Developing an Effective Market for Open Access Article Processing Charges

In 2013, a consortium of partner funders - Jisc, Research Libraries UK, Research Councils UK, the Wellcome Trust, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics - came together to commission a study to examine the rapidly developing market for open access article processing charges (APCs).

The work, which was undertaken by Professor Bo-Christer Björk of the Hanken School of Economics (Finland) and Professor David Solomon of Michigan State University (USA), set out to analyse this market, and to develop policy options through which funders could help ensure that the market will deliver value for money for the research community.

In their report, published in March 2014, Björk and Solomon set out a series of scenarios for how funders might develop their approaches for supporting APCs. These cover both full open access journals (which operate exclusively by this model) and so-called hybrid journals (which offer this service for individual articles, while continuing to operate via the subscription model). The authors appraised three combined scenarios, which they conclude to be the most promising for further consideration.

The partner funders hope that this work will provide a starting point for discussion and debate on how researchers, institutions and funders can work together to ensure the open access market is competitive and delivers high-quality services for the research community.

Access the data

Several datasets were developed by the consultants as part of this report (as listed in Annex D). These are freely available on FigShare, https://figshare.com/articles/Developing_an_effective_market_for_Open_A_APC/951966