From: Saskia de Vries <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2019 12:21:14 +0000

Dear all,

 

Price transparency is a key requirement for journals to be compliant with Plan S.  The Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA) now presents the FOAA Breakdown of Publishing Services and Prices that it developed in one-on-one talks with a number of publishers, see below and see https://www.fairopenaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/0.4-press-release-nov-2019-Fair-Open-Access-breakdown.pdf.


FOAA invites all publishers to use this breakdown to make the structure of their fees transparent, in order to inform the market in the sense of Principle 5 of Plan S. 

 

Saskia de Vries / Fair Open Access Alliance

 

 

The Fair Open Access Breakdown of Publication Services and Fees

Service baskets

Components

Specify

%

Price

1. Journal operations

- Journal support and submission system
- Platform development and maintenance
- Helpdesk & other support staff

In/out house

2. Publication

- Triaging                          
- Organization peer review
- Other Editorial assistance 
- Indexing
- Archiving

- Typesetting
- Copy-editing
- Language editing
- Proofreading

Rejec-tion rate

3. Fees

- Scientific editors fees
- Scholarly societies fees

Agree-ments

4. Communication

- Dissemination
- PR & marketing

- Community support
- Advocacy

5. General

- Management & administration
- Other business costs
- Taxes

Can be allocated elsewhere since it is not a service

6. Surplus

- Can be allocated elsewhere
- Cross-subsidizing of titles?

7. Discounts & waivers

Policy

Total publication fee per article
(Average for: i. all journals of a publisher,  ii. one journal, iii. a subset of journals)

Rules:   - Baskets 1-7 represent the minimum information required.
- These can be extended to a maximum of 10 baskets as publishers see fit for their operations.
- For Baskets 1, 2 and 5, several components must be specified, though 5 can be allocated elsewhere.
- Components can be joined together or extended.