*Selecting CC-BY license, USD 4,000 when selecting CC-BY-NC-ND license.
In chemistry too the APCs present significant differences across
different OA journals (Table 4). As lately shown by economics scholars,
this large variance is not explained by the cost of production but by
other drivers collectively identified by the scholars as “market
power” [21].
In detail, the average APC can be modeled a constant term of $768.1,
interpreted as the production cost of processing an article for an OA
journal, plus the JIF×132.5 (a one unit increase of the JIF increases
the APC by $132.5), plus the compound effect of being a big publisher
amounting to $447.6 + $1.13 × pub age. big. pub, namely the product of
publisher age and size because age only counts in combination with being
a big publisher (otherwise age increases average APC by only $1.13)
[21].
3 The structure of the chemistry publishing industry
Trying to answer the question why in 2017 scholars continued “to give
their labour – as authors, referees and editors – to publishing firms
that do not, in fact, circulate knowledge widely and affordably”
[22], a team of scholars in open science suggests that:
«The answer lies in a lack of detailed understanding among academics of
the historical and economic forces at play in academic publishing; and
in the success with which big publishers have learned how to make
themselves apparently indispensable to the academic prestige economy»
[22].
Data in Table 5 show the average citations per paper over a 3-year
window (2017-2019) for the 20 largest publishers by volume (total
documents in 2019) [23].
Table 5 . Top 20 publishers by volume, ranked by number of
average citations received to articles published in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
[Source: SCImago, 2019].