Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023

2024/07/23 by Stefanie Haustein, Haustein, Stefanie, Eric Schares +9 · 48 voices · 10 citations
Computer Science · #cs.DL

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2407.16551

Abstract

This study presents estimates of the global expenditure on article processing charges (APCs) paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023. APCs are fees charged for publishing in some fully open access journals (gold) and in subscription journals to make individual articles open access (hybrid). There is currently no way to systematically track institutional, national or global expenses for open access publishing due to a lack of transparency in APC prices, what articles they are paid for, or who pays them. We therefore curated and used an open dataset of annual APC list prices from Elsevier, Frontiers, MDPI, PLOS, Springer Nature, and Wiley in combination with the number of open access articles from these publishers indexed by OpenAlex to estimate that, globally, a total of $8.349 billion ($8.968 billion in 2023 US dollars) were spent on APCs between 2019 and 2023. We estimate that in 2023 MDPI ($681.6 million), Elsevier ($582.8 million) and Springer Nature ($546.6) generated the most revenue with APCs. After adjusting for inflation, we also show that annual spending almost tripled from $910.3 million in 2019 to $2.538 billion in 2023, that hybrid exceed gold fees, and that the median APCs paid are higher than the median listed fees for both gold and hybrid. Our approach addresses major limitations in previous efforts to estimate APCs paid and offers much needed insight into an otherwise opaque aspect of the business of scholarly publishing. We call upon publishers to be more transparent about OA fees.

Cited by

• The Drain of Scientific Publishing
• The oligopoly of academic publishers persists in exclusive database
• Access models, authorship patterns, and citation impact in Ukrainian scholarly publishing (2020-2023)
• Diamond is the new Green—Why Green Open Access is not a sustainable long-term model for scientific publishing
• <b>Rethinking where and how we publish in health sciences</b>
• Review of interactive open-access publishing with community-based open peer review for improved scientific discourse and quality assurance
• APCs and citation impact of Gold OA articles authored by Ukrainian scholars before and during Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine (2020-2023)
• The Science System at the Limit: A Call to Action for Considerate Publishing
• Pursuing transparency: How research performing organizations in Germany collect data on publication costs
• The 'Big Three' of Scientific Information: A comparative bibliometric review of Web of Science, Scopus, and OpenAlex
• Estimating transformative agreement impact on hybrid open access: A comparative large-scale study using Scopus, Web of Science and open metadata

Discussions

• Between 2019 and 2023, researchers paid $8.968 billion to make papers open access. Imagine what else could be done with this money if it wasnt paid to for profit publishing companies... 👉 arxiv.org/ [bsky, 637 points, 18 comments]
• 🚨 Preprint! We combine our recent open dataset of #APC prices with the article counts per journal-year from #OpenAlex to estimate how much the academic community has paid in APCs over the last 5 year [bsky, 186 points, 6 comments]
• Researchers paid $9 billion over 5 years for their findings to be freely accessible. This is based on a study of the global expenditure on article processing charges (APCs) paid to six publishers fo [bsky, 84 points, 2 comments]
• Annual spending on APCs went from $910 million (2019) to $2.5 billion (2023) alongside "the strain on scientific publishing." Most of those fees went to for-profit groups. Publish with non-profit soc [bsky, 46 points, 1 comments]
• Link: arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 37 points, 2 comments]
• A wild statistic: Authors of peer-reviewed journal articles paid $8.968 billion in open-access fees in the last five years. This is clearly the wrong way of doing open access, and as academics, we sho [bsky, 25 points, 5 comments]
• The price of open access 🧪https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 15 points, 1 comments]
• This is a fairly shocking recent preprint on estimated global expenditure on article processing charges (APCs). Six publishers (Elsevier, Frontiers, MDPI, PLOS, Springer Nature, and Wiley) received $ [bsky, 13 points, 0 comments]
• $8B???? Thats... I can't even... I'm lost for words. arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 I will take this moment to remind you to support your society journals often. Imagine if they had the $8B instead! [bsky, 11 points, 3 comments]
• '(Using) an open dataset of annual APC list prices fm Elsevier, Frontiers, MDPI, PLOS, Springer Nature & Wiley in combination w the number of open access articles fm these publishers indexed by OpenAl [bsky, 10 points, 1 comments]
• When people ask why we are starting a new independent journal, I think I’ll just show them this: arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 An estimated $8.98 billion spent on open access fees in 4 years. Imagine what [bsky, 10 points, 1 comments]
• Wow! Study estimates that globally $8.96 billion USD was spent on open access Article Processing Charges between 2019 and 2023 Costs have also tripled from $910.3 million in 2019 to $2.538 billion [bsky, 8 points, 0 comments]
• We've been paying over 8$ billion in APCs to 6 main publishers. This is simply outrageous and unsustainable. arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 via @themeta.news [bsky, 8 points, 0 comments]
• Sex dominerande vetenskapliga förlag tog i cirka 28 miljarder kronor i avgifter för öppen tillgång-publicerad forskning 2023. arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 7 points, 1 comments]
• If you do use averages instead of actual journal rates, you’d also want to use a different average for hybrid vs gold journals. Dataset: doi.org/10.7910/DVN/... Data paper: arxiv.org/abs/2406.08356 Pr [bsky, 6 points, 0 comments]
• Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023 arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 #publishing #research #science #funding #elsevier #springer #wiley #m [bsky, 5 points, 0 comments]
• Preprint Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023 arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 5 points, 0 comments]
• 8,4 billion USD in private pockets in only five years just to make research and science open access, while there is a constant decline in quality. Insane. [bsky, 4 points, 0 comments]
• Wow, almost 9 billion US$ in open-access fees for journals of Elsevier, Frontiers, MDPI, PLOS, Springer Nature, and Wiley combined between 2019 and 2023. These open-access fees allow us to download a [bsky, 4 points, 1 comments]
• And $2.5b is just APC for six publishers. Total costs of publishing is obviously a lot more arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 4 points, 1 comments]
• APCs costing science $Billions. Would love to be able to track average APC cost, so we can see *hopefully* progress in reducing that number through efficiency. This study curated an APC dataset, but [bsky, 3 points, 1 comments]
• $8.968 billion payed for open access between 2019 and 2023. Imagine how many projects you could support. [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]
• "Une étude a récemment estimé que les cinq principaux éditeurs ont perçu près de 9 milliards de dollars en frais de traitement des articles entre 2019 et 2023. Les auteurs ont calculé qu'Elsevier à lu [bsky, 3 points, 1 comments]
• Estimate of global article processing charges (2019-2023) > $8.3billion. Biggest moneymakers in 2023: MDPI ($681.6 million), Elsevier ($582.8 million) and Springer Nature ($546.6) arxiv.org/abs/2407.1 [bsky, 3 points, 1 comments]
• Fascinating read on the ever frustrating topic of publication fees: this paper estimates that between 2019 and 2023 researchers and institutions paid a whopping USD $8.968 billion for their findings [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]
• This is your periodic reminder that for-profit academic publishing is a racket and needs to be dismantled. $8.349 billion in article processing fees in a four year period: arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]
• Yes, they are clearly different in key metrics. In our data (see here: arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 ) Frontiers is clearly less of an outlier than MDPI, that is in turn an *extreme* outlier in all respect [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
• Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023 arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 Plan U, by @richardsever.bsky.social and colleagues: journals.plos.or [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
• 📊 Between 2019 and 2023, researchers spent $8.349 billion on #APCs to publish open access with 6 major publishers. Source : arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 💎 The alternative: #DiamondOpenAccess model of @ [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
• "Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023" by Stefanie Haustein, Eric Schares, Juan Pablo Alperin, Madelaine Hare, Leigh-Ann Butler, an [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
• 🚨 Global spending on article processing charges (APCs) reached $8.4 billion between 2019-2023 for #OpenAccess, tripling in 4 years, with MDPI, Elsevier & Springer Nature leading revenue, yet the syst [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
• What if we used this money differently? 1/4 💰 A work posted online in July 2024 (arxiv.org/pdf/2407.16551) is making news at the start of 2025. It estimates that globally, a total of $8.968 billion [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]
• We (researchers) allowed this monster to grow and we have the power to suppress it "After adjusting for inflation, we also show that annual spending almost tripled from $910.3 million in 2019 to $2 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• "Hybrid" publishers are such a giant grift arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• Authors "estimate that, globally, a total of $8.349 billion ($8.968 billion in 2023 US dollars) were spent on APCs between 2019 and 2023." Consider publishing in diamond journals like RiSE and put tha [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• If the $9B in open access fees alleged by this article is anywhere near the ballpark, perhaps multiply your first answer by ten. #medsky arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019-2023 OpenAlex estimateed that, globally, a total of $8.349 billion ($8.968 billion US dollars) were spe [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• 🤔 What’s your take on Open Access? Can it be achieved at more sustainable prices? Read the full analysis here: arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 Let’s discuss! [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
• Thanks for this. Curious what kind of reception you've had to this argument. Have you gotten any feedback from contract lawyers? btw: ICYMI, we've done an estimate of APC expenditures: arxiv.org/ab [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• Missed this paper last, turns out that scientific publishing and 'open access' is pretty lucrative. Who'd have guessed. Publishing science really needs to change. arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• Preprint : Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023 8.349 milliards $ MDPI, Springer et Elsevier en tëte Dépense annuelle X3 APC hybrid [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023 https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• Corporate journal publishers extracted $9 billion in APC charges from 2019-2023. arxiv.org/pdf/2407.16551 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• Viitattu artikkeli arxiv.org/pdf/2407.16551 2/2 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• PREPRINT - Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023 arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• A total of $8.349 billion were spent on APCs between 2019 and 2023. In 2023 MDPI ($681.6 mln), Elsevier ($582.8 mln) and Springer Nature ($546.6 mln) generated the most revenue with APCs. Annual spend [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023 Preprint from @eschares et al https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]

Related

• The oligopoly’s shift to open access: How the big five academic publishers profit from article processing charges
• An open dataset of article processing charges from six large scholarly publishers (2019-2023)
• Article processing charge costs of open access articles indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection from 2019 to 2023 by publisher and country: a secondary publication
• The “total cost of publication” in a hybrid open‐access environment: Institutional approaches to funding journal article‐processing charges in combination with subscriptions
• Article processing charges for open access journal publishing: A review