Elsevier and Springer Nature sit out Plan S cost comparison tool

More than 2,000 journals have shared extensive information about their costs and services as part of transparency measures driven by the Plan S open access project.

In a much-anticipated move designed to justify the hefty article processing charges (APCs) set by many journals, a total of 27 publishers have joined the Journal Comparison Service (JCS) run by cOAlition S, an alliance of national funders and charitable bodies set up to increase the volume of free-to-read research.

Under the agreement, the clients of publishers – primarily libraries and library consortia who procure publishing services on behalf of the research community – will be able to compare the costs and prices of journals on a range of key indicators.

This information will allow libraries to determine whether the prices charged by journals represent value for money amid claims that some scientific journals are charging vastly more than the costs they incur for each article published. An F1000 study published last year claimed the most highly selective journals incur costs of no more than $1,000 (£734) for every paper they produce, even though they charge about £8,000 for publication – a calculation that significantly underestimated the costs of peer review, according to one publisher.

Of the 2,070 titles whose information will become accessible under the JCS, although not directly to researchers, 1,000 belong to the US academic publishing giant Wiley, while another 219 journals owned by Hindawi, which was bought by Wiley last year, also appear on the list.

Several other fully open access publishers will also participate on the comparison site including Plos, the Open Library of Humanities and F1000, while learned society presses and university publishers, including the Royal Society, Rockefeller University Press and the International Union of Crystallography, are also part of the scheme.

Other notable participants include the prestigious life sciences publisher eLife, EMBO Press and the rapidly growing open access publisher, Frontiers.

However, the two of the world’s largest scholarly publishers – Elsevier and Springer Nature, whose most prestigious titles charge about £8,000 for APCs – are not part of the scheme.

Springer Nature said it was not taking part in the JCS, but it had “launched a dedicated page on our website where our community can find this information in one central place to evaluate us on the value that we provide”.

“As a global publisher we take seriously our duty to clearly and openly show our customers, partners and research community how we work to deliver on the things that matter to them,” said Carrie Webster, Springer Nature’s vice-president (open access).

In a statement, Elsevier said it “recognise[d] the importance of providing information to the research community to help them make data-led decisions” which is “why we already make information regarding our pricing and journal offerings publicly available for everyone across our website”.

This information included an “explanation regarding our pricing policy, list prices [and] components that factor into our pricing”, “metrics found on many of our journal home pages, including acceptance rates, and average review and publication times” and “details about our publishing volumes under subscription and open access business models for our individual journals”.

“Given the number of journals we publish (over 2,800), we will continue to add to the information we provide publicly about our pricing and journal quality metrics and services over the coming weeks,” it added.

Under the Plan S agreement, scholarly journals are obliged to become “transformative journals” and gradually increase the proportion of non-paywalled content over a number of years. Those titles that do not make their papers free at the point of publication will drop out of the Plan S scheme, meaning authors cannot use funds provided by any of the 17 funding agencies and six foundations now signed up to Plan S. There are, however, no immediate consequences for a publisher who decides not to share their price and service data through the JCS.  

Caren Milloy, director of licensing at Jisc, which negotiates with publishers on behalf of UK universities, said that the “data supplied via the JCS is a key step in fostering a shared understanding of publisher services”.

“It will enable us and our members to transparently assess value derived and support decision-making about the future investment of institutional and public funds,” she said.

Robert Kiley, head of strategy at cOAlition S, added: “Although researchers do not have direct access to the data held on the JCS, they can see whether a specific title has provided data to the JCS or not, thanks to an integration with the Journal Checker Tool.

“Through the integration with the Journal Checker Tool, researchers can see whether their preferred journal supports values like openness and transparency. They can then use this information in determining where to submit their manuscripts for publication”. 

Kathryn Sharples, vice-president of open research at Wiley, said the publisher was keen to “provide greater visibility of the services our journals provide”.

“We are participating in the JCS because we believe it is important to engage with a range of stakeholders to increase transparency in research publishing. We look forward to learning lessons from this first year in the JCS and evolving our approach to transparency for the future,” she said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com