Oxford Journals’ experiments with open access under the Oxford Open initiative have now been running for over four years. We always strive to price our journals fairly, and so some of our Oxford Open journals have seen modifications to their 2008 prices based on the volume of open access content within those journals....
Under the Oxford Open model, authors of accepted papers in participating journals have the option of paying an open access publication charge to make their paper freely available online immediately upon publication....54 journals were published under the Oxford Open model in 2006, and more have joined the initiative since.
Oxford Journals is keen to ensure that the open access content in these journals has an effect on the price. In 2008, the average increase across all Oxford Journals titles is 6.9%. For the 28 Oxford Open titles with open access uptake in 2006 (the last full calendar year on which we could calculate), the average 2008 online-only price increase is just 1.7%. This is due to adjustments to the online-only prices of these journals which reflect increases in the percentage of open access content published between 2005 and 2006....
Subscribers should pay only for non-open access content....As a result, eight out of 54 Oxford Open titles saw an absolute reduction in price from 2007 to 2008, and a further 20 titles benefited from a lower price increase....
PS: Table 1 shows that that the rate of uptake for Oxford Open journals varies by field from 1.1% in the social sciences and humanities to 7.6% in the life sciences. Table 2 shows the range of effective price reductions due to OA, from 0% for 26 journals to 18% for two journals.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/01/2008 11:07:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
