Schönfelder, N.

2026

2026openCost: Navigating Cost Transparency, HamburgHamburg, Germany, 17 Mar 2026 - 19 Mar 20262026-03-172026-03-19 [10.3204/PUBDB-2026-00919]  

Abstract: Since 2021 the oa.finder displays information on list-price APCs for around 5.000 pure OA journalsas derived from the DOAJ and more than 6.000 hybrid journals that come from an own longitudinaldata collection. The later increased over time adding more publishers and hybrid journals to thecollection. All APCs are converted at the historical spot rates to Euro. This unpublished data set—observing list-price APCs of currently 7.000 hybrid journals from thirteen traditional publishers,among them the big ones as Wiley, Springer Nature, Elsevier as well as small publishers like JohnBenjamins Publishing and Duncker & Humblot—together with the DOAJ data can be used to analyzeprice trends in the OA publishing market.Combining the APC information with the article output on journal level derived from Scopus, makesit possible to calculate Laspeyres-type indices—by a similar method as Eurostat calculates the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP). The results are two sector-specific price indices showingthe aggregate APC changes in scientific publishing. The interpretation of the results differs for pureOA journals and hybrid journals. The price index for pure OA APCs can be understand as a descriptive measure; the price index for hybrid OA APCs as a counterfactual analysis: How much wouldhave the prices increased if all articles had been published open access without applying read &publish agreements? The poster shows the price trends and compares the rates with the HICP forthe euro area.The Bielefeld University Library has developed the oa.finder as part of the project open-access.network.The web service contains information on around 57,000 international journals as well as informationon over 80 scientific publishers for OA books in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.