Each year we survey the list Article Processing Charges (APCs) of a sample of major and significant publishers. Covering over 20,000 titles, and going back to 2016, our data set represents one of the most comprehensive reviews of open access pricing.
To compare like for like, we analyze non-discounted, CC BY charges. We take a snapshot at the end of every January, so we can track yearly changes while controlling for the different times of year that publishers may update prices.
Headline Changes
Going into 2024, we have seen significant price increases.
Fully OA list prices across our sample have risen by around 9.5% compared with those set a year ago.
Hybrid list prices have risen by an average of 4.2% over the same period.
Maximum APCs for Fully OA journals remain at $8,900.
Maximum APCs for Hybrid journals now top out at $12,290 (up $600 from last year).
The last big jump in prices happened in 2020-2021, when the high-impact journals started offering OA options for the first time. This served to drag up average price increases. They subsequently fell back to averages.
Source: Delta Think
Underlying trends continue.
There are almost 3x more Hybrid journals than Fully OA ones. Hybrid journals follow (or, rather, set) a similar pattern to the market overall.
On average, Fully OA prices are around 62% of Hybrid prices. But, after a few years of widening, the gap is showing signs of narrowing – it was 58% last year but 63% the year before that.
Around 31% of our sample of Fully OA journals charge no APCs.
Price rises vary significantly by discipline. Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences have seen particularly large average increases, especially in Fully OA journal prices.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
