[GOAL] Registration now open for Radical Open Access II - The Ethics of Care

[Janneke Adema]

Radical Open Access II – The Ethics of Care
Two days of critical discussion about creating a more diverse and equitable 
future for open access
The Post Office
Coventry University
June 26-27 2018
Organised by Coventry University’s postdigital arts and humanities research 
centre The Post Office, a project of the Centre for Postdigital 
Cultures
Find out more at: 

 
http://radicaloa.co.uk/conferences/roa2/
Attendance and participation is free of charge but registration is mandatory. 
Register 
here:https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/radical-open-access-ii-the-ethics-of-care-tickets-44796943865

Co-curators: Culture Machine, Mattering Press, Memory of the World/Public 
Library, meson press, Open Humanities Press, punctum books, POP
Speakers: Denisse Albornoz, Janneke Adema, Laurie Allen, Angel Octavio Alvarez 
Solís, Bodó Balázs, Kirsten Bell, George Chen, Jill Claassen, Joe Deville, 
Maddalena Fragnito, Valeria Graziano, Eileen Joy, Chris Kelty, Christopher 
Long, Kaja Marczewska, Frances McDonald, Gabriela Méndez-Cota, Samuel Moore, 
Tahani Nadim, Christopher Newfield, Sebastian Nordhoff, Lena Nyahodza, 
Alejandro Posada, Reggie Raju, Václav Štětka, Whitney Trettien

Radical Open Access II is about developing an ethics of care. Care with regard 
to:

  *   our means of creating, publishing and communicating research;
  *   our working conditions;
  *   our relations with others.

Radical Open Access II aims to move the debate over open access on from two 
issues in particular:
THE QUESTION OF ACCESS. At first sight it may seem rather odd for a conference 
on open access to want to move on from this question. But as Sci-Hub, rg, 
libgen et al. show, the debate over access has largely been won by 
shadow-libraries, who are providing quick and easy access to vast amounts of 
published research. Too much of the debate over ‘legitimate’ forms of open 
access now seems to be about how to use the provision of access to research as 
a means of exercising forms of governmental and commercial control (via audits, 
metrics, discourses of transparency and so on).
THE OA MOVEMENT’S RELUCTANCE TO ENGAGE RIGOROUSLY WITH THE KIND OF CONCERNS 
THAT ARE BEING DISCUSSED ELSEWHERE IN SOCIETY. This includes climate change, 
the environment, and the damage that humans are doing to the planet (i.e. the 
Anthropocene). But it also takes in debates over different forms:

  *   of organising labour (e.g. platform cooperativism);
  *   of working – such as those associated with ideas of post-work, the 
sharing and gig economies, and Universal Basic Income;
  *   of being together – see the rise of interest in the Commons, and in 
experiments with horizontalist, leaderless ways of self-organizing such as 
those associated with the Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and the Dakota Standing 
Rock Sioux protests.

Background
In 2015 the 
inaugural
 international Radical Open Access Conference addressed an urgent question: ho

Re: [GOAL] [SCHOLCOMM] Recent APC price changes for 4 publishers (BMC, Hindawi, PLOS, PeerJ)

[Dr. Franck Vazquez | CEO | MDPI]

Adding up the data summary for MDPI to the picture:

•164 journals with numeric data in 2017 (average APC 438CHF) and 2018 
(average APC 533CHF)
•107 journals (65.2%) with no change in APC, including 40 journals free 
(average APC 375CHF)
•40 journals (24.3%) with APC increase of 6% - 142% (increase range from 
100 – 500CHF; average APC increase 219CHF; average percent increase 27.3%)
•17 journals (10.3%) free in 2017, introduced APC in 2018 
(250CHF-550CHF; average APC 370CHF)

Original data can be found here:
http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc
http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc-2017

Some Publishers and Journals statistics can also be found here:
https://www.scilit.net/rankings
Please read the "Disclaimer & Notes".

Hoping this is useful,
Best wishes,
Franck

Franck Vazquez, Ph.D
Chief Executive Officer, MDPI
St. Alban-Anlage 66, 4052 Basel, Switzerland
Tel. +41 61 683 77 34
http://www.mdpi.com
--
http://orcid.org/-0002-7967-3798
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Franck_Vazquez
https://www.linkedin.com/in/franck-vazquez-932a96a8/


On 13.04.18 18:14, Heather Morrison wrote:
> Following is a summary of recent APC changes for 4 publishers, prepared 
> on request but posted in case this might be of interest to anyone else. 
> In brief, each publisher appears to be following a different pricing 
> strategy ranging from flat pricing over many years with one rare 
> exception, to a tenfold increase from 2016 – 2017.
> 
> 
> *BioMedCentral*: mixed picture
> 
> • 269 journals with numeric data 2017 and 2018 (April 4 sampling date 
> both years)
> • 20 with price increases of 2% – 83% (30 – 620 GBP)
> • 5 with price decreases of 1% – 15% (15 – 205 GBP)
> • Of interest: 25 journals with no publication fee (appears to be 
> society / university sponsorship)
> • Of concern: 44 journals with “title not found”: some will reflect 
> earlier title drop
> 
> 
> *Hindawi *April 2016 – November 2017: mixed picture, price increases a 
> bit concerning
> 
> • 281 journals with numeric data for 2016 and 2017 (including 0 = free 
> for now*)
> • 99 journals have price increases ranging from 14 – 108% (100% = price 
> has doubled), increases of 250 – 650 USD
> • 115 journals have no change in pricing
> • 45 journals have price decreases of 6 – 25%, 50 – 100 USD
> • Of interest: 230 Predecessor journals (ISRN series): good practice
> • Of concern: 186 title not found (not limited to 2017), excluding 
> predecessor
> 
> *Rotating free journals: 5 of the 281 journals were free in 2016; 1 is 
> still free, the other 4 have APCs of 1250 – 1750 USD. 17 journals that 
> had an APC in 2016 were free in 2017. Paul Peters sent an e-mail 
> explaining this strategy a few years ago.
> 
> 
> *PLOS ONE*: flat pricing with one exception
>  From 2014 – 2018, there has been only one price change for PLOS 
> journals: PLOS ONE was $1,350 USD in 2014 and is $1,495 USD today. The 
> sample date was December 2017, a visual scan confirms the same prices 
> are in effect as of April 13, 2018.
> 
> 
> *PeerJ*: tenfold price increase from 2016 – 2017 (99 USD – 1,095 USD); 
> new journal PeerJ Computer Science is 895 USD.
> 
> See also yesterday’s post
> 
> 
> Frontiers: 40% of journals have price increases from 18 – 31% 
> .
>  
> 
> 
> 
> Blog post link (text is the same):
> 
> 
> https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/04/13/recent-apc-price-changes-for-4-publishers-bmc-hindawi-plos-peerj/
> 
> 
> best,
> 
> 
> Heather Morrison
> 
> Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa
> 
> Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa
> 
> heather.morri...@uottawa.ca
> 
> https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org
> 
> https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
> 

___
GOAL mailing list
GOAL@eprints.org
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal

Re: [GOAL] [SCHOLCOMM] Recent APC price changes for 4 publishers (BMC, Hindawi, PLOS, PeerJ)

[Heather Morrison]

Thank you Franck this is very helpful.


According to this website, the current inflation rate for Switzerland is .8, 
i.e. less than one per cent:

https://tradingeconomics.com/switzerland/consumer-price-index-cpi


I see that a quarter of MDPI's journals have an average price increase of 
27.3%. It appears that MDPI is not making decisions about price increases based 
on such factors as consumer price increase or inflation rates.


List members who are interested in supporting OA through paying APCs could 
benefit from understanding how this works in order to budget for future needs. 
Can you explain MDPI's current and/or projected future pricing strategy?


MDPI is one of the publishers who offers "free for now" publishing in order to 
attract content for new journals. As an author, I have benefited from this as 
well as from MDPI's high quality professional editing and peer review. However, 
if those who pay APCs do not take this practice into account, they will find 
themselves short of funds in future when established journals start charging 
APCs, as 10% of MDPI's journals did this year by your account.


Two other notes / questions from MDPI for this year that I wonder if you would 
like to comment on?


  *   new pricing coming in July
  *   partnership with Knowledge Unlatched - on MDPI's APC price list that some 
journals are
"* free for authors; APC funded by Knowledge 
Unlatched" from: 
http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc


best,


Heather Morrison

Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa

Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa

heather.morri...@uottawa.ca

https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org

https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706

PS: if CHF is not your local currency, you can find both current and historical 
conversion rates through XE currency converter: 
https://www.xe.com/currencytables/

From: scholcomm-requ...@lists.ala.org  on 
behalf of Dr. Franck Vazquez | CEO | MDPI 
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2018 10:02 AM
To: scholc...@lists.ala.org; Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] Recent APC price changes for 4 publishers (BMC, 
Hindawi, PLOS, PeerJ)


Adding up the data summary for MDPI to the picture:

•164 journals with numeric data in 2017 (average APC 438CHF) and 2018
(average APC 533CHF)
•107 journals (65.2%) with no change in APC, including 40 journals free
(average APC 375CHF)
•40 journals (24.3%) with APC increase of 6% - 142% (increase range from
100 – 500CHF; average APC increase 219CHF; average percent increase 27.3%)
•17 journals (10.3%) free in 2017, introduced APC in 2018
(250CHF-550CHF; average APC 370CHF)

Original data can be found here:
http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc
http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc-2017

Some Publishers and Journals statistics can also be found here:
https://www.scilit.net/rankings
Please read the "Disclaimer & Notes".

Hoping this is useful,
Best wishes,
Franck

Franck Vazquez, Ph.D
Chief Executive Officer, MDPI
St. Alban-Anlage 66, 4052 Basel, Switzerland
Tel. +41 61 683 77 34
http://www.mdpi.com
--
http://orcid.org/-0002-7967-3798
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Franck_Vazquez
https://www.linkedin.com/in/franck-vazquez-932a96a8/


On 13.04.18 18:14, Heather Morrison wrote:
> Following is a summary of recent APC changes for 4 publishers, prepared
> on request but posted in case this might be of interest to anyone else.
> In brief, each publisher appears to be following a different pricing
> strategy ranging from flat pricing over many years with one rare
> exception, to a tenfold increase from 2016 – 2017.
>
>
> *BioMedCentral*: mixed picture
>
> • 269 journals with numeric data 2017 and 2018 (April 4 sampling date
> both years)
> • 20 with price increases of 2% – 83% (30 – 620 GBP)
> • 5 with price decreases of 1% – 15% (15 – 205 GBP)
> • Of interest: 25 journals with no publication fee (appears to be
> society / university sponsorship)
> • Of concern: 44 journals with “title not found”: some will reflect
> earlier title drop
>
>
> *Hindawi *April 2016 – November 2017: mixed picture, price increases a
> bit concerning
>
> • 281 journals with numeric data for 2016 and 2017 (including 0 = free
> for now*)
> • 99 journals have price increases ranging from 14 – 108% (100% = price
> has doubled), increases of 250 – 650 USD
> • 115 journals have no change in pricing
> • 45 journals have price decreases of 6 – 25%, 50 – 100 USD
> • Of interest: 230 Predecessor journals (ISRN series): good practice
> • Of concern: 186 title not found (not limited to 2017), excluding
> predecessor
>
> *Rotating free journals: 5 of the 281 journals were free in 2016; 1 is
> still free, the other 4 have APCs of 1250 – 1750 USD. 17 journals that
> had an APC in 2016 were free in 2017. Paul Peters sent an e-mail
> explaining this strategy a few years ago.
>
>
> *PLOS ONE*: flat pricing with one exception

Re: [GOAL] [SCHOLCOMM] Recent APC price changes for 4 publishers (BMC, Hindawi, PLOS, PeerJ)

[Ross Mounce]

Dear Heather,


I find it extremely misleading that you assert that PeerJ has had a
"tenfold price increase" in a discussion about APCs.

The $99 USD you quote as the original price is not and never was an APC.
You are comparing apples and oranges.

The $99 offer was a limited-time-only promotional price for an individual
'Basic' lifetime membership, which as I understand it would only allow a
person to submit a single paper, one per year for 'free', if all authors
also had personal memberships (as part of the lifetime membership model).
The $99 offer was available from launch until Feb 22, 2016
https://web.archive.org/web/20160714195726/https://peerj.com/pricing/

After Feb 22, 2016 the Basic lifetime membership price increased to $199

The present day Basic lifetime membership price is $399, which is only four
times the original promotional pricing, not "tenfold".

It is not at all valid to compare the membership model with the APC model
because under the APC-model you pay and you get one article for that one
APC. Whereas under the membership model, you could potentially (if they
pass peer review) publish many multiple articles for that single membership
payment over the course of many years. The exact value for money is
therefore dependent upon how many times the author uses their PeerJ
membership.

The first true APC-style pricing PeerJ offered was for an APC of $695 which
covered articles with any number of authors, whether they had paid-for
PeerJ memberships or not. Today, the PeerJ APC price is $1,095 which is
certainly not a "tenfold" increase on the initial APC of $695.


FWIW I bought myself a PeerJ Basic lifetime membership for $99 years ago
and I'm delighted I did.



Kind regards,


Ross




On 13 April 2018 at 17:14, Heather Morrison 
wrote:

> Following is a summary of recent APC changes for 4 publishers, prepared on
> request but posted in case this might be of interest to anyone else. In
> brief, each publisher appears to be following a different pricing strategy
> ranging from flat pricing over many years with one rare exception, to a
> tenfold increase from 2016 – 2017.
>
>
> *BioMedCentral*: mixed picture
>
> • 269 journals with numeric data 2017 and 2018 (April 4 sampling date both
> years)
> • 20 with price increases of 2% – 83% (30 – 620 GBP)
> • 5 with price decreases of 1% – 15% (15 – 205 GBP)
> • Of interest: 25 journals with no publication fee (appears to be society
> / university sponsorship)
> • Of concern: 44 journals with “title not found”: some will reflect
> earlier title drop
>
>
> *Hindawi *April 2016 – November 2017: mixed picture, price increases a
> bit concerning
>
> • 281 journals with numeric data for 2016 and 2017 (including 0 = free for
> now*)
> • 99 journals have price increases ranging from 14 – 108% (100% = price
> has doubled), increases of 250 – 650 USD
> • 115 journals have no change in pricing
> • 45 journals have price decreases of 6 – 25%, 50 – 100 USD
> • Of interest: 230 Predecessor journals (ISRN series): good practice
> • Of concern: 186 title not found (not limited to 2017), excluding
> predecessor
>
> *Rotating free journals: 5 of the 281 journals were free in 2016; 1 is
> still free, the other 4 have APCs of 1250 – 1750 USD. 17 journals that had
> an APC in 2016 were free in 2017. Paul Peters sent an e-mail explaining
> this strategy a few years ago.
>
>
> *PLOS ONE*: flat pricing with one exception
> From 2014 – 2018, there has been only one price change for PLOS journals:
> PLOS ONE was $1,350 USD in 2014 and is $1,495 USD today. The sample date
> was December 2017, a visual scan confirms the same prices are in effect as
> of April 13, 2018.
>
>
> *PeerJ*: tenfold price increase from 2016 – 2017 (99 USD – 1,095 USD);
> new journal PeerJ Computer Science is 895 USD.
>
> See also yesterday’s post
>
>
> Frontiers: 40% of journals have price increases from 18 – 31%
> .
>
>
> Blog post link (text is the same):
>
>
> https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/04/13/recent-apc-
> price-changes-for-4-publishers-bmc-hindawi-plos-peerj/
>
>
> best,
>
>
> Heather Morrison
>
> Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa
>
> Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa
>
> heather.morri...@uottawa.ca
>
> https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org
>
> https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
>



-- 
-- 
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
Ross Mounce www.rossmounce.co.uk 
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
___
GOAL mailing list
GOAL@eprints.org
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal

Re: [GOAL] [SCHOLCOMM] Recent APC price changes for 4 publishers (BMC, Hindawi, PLOS, PeerJ)

[Heather Morrison]

Thank you for the clarification, Ross.


To clarify further, from PeerJ's website: the current fee for lifetime 
membership is $399 - $499 based on the number of articles to be covered (a 4 to 
5-fold increase from the original price; and "All authors of a paper require a 
membership or a single APC charge must be paid instead". (From: 
https://peerj.com/pricing/)


Based on your information on APC per se, PeerJ has increased its APC from 695 
USD to 1095 USD. Thiw would be an increase of 58% (time frame not provided). I 
can confirm the current fee from the PeerJ website, however I do not have 
historical data for the 695.


According to my DOAJ 2016 spreadsheet, 99 USD was listed as the APC for PeerJ 
in 2016, 1095 in 2017. Assuming PeerJ staff input this data in the DOAJ 
application process, this is the source of the misunderstanding. This reflects 
what I would describe as a limitation on what we can realistically expect from 
DOAJ. Many journals have complex models, pricing in multiple currencies, etc., 
so asking for "the APC" as if it were a single amount in a single currency 
oversimplifies the situation and risks more such misunderstandings. DOAJ does 
important work; I would like to see it refocus on its work as a directory, 
connecting people to all these OA journals and articles. A yes/no about 
publication fees and a link to further information would be sufficient from my 
perspective.


Perhaps a representative from PeerJ would like to clarify further?


best,


Heather Morrison

Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa

Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa

heather.morri...@uottawa.ca

https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org

https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706



From: Ross Mounce 
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2018 10:59 AM
To: Heather Morrison
Cc: scholc...@lists.ala.org; Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] Recent APC price changes for 4 publishers (BMC, 
Hindawi, PLOS, PeerJ)

Dear Heather,


I find it extremely misleading that you assert that PeerJ has had a "tenfold 
price increase" in a discussion about APCs.

The $99 USD you quote as the original price is not and never was an APC. You 
are comparing apples and oranges.

The $99 offer was a limited-time-only promotional price for an individual 
'Basic' lifetime membership, which as I understand it would only allow a person 
to submit a single paper, one per year for 'free', if all authors also had 
personal memberships (as part of the lifetime membership model). The $99 offer 
was available from launch until Feb 22, 2016 
https://web.archive.org/web/20160714195726/https://peerj.com/pricing/

After Feb 22, 2016 the Basic lifetime membership price increased to $199

The present day Basic lifetime membership price is $399, which is only four 
times the original promotional pricing, not "tenfold".

It is not at all valid to compare the membership model with the APC model 
because under the APC-model you pay and you get one article for that one APC. 
Whereas under the membership model, you could potentially (if they pass peer 
review) publish many multiple articles for that single membership payment over 
the course of many years. The exact value for money is therefore dependent upon 
how many times the author uses their PeerJ membership.

The first true APC-style pricing PeerJ offered was for an APC of $695 which 
covered articles with any number of authors, whether they had paid-for PeerJ 
memberships or not. Today, the PeerJ APC price is $1,095 which is certainly not 
a "tenfold" increase on the initial APC of $695.


FWIW I bought myself a PeerJ Basic lifetime membership for $99 years ago and 
I'm delighted I did.



Kind regards,


Ross




On 13 April 2018 at 17:14, Heather Morrison 
mailto:heather.morri...@uottawa.ca>> wrote:

Following is a summary of recent APC changes for 4 publishers, prepared on 
request but posted in case this might be of interest to anyone else. In brief, 
each publisher appears to be following a different pricing strategy ranging 
from flat pricing over many years with one rare exception, to a tenfold 
increase from 2016 - 2017.


BioMedCentral: mixed picture

* 269 journals with numeric data 2017 and 2018 (April 4 sampling date both 
years)
* 20 with price increases of 2% - 83% (30 - 620 GBP)
* 5 with price decreases of 1% - 15% (15 - 205 GBP)
* Of interest: 25 journals with no publication fee (appears to be society / 
university sponsorship)
* Of concern: 44 journals with "title not found": some will reflect earlier 
title drop


Hindawi April 2016 - November 2017: mixed picture, price increases a bit 
concerning

* 281 journals with numeric data for 2016 and 2017 (including 0 = free for now*)
* 99 journals have price increases ranging from 14 - 108% (100% = price has 
doubled), increases of 250 - 650 USD
* 115 journals have no change in pricing
* 45 journals have p