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Gold OA Pricewatch #2 – BMC journal APCs increase

Just a quick note that BMC journal APC’s have increased from what they were in 2012.

 

Luckily I had the 2012 data saved on my computer so I can compare prices directly.
I’ve put the data for 97 journals (not all of them) here on figshare.

The mean price increase is just over 5%.

Although to give it a fair statistical treatment – the median price increase is just 3.3% (to 1 d.p.). There is a lot of variance. Some of the biggest price hikes appear to be from society journals e.g. Journal of Physiological Anthropology (An official journal of the Japan Society of Physiological Anthropology) and thus the price hike is probably the society decision rather than BMC’s doing. But in the era of PeerJ & eLife should prices be going up at all? If anything I’d expect prices to go down to remain competitive. Perhaps BMC are hoping things will be business as usual this year?

I got what I assume to be the correct 2013 prices over at the official BioMedCentral website today.

It’s a shame y’know. I’ve read a little of the history of the Open Access movement and in earlier times, perhaps a decade ago BioMedCentral really helped enable Open Access, convincing sceptical academics that it could work.

But now, it does make me wonder whether their prices aren’t a bit too high:

BMC tweet

As James McInerney tweeted on 1st January 2013. Are BMC price gouging?


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