Annual article processing charges for six large scholarly publishers

Abstract

Article processing charges (APCs) were devised as an alternative to subscriptions that could support open access (OA) publishing but have since become a financial barrier for authors and a lucrative source of revenue for scholarly publishers. APCs are difficult to track as they vary by publisher, journal and over time. Reliable and comprehensive annual data is challenging to gather, eliciting a diverse range of approaches to estimate and monitor APC spending. This paper introduces a dataset of APCs of six large commercial publishers – Elsevier, Frontiers, PLOS, MDPI, Springer Nature and Wiley – between 2019 and 2023, produced from snapshots collected from publisher websites and via Wayback Machine. Data includes journal metadata, collection methods and annual APC price list information in several currencies for 8,722 unique journals and 36,618 journal-year combinations. The dataset can support library collection development and scientometric analyses on APCs for gold and hybrid OA journals. Presentation at the 28th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators, 2024, held September 18-20, 2024 in Berlin.