The oligopoly’s shift to open access: How the big five academic publishers profit from article processing charges
2023/01/01 by Leigh-Ann Butler, Lisa Matthias, Marc‐André Simard +2 · 6 voices · 105 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Decision Sciences · #Academic Publishing and Open Access #Advertising #Business #Computer science #Economics #Finance #Law #Library science #Mathematical economics #Oligopoly #Political science #Private Equity and Venture Capital #Publication #Publishing #Revenue #The Internet #World Wide Web #scientometrics and bibliometrics research
paper · pdf · doi:10.1162/qss_a_00272
published in Quantitative Science Studies 4(4), 778-799 (The MIT Press)
openalex publication_date 2023/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Abstract
Abstract We aim to estimate the total amount of article processing charges (APCs) paid to publish open access (OA) in journals controlled by the five large commercial publishers (Elsevier, Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley) between 2015 and 2018. Using publication data from WoS, OA status from Unpaywall, and annual APC prices from open data sets and historical fees retrieved via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, we estimate that globally authors paid 1.06 billion in publication fees to these publishers from 2015–2018. Revenue from gold OA amounted to 612.5 million, and 448.3 million was obtained for publishing OA in hybrid journals. Among the five publishers, Springer Nature made the most revenue from OA (589.7 million), followed by Elsevier (221.4 million), Wiley (114.3 million), Taylor & Francis (76.8 million), and Sage (31.6 million). With Elsevier and Wiley making most of their APC revenue from hybrid fees and others focusing on gold, different OA strategies could be observed between publishers.
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Discussions
- I always had the vague feeling that Scientific Reports and Nature Communications are mainly APC business models. A paper estimated the total APC for gold/hybrid Open Access per journal 2015–2018: doi [bsky, 103 points, 5 comments]
- I guess quality proofreading is too expensive for them. 😏 doi.org/10.1162/qss_... [bsky, 2 points, 3 comments]
- Link: doi.org/10.1162/qss_... [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
- "the need to contain costs will undermine the transition to open research" is an interesting one, it reads like code for "we want to be able to charge whatever we like, regardless of it's reasonable". [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]
- Lassen wir mal die Zahlen auf uns wirken: "[...] we estimate that globally authors paid $1.06 billion in publication fees to these publishers from 2015–2018. Revenue from gold OA [...] $612.5 million, [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
- The paper: Leigh-Ann Butler, Lisa Matthias, Marc-André Simard, Philippe Mongeon, Stefanie Haustein; The oligopoly’s shift to open access: How the big five academic publishers profit from article proce [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
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