Confirming the Wellcome Trust's predictions about open access article processing fees

In 2004, The Wellcome Trust published the report, Costs and business models in scientific research publishing. After reviewing the literature on costs of scholarly publishing and discussions with senior staff at a range of publishers (including commercial publishers), the Wellcome Trust concluded: A conservative estimate of the charge per article necessary for author-pays journals lies in the range $500–$2500, depending on the level of selectivity used by the journal, plus a contribution to overheads and profits (p. 2).

Today's actual article processing fees (APF) of successful, established fully open access publishers supports this prediction of The Wellcome Trust. The profitable Hindawi charges fees closer to the low end of the range; for example, the APF for  Hindawi's Economics Research International is $400. BioMedCentral's average APF is $1,640, in the middle of the range. PLoS fees range from $1,300 for PLoS ONE to $2,900 for PLoS Biology. This is just over the top of the Wellcome Trust range - but then seven years has intervened between the publication of the report and now. 

References

BioMedCentral (2011). Frequently asked questions about BioMedCentral’s article-

processing charges. Retrieved November 22, 2011 from http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apcfaq

Hindawi (2011). Article processing charges. Retrieved November 22, 2011 from

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/econ/apc/

Public Library of Science (2011). Publication fees. Retrieved November 22, 2011 from

http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees/

Wellcome Trust. (2004). Costs and business models in scientific research publishing.

n.p.: The Wellcome Trust. Retrieved November 22, 2011 from http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Publications/Reports/Biomedical-science/WTD003185.htm

This post is part of an early (not yet posted) draft of the economics chapter of my open thesis.