APC-Payments of the University of Turku - Data Available Now for 4 Years

For the year 2021, some preliminary data (Jan-Apr) is already available. During the last 4 years, the University has paid APC-payments over 1 million euros (108.0000). 56 % of the cost  had gone to Golden OA (FullOA) journals, 44 % to hybrid journals. Most of the APC-payments have been paid to well-known big publishing houses like Elsevier and Springer Nature. Hybrid costs concentrate mainly for two publishers, Elsevier and John Wiley.

There is more variation in payments for Golden OA (FullOA journals), but a major part of the payments go to publishers which are connected to Springer publishing house (Springer Nature, BioMed Central). In 2017-2020, the highest amount of payments have gone to two Springer journals: Scientific Reports and Nature Communications.

For the year, 2021 data is still preliminary but if the trend continues there is now going a changeover from Hybrid publishing model to Full Golden OA. In January-April, the university paid only four hybrid APC-payments. Also big traditional publishing houses may lose their position as a Swiss GoldenOA-publishing house MDPI is rising.

APC-payments in 2020

In 2020 University of Turku paid APC-fees about 350.000 euros (352.508,78). Over half of the fees (54 %) were targeted for GoldenOA (FullOA) journals. In 2020, University of Turku paid also book processing chargers (BPC), 27.216,91 euros). BPC are, at the moment, however, not systematically monitored in Finland, but University of Turku is already ready for that. I also must be noted that BPC are usually much higher than APC-payments of journals.

Within the University APC payments concentrate for the Faculties of Natural Science and Technology (44 %) and Medical Faculty (33 %). Most of the APC-payments of these two faculties go to GoldenOA (FullOA) journals, as also at the School of Economics. Hybrid journals, howler are in major at the Faculty of Humanities and Education. Also over 2/3 of the fees are paid for publisher with hybrid publishing model at the Faculty of Social Sciences.

Concerning publishing houses, most of the APC-payments (GoldenOA/HybridOA in total) were paid for Elsevier, of whose APC-cost most targeted to hybrid journals. Springer Nature was on the second place. Springer Nature’s APC-payments were divided to both Golden (FullOA) and hybrid journals, of which Scientific Reports and Nature Communications were still on top. Both are GoldenOA journals.

One notable change is that Swiss GoldenOA publishing house MDPI is getting more GoldenOA-payments. In 2020, it received nearly a quarter of the Golden-OA-payments (24 %). Data for year 2021 is very preliminary (available for Jan-Apr) but during the first 4 months of the year 2021 it received over third of the APC-fees (GoldenOA/Hybrid in total) and over half of the GoldenOA fees. All journals of Swiss MDPI are GoldenOA and have a Creative Commons BY-license. At the Finnish publication forum level, MDPI's journals are on level 1.

The average GoldenOA (FullOA) APC-payment in 2020 was 1750 euros (1742,54), average hybrid APC-payment 1868,65 euros. It must by noted that variation in APC-payments is large, for GoldenOA/FUllOA-payments from 75-to 5431 euros, for hybrid payments from 397 to 4811 euros.

APC-payments of the Academy of Finland

It is possible to separate APC-payments financed by the Academy of Finland. Academy's share of payments is about one third (32 %) of all. Notable is that hybrid publishing model is a bit more common on Academy's research projects, 53 % of payments go  to hybrid journals and 47  % of payments to GoldenOA/Fulloa-journals. PlanS requirements of openness in Science require immediate opening of articles and do not recommend hybrid model of publishing.  It will be interesting to follow if there will be a change in payment division in 2021. The preliminary data of 2021 may already indicate a trend to a change for GoldenOA (FullOA)-journals.

University of Turku's APC-payments are also visible on German-based international OpenAPC-service (1) . Payments can be browsed e.g. by year, publisher, journal and OA-type. The OpenAPC-service unfortunately does not have information of payment division of faculties and departments. University of Turku APC-payments are inserted to Converis Research Portal and are on University's data warehouse. In future, they will become a part of Virta-publication data transfer and will be a part of Ministry of Education's statistics (2).

References:

1. International OpenAPC-service 
2. Vipunen - Education Statistics Finland