Volume 13, No 2, 2016
What is the cost of bibliometric games to taxpayers?
Vladimir M. Moskovkin and Olesya V. Serkina
Abstract
The paper shows how editors of hybrid journals, high IF OA-Journals and Low-IF OA-Journals behave in the conditions of the publication race going on under the slogan “Publish or Perish”, by launching “bibliometric and citation games”. The publishers from the first group, namely Elsevier, Springer and Wiley Publishers, charge an average $3,000 for the Open Access - option (with the cost ranging from $500 to $5,000). For the editors from the second group, such as PLoS publishers, there has been obtained a simple balanced equation showing that if when moving from a subscription journal to an OA-Journal an editor intends to keep his incomes at the old level, the he should keep the annual average number of articles equal to the circulation of his subscription journal, and the cost of publishing one article should be equal to the annual subscription fee (about $2,000-3,000). The publishers from the third group, included in Beall's List, charging far less for publishing an article (about $200-300 or $300-400) compared to High-IF OA-Journals, compensate for their losses by publishing a large number of articles in each issue of a journal. But in all three cases, the main burden falls on taxpayers.
Pages: 8-15
Keywords: Bibliometric games; Citation games; Publication games; Publication race; Hybrid journals; Open Access Journals; Publish; Perish; Taxpayers