Article processing charges for open access publication—the situation for research intensive universities in the USA and Canada

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  1. August 8, 2016: Minor correction: The title of Table 2 should be 'Article processing charges in USD for journals flipped by major subscription publishers' and not 'Breakdown of different sources of APC payment/charges by discipline'

Introduction

Since the launch of the first Open Access (OA) journals funded by Article Processing Charges (APC) around 2000, APC funded OA publication has grown rapidly. By 2010 the number of articles published in APC funded OA journals indexed in Scopus surpassed the number of articles published in OA journals funded by other means (Solomon, Laakso & Björk, 2013). There also is evidence that APC funded OA articles are continuing to grow exponentially. Between 2010 and 2012, the number of APC funded OA articles published by 7 major OA publishers more than doubled from 41,974 to 87,021 (Neylon, 2013). Along with publishers that only publish APC funded OA journals, large, traditionally subscription publishers, are rapidly increasing the number of OA journals they publish. For example, between August 2013 and June 2016 Elsevier increased the number of APC funded OA journals they publish from 46 to over 5501 (Solomon & Björk, 2012).

As publishing in APC funded OA articles becomes more commonplace there is concern that if libraries begin paying publishing fees in lieu of subscriptions it could become a significant burden for libraries at research intensive universities. A recent survey of libraries found about 20% of the funding for APCs is coming out of library budgets with 70% of the respondents indicating the funding for APCs at their libraries is coming out of the materials budget (Lara, 2014). There is a real concern such a significant shift in funding for scholarly publishing would be unsustainable for research intensive universities in the USA and Canada. The University of California (UC), Davis, is leading a multi-institutional project titled Pay It Forward (PIF) including 4 research intensive universities focused on estimating the likely budgetary impact of such a transition. The research is being funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (Smith, 2014). As consultants on this project, our major role was in helping estimate the likely cost of APCs for articles published by researchers at research intensive universities in the USA and Canada. This paper summarizes our findings in this area.

There have been several studies that have attempted to characterize the cost of APC funded OA. In 2012 we conducted a comprehensive review of the APC prices for the journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) that were listed in the directory as charging APCs (Solomon & Björk, 2012). As part of the study we collected the article counts for 2011, the most recent calendar year. We gathered either the listed APC price off the journal web site or our best estimate of the typical APC price when there was not a specific single APC listed. We found that across this broad range of journals the APC prices both raw and weighted by the number of articles published to be around 900 USD.

In 2014 we revisited a subset of the journals included in our previous study. We attempted to limit the sample to those journals which researchers at research intensive universities in the US, Canada and Western Europe would likely publish by selecting only journals from publishers with at least 8 journals of which at least 2 were indexed in the (WoS). We included all APC funded journals from publishers who met the criteria above with less than 30 journals and randomly sampled 30 journals from publishers which published over 30 journals. This resulted in a sample of 187 journals from 9 publishers. We found the number of articles published in these journals increased between 2011 and 2013 by an average 24.5% even when PLOS ONE was left out of the analysis as an outlier. The average APC in this subset of journals was 1,292 USD in the fall of 2012 and had increased to 1,418 USD by the fall of 2014.

Most of the large, traditionally subscription publishers have begun publishing full OA journals We collected APC prices for 102 journals published by 6 major traditionally subscription publishers (Björk & Solomon, 2014). The 102 journals published by major traditionally subscription publishers were on average 679 USD higher than our sample of journals from full OA publishers. Interestingly 15 of the 102 journals from these major publishers had APCs under 500 USD. Many of these journals however were medical journals that only published case reports (Cohen, 2006).

Morrison and colleagues (2015) conducted a study gathering the list price and pricing methodology of the journals in the DOAJ that charge APCs. They used a stratified sampling procedure that selected 1,584 of the 2,567 journals listed in the DOAJ as charging APCs. Their results were similar to our first study finding an average APC of 964 USD suggesting there has been modest inflation in APC prices in the 3 years in between the 2 studies. As with our first study, this study included a wide range of journals many of which authors from research intensive universities in the US, Canada and Western Europe are unlikely to publish.

The previous studies focused on the published prices of full OA journals. Pinfield and his colleagues (2016) conducted a study assessing the total cost to institutions of paying both subscriptions and APCs including APCs from hybrid journals which are subscription journals where authors can pay APCs to make their individual articles OA. They used data from 23 universities in the United Kingdom (UK) gathered between 2007 and the first quarter of 2014. Pinfield and his colleagues also attempted to estimate the administrative costs of paying APCs. They found a significant increase in the total costs to these universities following policy changes in the UK encouraging APC funded OA. By 2013, the APCs paid by these universities to major subscription publishers for hybrid articles increased the total cost of access to these journals by about 10%. They defined the total cost of access as APCs paid for their authors, subscription fees and the administrative costs of paying APCs. They also found it difficult to estimate administration costs and these costs appeared to vary considerably among universities. The APC levels Pinfield and his colleagues found were roughly consistent with our earlier study.

While the studies described above begin to provide a picture of APC pricing and in the case of Pinfield and his colleagues’ study, the total cost of access for of UK universities, we felt we needed additional data that would be more directly applicable for estimating the feasibility of transitioning to APC funded OA for research intensive institutions in the USA and Canada. We believe there is evidence that researchers at research intensive universities tend to publish in the more expensive APC journals and hence previous studies estimating APC prices that included all OA journal would underestimate the cost of APCs for this group of researchers.

The goal of the study was to estimate the per article APC expenditures for the publications of researchers at research intensive universities in the USA and Canada.

Methods

We used three types of data to characterize what the likely cost of APCs would be for research intensive universities in the USA and Canada. Each has its strengths and limitations. By triangulating different sources of information we felt we could derive a more robust estimate of the likely cost of APCs for researchers at these institutions. Firstly, we tied published APC prices to OA articles published by faculty at the PIF partner universities. Secondly we identified a sample of journals published by major traditionally subscription publishers that were recently converted from subscription to APC funded OA. Thirdly we gathered APC payments made by funding agencies and universities from special budgets set aside for this purpose such as was used by Pinfield and his colleagues in their study of UK university APC funding programs.

WoS Metadata—Thomson Reuters in partnership with the PIF Project provided article level metadata from the WoS for the articles published by the PIF partner universities between 2009 and 2013. They also provided article level metadata for the APC payment records we obtained from the universities and funding agencies described below that were matched via Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). The metadata contained a variety of useful information however for the purposes this analysis we focused on the type of publication limiting the analysis to research articles and conference proceedings. We also broke down the payment and APC pricing results by discipline. The PIF project settled on a 13 category discipline coding scheme derived from Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators (ESI) and Scopus’s 23 category discipline scheme. Since there is no ESI code for the arts and humanities, we coded articles and proceedings listed in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) as being in the arts and humanities. The coding scheme developed by the project is shown in Table 3.

APC Prices for Publications by PIF Partner University Faculty—As noted earlier, to get an accurate picture of the cost of transitioning from subscription to APC funded OA, we needed to characterize the APC prices for the types of OA journals researchers at research intensive universities in the USA and Canada would likely publish. We matched the articles and proceedings researchers at the 4 PIF partner institutions published between 2009 and 2013 obtained from the WoS with APC pricing data obtained from journal websites collected in 2014 by Morrison and her colleagues. Their pricing data was the most up-to-date and comprehensive data we were able to locate and they had made it available in a public archive. We used International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSN) to match the individual articles or proceedings identified in the WoS with the APC prices for the journals in which they were published.

Subscription journals converting to APCs—We attempted to identify journals from major publishers that traditionally published subscription journals which had transitioned from subscription to APC funded OA. To identify these journals, we searched the websites of 7 large publishers as well as the Internet for press releases, blog entries and other indications journals from these publishers flipped from subscription to OA. Once we identified that a journal had “flipped” to OA, we gathered the APC and other metadata from the journal web site.

APC payment repositories—We were able to obtain APC payment data from 4 sources. All were based in Europe. These included UK universities; German universities and the Max Plank Digital Library; the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Wellcome Trust. The data were downloaded around March 1, 2015. The specific information provided, requirements, rules for payment, time period in which the payments were made and the currency differed among these data sets. Each is described in more detail below:

United Kingdom (UK) Universities—Stuart Lawson and his colleagues at Jisc compiled APC payment data from a number of UK universities (House of Commons, 2014; Lawson, 2014). We combined the two overlapping data sets removing the duplicates. The payments were converted from GBP to USD using an exchange rate of 1.6 which roughly reflected the exchange rate during the period the APC payments were made. The data include both full OA and hybrid payments.

Wellcome Trust—The Wellcome Trust maintains a special budget for paying publication charges for the research it funds. The Trust has released APC payments made during their 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 fiscal years (Kiley, 2014; Kiley, 2015). As with the UK university data above, a currency conversion rate of 1.6 was used for converting from GBP to USD. The data include both full OA and hybrid payments.

German Universities and Foundations—APC payment records were available for 22 German universities and 5 other participating institutions (Apel et al., 2015). The payment data in EUR were converted to USD using an exchange rate of 1.3 which roughly reflected the exchange rate during the period the payments were made. Payments were only made for publication in fully OA journals.

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)—The FWF covers the cost of APCs and other publication charges for researchers they fund. The data for 2013 was available at the time we merged the data with WoS (Reckling & Kenzian, 2014). Unfortunately 2014 data became available just after we requested WoS metadata from Thomson Rueters (Reckling & Rieck, 2015). The data include both full OA and hybrid payments,

The data from these universities and funding agencies was merged with WoS metadata in late April 2015 using DOIs.

Results

We identified 14,356 OA articles and proceeding published by researchers at PIF partner universities between 2009 and 2013 in OA journals that we were able to obtain APC prices. Please note the article/proceedings were published between 2009 and 2013 while the APC prices were gathered in 2014.

We collected a total of 13,819 payment records from the 4 APC payment databases. A total of 12,172 or 88% were matched with WoS metadata based on DOIs. After removing duplicates, records that were not articles or proceedings or were missing key information, there were 7,629 payment records that were used in the analyses described below.

Table 1 below presents hybrid and full OA payments from the European payment databases and full APC prices for articles and proceedings by authors from PIF universities. The results are broken down by the 13 discipline categories.

Table 1:
Breakdown of different sources of APC payment/charges by discipline.
APCs in US dollars.
Hybrid payments Full OA payments Full OA prices
Discipline Payments N SD Payments N SD Charges N SD
Arts and humanities 2,168.26 5 1,276.86 No data 0 0 1,273.26 19 354.76
Multidisciplinary 2,074.42 16 1,631.24 1,896.48 64 1,355.18 1,345.83 522 50.39
Mathematics 2,579.93 52 908.46 905.60 5 455.97 1,209.79 24 69.60
Clinical Medicine 3,000.33 626 1,082.86 1,870.32 526 584.89 1,753.60 3,456 466.20
Biomedical Research 2,996.56 1,377 1,212.28 1,952.02 1,076 864.70 1,830.36 5,511 552.38
Life Sciences 2,859.62 667 1,164.24 1,876.85 579 716.09 1,789.30 2,286 552.35
Chemistry 2,901.43 370 915.12 2,403.16 47 1,629.68 1,712.00 189 308.93
Physics and Astronomy 2,575.06 241 844.62 1,890.44 190 1,395.89 1,327.90 139 84.72
Engineering 2,718.00 365 903.61 1,669.40 97 737.46 1,900.44 436 453.47
Earth Science 2,905.81 264 824.92 1,523.47 164 706.69 1,599.72 664 331.82
Business and Economics 2,521.58 35 931.65 1,415.65 4 101.74 1,350.00 11 0.00
Psychiatry/Psychology 2,955.87 204 956.31 1,647.01 231 582.40 1,787.35 373 433.94
Social Science 2,736.35 307 878.52 1,822.51 117 407.03 1,940.57 726 460.28
Total 2,886.88 4,529 1,076.15 1,864.53 3,100 838.55 1,775.07 14,356 510.65
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.2264/table-1

The results presented in Table 1 by discipline should be interpreted with caution. There were very few publications in some of disciplines including arts and humanities, mathematics and business/economics. In addition, many of the articles/proceedings coded in disciplines such as the arts, humanities and social sciences are in journals that would generally be considered to be in the biomedical or life sciences. Table 4 presents the number and percentage of articles/proceedings in each journal within each discipline. For example, as can be seen in Table 4, 59% of the articles/proceedings in engineering were published in BMC Bioinformatics and 68% of the article/proceedings in the arts and humanities where published in PLOS ONE. We believe in most cases these article/proceedings describe research that is multidisciplinary but the ESI/AHCI coding scheme we used only assigned a single discipline code to each publication record. For example, one of the articles coded as being in the arts and humanities was titled “Effects of Culture on Musical Pitch Perception” and was published in PLOS ONE.

Table 2:
Breakdown of different sources of APC payment/charges by discipline.
APCs in US Dollars.
Publisher Mean N SD
De Gruyter 1,356.00 5 309.46
Elsevier 1,950.00 7 485.63
Nature Publishing Group 5,200.00 1
Oxford University Press 2,163.33 3 625.81
Springer 1,380.46 13 372.11
Tailor & Francis 1,031.67 3 451.12
Wiley 2,408.00 9 550.63
Total 1,825.20 41 829.68
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.2264/table-2

Notes:

APCs reported in US dollars.

We attempted to identify journals from large traditionally subscription publishing houses that have transitioned from subscription to APC funded OA. We were able to locate 41 such journals from 7 major publishers. A summary of the results is presented in Table 2.

With the exception of one outlier, Nature Communications, the APCs charged for these journals appear similar to APCs for APC funded OA journals published by fully OA publishers. Five of these journals, 2 each from Springer and Elsevier and 1 from Oxford University Press were part of the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) tendering process (SCOAP3, 2015). The APCs for these journals averaged 1,674 USD.

Discussion

We encountered several challenges in estimating APC prices for journals researchers at research intensive universities in the US and Canada are likely to publish.

  • Assigning a single discipline category to each article/proceeding is somewhat artificial given research is often multidisciplinary. While there were two other discipline coding schemes at different levels of specificity in the WoS that assigned multiple discipline codes for each publication, attempting to use a coding scheme with multiple codes per publication to sort out disciplinary differences in APC prices would have been extremely complex and probably not helpful. The current APC market is also concentrated in a few disciplines and there are very few APC funded OA journals that publish in the social sciences and humanities. The articles and proceedings that we found coded in these disciplines were often multidisciplinary and published in journals that generally publish material in the life, medical or biological sciences.

  • The APC market is complex and getting even more complex with full OA and hybrid APCs as well as an increasing number of comprehensive “cost of ownership” agreements negotiated between publishers and universities, university consortia and research funders. APC s are often complex with various discounts and fee structures for different types of publications (Björk & Solomon , 2012).

  • There is very little information available on the costs associated with paying APCs, both for the publishers and the organizations that are funding APCs nor how these compare with the costs of negotiating and paying subscription fees.

  • The current APC market is fluid and subject to market forces brought about by the APC payment policies of the universities, consortia and funding agencies that are increasingly paying APCs as this market evolves (Björk, 2016).

Despite these difficulties we found a pattern in APC list prices and APC payments by universities and funding agencies that were fairly consistent in all 3 sources of data we used in the study.

  1. For researchers at research intensive universities, APCs the paid for the fully OA journals average around 1,800 USD while hybrid journal APCs average about 3,000 USD.

  2. There do not appear to be large discipline differences in APCs. This likely reflects the limitations of the data available. There were very few publications in a number of disciples and those tended to be multidisciplinary.

  3. Based on the very small sample of journals flipped from subscription to OA by major traditionally subscription publishers that publish a major portion of the scholarly literature, the APCs for these journals appear to be similar to journals that were launched as full OA journals.

Our estimates of the APCs for fully OA journals are considerably higher than estimates of APCs in previous research. Our own and Morrison and her colleagues’ estimates of APC charges (Solomon & Björk, 2012; Morrison et al., 2015) reflect the full distribution of OA journals in the DOAJ. Many of those journals with very low APCs are regional journals that researchers at research intensive universities in the USA, Canada and Western Europe are unlikely to publish. In our later study (Björk & Solomon, 2014) we did try to limit the journals included to those which researchers at research intensive universities would likely publish. However, our methodology for achieving this was weak, limiting the sample to journals published by OA publishers with at least 2 journals in the Web of Science. The criteria did result in a significantly higher APC estimate but well below estimates from this study. We feel this is largely due to the methodology used. Our current study used 3 separate approaches. One, probably the most robust, used APC prices for articles and proceedings authored by researchers at the 4 PIF partner universities. The second approach used actual APC payments made by 2 European foundations and the universities in 2 European countries for their researchers’ publications. The third were APC prices for journals “flipped” from subscription to an APC business model by major traditionally subscription publishers. The APC estimates from these three methodologies triangulated at roughly 1,800 USD for articles published in full OA journals. We feel the estimates are probably the best available for APCs that would likely be paid currently for researchers at research intensive universities in the USA, Canada as well as Western Europe.

Many European governments and funding agencies are working towards transitioning all their research publications to OA with a preference for APC funded OA (Schimmer, Geschuhn & Vogler, 2015). The PIF project is modeling a similar transition for research intensive universities in the USA and Canada. At this juncture it appears we are moving towards a wide scale transition of the existing subscription journals to OA publishing much of it funded by APCs (Shearer, 2016). Having reasonable estimates of the likely costs of APCs is essential for modeling the cost of this large scale transition to OA scholarly publishing. The results presented in this paper are based on a number of sources of information and we feel despite their limitations, reflect the best data available for characterizing the per publication APC costs for research intensive universities in the USA, Canada and Western Europe.

Appendix 1

Table 3:
Scopus—WOS subject mapping.
Scopus 27 Subject merge ESI 23
General Multidisciplinary E Multidisciplinary (sciences)
S Mathematics Mathematics E Mathematics
S Medicine Clinical Medicine E Clinical Medicine
S Pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics E Pharmacology & Toxicology
S Nursing
S Health professions
S Dentistry
S Immunology and microbiology Biomedical Research Disciplines E Immunology
E Microbiology
S Biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology E Molecular Biology and Genetics
S Neuroscience E Neuroscience and Behavior
S Agricultural and biological sciences Life Sciences E Agricultural sciences
E Biology and Biochemistry
S Veterinary E Plant and animal sciences
S Chemistry Chemistry E Chemistry
S Chemical engineering
S Physics and astronomy Physics and Astronomy E Physics
E Space sciences
S Engineering Engineering E Engineering
S Materials Science E Materials Science
S Computer Science E Computer Science
S Energy
S Earth and planetary sciences Earth Sciences E Geosciences
S Environmental science E Environment/ecology
S Business management and accounting Business and economics E Economics and business
S Decisions sciences
S Economics, econometrics and Finance
S Psychology Psychiatry/Psychology E Psychiatry/Psychology
S Social Sciences Social Science E Social sciences, general
S Arts & Humanities Arts and humanities E (Arts and Humanities—category to be created from WOS categories/research areas. PIF team will have to assign journals with both an A&H and SocSci ESI category to a single preferred category)
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.2264/table-3

Appendix 2

Table 4:
Number of APC funded publications in each journal within each discipline based on PIF partner authored article/ proceeding 2009–2013.
Article Processing Charge (APC) based on Morrison et al. (2015).
Discipline Journal APC Number Percent
Arts and Humanities ENTROPY 1,349 2 10.5%
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS 1,920 1 5.3%
PLOS ONE 1,350 13 68.4%
RELIGIONS 337 2 10.5%
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 1,350 1 5.3%
Multidisciplinary DISCRETE DYNAMICS IN NATURE AND SOCIETY 1,200 1 0.2%
PLOS ONE 1,350 477 91.4%
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 1,350 39 7.5%
SCIENTIFIC WORLD JOURNAL 1,200 1 0.2%
SYMMETRY-BASEL 562 2 0.4%
THESCIENTIFICWORLDJOURNAL 1,200 2 0.4%
Mathematics ABSTRACT AND APPLIED ANALYSIS 1,200 2 8.3%
COMPUTATIONAL AND MATHEMATICAL METHODS IN MEDICINE 1,200 16 66.7%
FIXED POINT THEORY AND APPLICATIONS 985 1 4.2%
JOURNAL OF APPLIED MATHEMATICS 1,200 2 8.3%
PLOS ONE 1,350 3 12.5%
Clinical Medicine AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY AND PHARMACOLOGY 600 2 0.1%
ANNALS OF INTENSIVE CARE 1,930 8 0.2%
BIOLOGY OF SEX DIFFERENCES 2,285 2 0.1%
BMC ANESTHESIOLOGY 2,215 5 0.1%
BMC CANCER 2,215 136 3.9%
BMC CARDIOVASCULAR DISORDERS 2,215 21 0.6%
BMC COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE 2,215 23 0.7%
BMC ENDOCRINE DISORDERS 2,215 11 0.3%
BMC FAMILY PRACTICE 2,215 12 0.3%
BMC GASTROENTEROLOGY 2,215 23 0.7%
BMC GERIATRICS 2,215 17 0.5%
BMC HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH 2,215 116 3.4%
BMC MEDICAL IMAGING 2,215 3 0.1%
BMC MEDICAL INFORMATICS AND DECISION MAKING 2,215 53 1.5%
BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2,215 29 0.8%
BMC MEDICINE 2,650 54 1.6%
BMC MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDERS 2,215 49 1.4%
BMC NEPHROLOGY 2,215 31 0.9%
BMC OPHTHALMOLOGY 2,215 9 0.3%
BMC ORAL HEALTH 2,215 6 0.2%
BMC PEDIATRICS 2,215 36 1.0%
BMC PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH 2,215 41 1.2%
BMC PULMONARY MEDICINE 2,215 13 0.4%
BMC SURGERY 2,215 2 0.1%
BMC UROLOGY 2,215 5 0.1%
BMC WOMENS HEALTH 2,215 10 0.3%
CANCER MEDICINE 2,250 14 0.4%
CARDIOVASCULAR DIABETOLOGY 2,185 12 0.3%
CARDIOVASCULAR ULTRASOUND 1,960 4 0.1%
CLINICAL EPIGENETICS 2,545 1 0.0%
CLINICAL INTERVENTIONS IN AGING 2,200 13 0.4%
DIABETOLOGY & METABOLIC SYNDROME 2,215 3 0.1%
DIAGNOSTIC PATHOLOGY 2,215 9 0.3%
DISEASE MARKERS 1,500 13 0.4%
EVIDENCE-BASED COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE 2,000 68 2.0%
FRONTIERS IN PHARMACOLOGY 2,194 24 0.7%
GASTROENTEROLOGY RESEARCH AND PRACTICE 1,500 20 0.6%
GUT PATHOGENS 2,250 4 0.1%
HEAD & FACE MEDICINE 2,215 1 0.0%
HEALTH AND QUALITY OF LIFE OUTCOMES 2,215 33 1.0%
INFECTIOUS AGENTS AND CANCER 1,960 2 0.1%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CHRONIC OBSTRUCTIVE PULMONARY DISEASE 1,865 12 0.3%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENDOCRINOLOGY 1,500 11 0.3%
ITALIAN JOURNAL OF PEDIATRICS 1,960 2 0.1%
JOURNAL OF CARDIOTHORACIC SURGERY 2,250 25 0.7%
JOURNAL OF CARDIOVASCULAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE 1,960 41 1.2%
JOURNAL OF DIABETES RESEARCH 1,500 3 0.1%
JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY AND ETHNOMEDICINE 1,960 3 0.1%
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL & CLINICAL CANCER RESEARCH 2,075 11 0.3%
JOURNAL OF FOOT AND ANKLE RESEARCH 1,960 2 0.1%
JOURNAL OF HEMATOLOGY & ONCOLOGY 2,250 21 0.6%
JOURNAL OF OPHTHALMOLOGY 1,500 14 0.4%
JOURNAL OF ORTHOPAEDIC SURGERY AND RESEARCH 2,545 9 0.3%
JOURNAL OF OTOLARYNGOLOGY-HEAD & NECK SURGERY 1,960 30 0.9%
JOURNAL OF TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE 2,215 82 2.4%
MALARIA JOURNAL 2,140 124 3.6%
MARINE DRUGS 2,023 12 0.3%
MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESPIRATORY MEDICINE 1,960 1 0.0%
NUTRITION & DIABETES 3,300 14 0.4%
ONCOTARGETS AND THERAPY 2,200 5 0.1%
ORPHANET JOURNAL OF RARE DISEASES 2,450 24 0.7%
PAKISTAN JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SCIENCES 71 2 0.1%
PARTICLE AND FIBRE TOXICOLOGY 1,960 15 0.4%
PATIENT PREFERENCE AND ADHERENCE 2,200 28 0.8%
PEDIATRIC RHEUMATOLOGY 1,960 16 0.5%
PLOS MEDICINE 2,900 64 1.9%
PLOS ONE 1,350 1,725 49.9%
RADIATION ONCOLOGY 1,960 26 0.8%
REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH 2,215 5 0.1%
RESPIRATORY RESEARCH 2,625 27 0.8%
SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF TRAUMA RESUSCITATION & EMERGENCY MEDICI 2,150 2 0.1%
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 1,350 31 0.9%
SCIENTIFIC WORLD JOURNAL 1,200 12 0.3%
THERANOSTICS 1,168 15 0.4%
THERAPEUTICS AND CLINICAL RISK MANAGEMENT 2,200 6 0.2%
THESCIENTIFICWORLDJOURNAL 1,200 6 0.2%
TOXINS 1,124 7 0.2%
TRIALS 1,960 53 1.5%
WORLD JOURNAL OF EMERGENCY SURGERY 1,960 11 0.3%
WORLD JOURNAL OF SURGICAL ONCOLOGY 2,250 21 0.6%
Biomedical Research Disciplines AIDS RESEARCH AND THERAPY 2,165 23 0.4%
ALGORITHMS FOR MOLECULAR BIOLOGY 1,960 12 0.2%
ALLERGY ASTHMA AND CLINICAL IMMUNOLOGY 1,960 9 0.2%
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN FUNCTIONS 2,215 13 0.2%
BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING ONLINE 2,215 17 0.3%
BMC CELL BIOLOGY 2,215 15 0.3%
BMC DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY 2,215 23 0.4%
BMC GENETICS 2,215 31 0.6%
BMC GENOMICS 2,215 354 6.4%
BMC IMMUNOLOGY 2,215 19 0.3%
BMC INFECTIOUS DISEASES 2,215 66 1.2%
BMC MEDICAL GENETICS 2,215 60 1.1%
BMC MEDICAL GENOMICS 2,215 47 0.9%
BMC MICROBIOLOGY 2,215 60 1.1%
BMC MOLECULAR BIOLOGY 2,215 13 0.2%
BMC NEUROLOGY 2,215 42 0.8%
BMC NEUROSCIENCE 2,215 46 0.8%
BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR 2,500 18 0.3%
CANCER CELL INTERNATIONAL 2,125 9 0.2%
CELL COMMUNICATION AND SIGNALING 2,500 7 0.1%
CELL DIVISION 2,125 8 0.1%
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND NEUROSCIENCE 1,000 4 0.1%
EPIGENETICS & CHROMATIN 2,545 16 0.3%
EVODEVO 2,545 6 0.1%
FRONTIERS IN AGING NEUROSCIENCE 2,194 15 0.3%
FRONTIERS IN BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2,194 28 0.5%
FRONTIERS IN CELLULAR NEUROSCIENCE 2,194 21 0.4%
FRONTIERS IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE 2,194 30 0.5%
FRONTIERS IN HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE 2,194 154 2.8%
FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY 2,194 94 1.7%
FRONTIERS IN MOLECULAR NEUROSCIENCE 2,194 19 0.3%
FRONTIERS IN NEURAL CIRCUITS 2,194 38 0.7%
FRONTIERS IN NEUROANATOMY 2,194 16 0.3%
FRONTIERS IN NEUROINFORMATICS 2,194 16 0.3%
G3-GENES GENOMES GENETICS 1,950 68 1.2%
GENES 562 8 0.1%
IMMUNITY & AGEING 1,960 4 0.1%
JOURNAL OF CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR MEDICINE 2,500 8 0.1%
JOURNAL OF INFLAMMATION-LONDON 2,085 10 0.2%
JOURNAL OF NEUROENGINEERING AND REHABILITATION 2,215 29 0.5%
JOURNAL OF NEUROINFLAMMATION 2,285 46 0.8%
MBIO 3,000 121 2.2%
MEDIATORS OF INFLAMMATION 1,500 21 0.4%
MOBILE DNA 2,545 6 0.1%
MOLECULAR AUTISM 2,545 18 0.3%
MOLECULAR BRAIN 2,000 15 0.3%
MOLECULAR CANCER 2,215 54 1.0%
MOLECULAR CYTOGENETICS 1,960 8 0.1%
MOLECULAR NEURODEGENERATION 2,420 47 0.9%
MOLECULAR PAIN 2,625 26 0.5%
MOLECULAR SYSTEMS BIOLOGY 4,114 85 1.5%
NEURAL DEVELOPMENT 2,545 31 0.6%
NEUROPSYCHIATRIC DISEASE AND TREATMENT 2,200 25 0.5%
NEUROSIGNALS 1,798 4 0.1%
OXIDATIVE MEDICINE AND CELLULAR LONGEVITY 1,500 10 0.2%
PARASITES & VECTORS 2,015 28 0.5%
PLOS GENETICS 2,250 322 5.8%
PLOS NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES 2,250 64 1.2%
PLOS ONE 1,350 2,639 47.9%
PLOS PATHOGENS 2,250 242 4.4%
RETROVIROLOGY 2,215 65 1.2%
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 1,350 53 1.0%
SCIENTIFIC WORLD JOURNAL 1,200 6 0.1%
THESCIENTIFICWORLDJOURNAL 1,200 8 0.1%
VIROLOGY JOURNAL 2,215 55 1.0%
VIRUSES-BASEL 1,573 36 0.7%
Life Sciences BIODATA MINING 1,960 1 0.0%
BIOLOGICAL PROCEDURES ONLINE 2,250 2 0.1%
BIOLOGY DIRECT 2,215 12 0.5%
BIOMED RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL 1,500 38 1.7%
BIOTECHNOLOGY FOR BIOFUELS 2,545 22 1.0%
BMC BIOCHEMISTRY 2,215 13 0.6%
BMC BIOLOGY 2,650 36 1.6%
BMC BIOPHYSICS 2,215 4 0.2%
BMC BIOTECHNOLOGY 2,215 20 0.9%
BMC EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY 2,215 124 5.4%
BMC PLANT BIOLOGY 2,215 61 2.7%
BMC STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY 2,215 8 0.3%
BMC SYSTEMS BIOLOGY 2,215 100 4.4%
BMC VETERINARY RESEARCH 2,215 13 0.6%
CELL AND BIOSCIENCE 2,015 8 0.3%
ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF BIOTECHNOLOGY 1,100 2 0.1%
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF HISTOCHEMISTRY 1,028 2 0.1%
FOOD & NUTRITION RESEARCH 1,645 1 0.0%
FORESTS 899 13 0.6%
FRONTIERS IN PHYSIOLOGY 2,194 71 3.1%
FRONTIERS IN PLANT SCIENCE 2,194 59 2.6%
FRONTIERS IN ZOOLOGY 2,385 7 0.3%
GENETICS SELECTION EVOLUTION 1,755 3 0.1%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL NUTRITION AND PHYSICAL ACTI 2,500 38 1.7%
JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING 2,040 11 0.5%
JOURNAL OF BIOMEDICAL SEMANTICS 1,960 8 0.3%
JOURNAL OF NANOBIOTECHNOLOGY 2,215 1 0.0%
JOURNAL OF OVARIAN RESEARCH 1,960 6 0.3%
JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 1,170 1 0.0%
JOURNAL OF RADIATION RESEARCH 1,371 6 0.3%
JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF SPORTS NUTRITION 2,215 6 0.3%
LIPIDS IN HEALTH AND DISEASE 2,215 19 0.8%
MICROBIAL CELL FACTORIES 1,960 19 0.8%
NUTRIENTS 1,349 27 1.2%
NUTRITION & METABOLISM 2,060 16 0.7%
NUTRITION JOURNAL 2,385 36 1.6%
ONCOGENESIS 3,300 5 0.2%
PLANT METHODS 1,990 12 0.5%
PLOS BIOLOGY 2,900 118 5.2%
PLOS COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY 2,250 194 8.5%
PLOS ONE 1,350 1,004 43.9%
PROTEOME SCIENCE 2,215 12 0.5%
REDOX BIOLOGY 1,500 4 0.2%
REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY AND ENDOCRINOLOGY 2,060 25 1.1%
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 1,350 29 1.3%
SCIENTIFIC WORLD JOURNAL 1,200 2 0.1%
SYMMETRY-BASEL 562 1 0.0%
VETERINARY RESEARCH 1,755 12 0.5%
ZOOKEYS 411 54 2.4%
Chemistry INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES 1,798 47 24.9%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLYMER SCIENCE 1,200 2 1.1%
MOLECULES 2,023 28 14.8%
PLOS ONE 1,350 44 23.3%
POLYMERS 1,349 6 3.2%
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 1,350 17 9.0%
SENSORS 2,023 44 23.3%
SYMMETRY-BASEL 562 1 0.5%
Physics and Astronomy ADVANCES IN ASTRONOMY 1,000 7 5.0%
ADVANCES IN CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS 1,200 1 0.7%
ADVANCES IN MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS 1,200 2 1.4%
ENTROPY 1,349 17 12.2%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHOTOENERGY 1,200 5 3.6%
NANOSCALE RESEARCH LETTERS 1,385 17 12.2%
PLOS ONE 1,350 34 24.5%
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 1,350 56 40.3%
Engineering ADVANCES IN ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 274 1 0.2%
ADVANCES IN MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING 1,200 3 0.7%
ADVANCES IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 1,500 5 1.1%
APPLIED SCIENCES-BASEL 562 1 0.2%
BMC BIOINFORMATICS 2,215 259 59.4%
CRYSTALS 562 3 0.7%
ENERGIES 1,349 11 2.5%
EURASIP JOURNAL ON ADVANCES IN SIGNAL PROCESSING 1,455 8 1.8%
EURASIP JOURNAL ON IMAGE AND VIDEO PROCESSING 1,145 2 0.5%
EVOLUTIONARY BIOINFORMATICS 1,980 6 1.4%
FRONTIERS IN NEUROROBOTICS 2,194 1 0.2%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION 1,500 2 0.5%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DISTRIBUTED SENSOR NETWORKS 1,500 4 0.9%
JOURNAL OF NANOMATERIALS 1,200 12 2.8%
JOURNAL OF SENSORS 1,000 1 0.2%
MATERIALS 1,573 21 4.8%
MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS IN ENGINEERING 1,200 10 2.3%
METALS 337 1 0.2%
MICROMACHINES 562 3 0.7%
NANOMATERIALS 337 1 0.2%
OPTICAL MATERIALS EXPRESS 1,350 11 2.5%
PLOS ONE 1,350 38 8.7%
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 1,350 12 2.8%
THEORETICAL BIOLOGY AND MEDICAL MODELLING 2,215 20 4.6%
Earth Science ADVANCES IN METEOROLOGY 1,200 6 0.9%
ATMOSPHERE 562 4 0.6%
BMC ECOLOGY 2,215 3 0.5%
ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION 1,950 44 6.6%
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH 2,040 92 13.9%
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS 1,920 83 12.5%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEAL 1,798 88 13.3%
MINERALS 337 4 0.6%
PLOS ONE 1,350 285 42.9%
REMOTE SENSING 1,349 20 3.0%
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 1,350 11 1.7%
SCIENTIFIC WORLD JOURNAL 1,200 2 0.3%
SUSTAINABILITY 1,124 14 2.1%
WATER 1,124 8 1.2%
Business and Economics PLOS ONE 1,350 11 100.0%
Psychiatry/Psychology ANNALS OF GENERAL PSYCHIATRY 2,545 7 1.9%
BMC PSYCHIATRY 2,215 36 9.7%
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTRAUMATOLOGY 1,303 6 1.6%
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY 2,194 145 38.9%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEMS 1,960 3 0.8%
PLOS ONE 1,350 171 45.8%
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 1,350 3 0.8%
THESCIENTIFICWORLDJOURNAL 1,200 2 0.5%
Social Science BMC INTERNATIONAL HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS 2,215 14 1.9%
BMC MEDICAL EDUCATION 2,215 30 4.1%
BMC MEDICAL ETHICS 2,215 5 0.7%
BMC PALLIATIVE CARE 2,215 5 0.7%
BMC PUBLIC HEALTH 2,215 235 32.4%
GLOBALIZATION AND HEALTH 2,215 29 4.0%
HARM REDUCTION JOURNAL 2,545 42 5.8%
HEALTH RESEARCH POLICY AND SYSTEMS 1,960 6 0.8%
HUMAN RESOURCES FOR HEALTH 2,545 16 2.2%
IMPLEMENTATION SCIENCE 2,300 52 7.2%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR EQUITY IN HEALTH 2,040 22 3.0%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CIRCUMPOLAR HEALTH 686 16 2.2%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH GEOGRAPHICS 1,960 21 2.9%
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES ON HEALTH AND WELL 1,234 1 0.1%
JOURNAL OF OCCUPATIONAL MEDICINE AND TOXICOLOGY 2,085 3 0.4%
MEDICAL EDUCATION ONLINE 1,166 10 1.4%
PLOS ONE 1,350 192 26.4%
POPULATION HEALTH METRICS 1,960 11 1.5%
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 1,350 1 0.1%
SCIENTIFIC WORLD JOURNAL 1,200 1 0.1%
SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT PREVENTION AND POLICY 1,960 13 1.8%
SYMMETRY-BASEL 562 1 0.1%
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.2264/table-4

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DOI: 10.7717/peerj.2264/supp-1
Based on fully OA journals listed by Elsevier at https://www.elsevier.com/about/open-science/open-access/open-access-journals on 2016-06-20.
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