Let’s start off by defining predator. In the Merriam-Webster dictionary online, the first version is what you think of: a predator is an animal that eats other animals. But the second definition is the one I want to focus on. This definition for predator is: “One who injures or exploits others for personal gain or profit”. Change personal for business; a business who injures or exploits others for business gain or profit is a predator. Keep that definition in mind.

The next question I would like to ask to develop this idea is: Are scientific researchers vulnerable to exploitation when it comes to publishing their papers? I would like to make a few key points and support them with evidence. First, many scientists believe that publications in high impact factor journals are key to the career that they want. Now whether that is true or not is a different question. I believe a scientist can have a good and rewarding career publishing in low or mid-tier journals. But many scientists feel a lot of pressure internally and socially to publish in high impact factor journals.

I’d like to point out this article: Early-Career Researchers and their Publishing and Authorship Practices. This paper that presented findings from a three-year longitudinal study of early career researchers. A key conclusion from the study is shown in this quote: “Underscoring previous evidence on the strategic importance accorded to publishing and high impact factor journals, the universal directive to do so is found to be the overriding consideration for our ECRs.” (early-career researchers) In other words, one of the most important factors for where they decided to publish was Journal Impact Factor.

In addition, Nature Publishing Group did a survey called the Author Insights Survey, and they found that the most important factors for authors choosing where to publish their work was “the reputation of the journal”, “relevance to my discipline”, “quality of the peer review”, and “the journal’s impact factor”. Now the relevance to my discipline is so obvious, it shouldn’t even be on the list. You’re not going to publish in a journal that’s not relevant to your discipline. What makes up the reputation of a journal? It’s largely quality of peer review or its rigorousness, in other words its acceptance rate, and its impact factor. So really these are all the same. Another figure from the survey shows that factors that contribute most to the perception of a journal’s reputation are “impact factor” and “seen as the place to publish the best research in my community”. So, the impact factor is at the top of this list.

We have established that the impact factor is the most important consideration for most researchers when they decide where to publish their journal article. A high impact factor and a high rejection rate gives journals prestige in the community, and that is evidenced by this article, published on the London School of Economics blog. “High rejection rates, if not always quality, imbue prestigious journals and publishers with pricing power. As such, high fees in eminent journals may be criticized, but they will never be labeled as predatory, even if their business models may be economically exploitive.” Well, I would say, never say never, I am asking the question: Are these high impact factor journals acting in the predatory manner when they extract high article processing charges from the authors?

We have covered the point that many scientists believe that publication in high impact factor journals is key to the career they want, that journal impact factor is one of their top priorities. Now let’s look at this next point. Journals have been raising article processing charges (APCs) at a much faster rate than inflation. A figure in “Article Processing Charge Hyperinflation and Price Insensitivity”, shows that APC rate increased more rapidly than inflation rate in the United States and in Europe. These APCs are increasing much more rapidly than they should if they were just keeping up with inflation, suggesting a race to the top of prices.

A fourth point that I would like to make, that was also mentioned in that hyperinflation article, is that authors are not sensitive to the APC price. They seem to be willing to pay whatever the journal asks. If the journal raises the price, the authors are going to pay that extra price. Let’s look at some evidence for that. Another article in the LSE blog is called “The Gold Rush: Why Open Access will Boost Publisher Profits”. A couple of quotes: “In theory, competition between publishers should apply a downward pressure on APCs; as academics should at least consider price when selecting a journal.” But that’s not happening. And this author did some additional research and saw “… no evidence that fee introduction resulted in any loss of article volume.” Whenever journals started charging article processing charges, they didn’t get fewer submissions, and when they reaised prices, they didn’t get fewer submissions. If you took economics 101, you learned the law of supply and demand, that when prices go up demand goes down. They are not seeing that happen in this study. In the cases where journals suddenly started charging fees or when they were formerly a traditional model journal and they switched Open Access, article volume did not decrease. One reason authors are not sensitive to how much it costs to publish is because they’re not paying for it out of their pocket. They are paying for it out of grants, or their institution is paying for it. Another quote from this article to note is that “the importance of journal prestige for career advancement gives researchers a strong incentive to publish in the highest quality journals they can. And since higher-quality open-access journals are associated with higher article processing charges, it actually encourages authors to spend more on publishing.”

A fifth point I would like to bring up is I would like to bring up is that most of the elite journals are published by for-profit publishers. They are not published by scientific societies that are operating on a non-profit basis. I don’t have a problem with people or companies making a profit. I don’t think that’s an inherently bad thing, but it does give them a motive for increasing the prices much more quickly than inflation. And because there’s no price insensitivity, there’s nothing holding them back. The typical laws of supply and demand are not going to apply to this situation. These APC prices could spiral out of control.

Here are four of the big for-profit publishers. I don’t want to name them specifically, because that’s not what this post is about, I’m just looking at the overall trends in the industry. In the figre, there is a normal-looking distribution. Some of the journals are pretty inexpensive, less than $500 for a few, and some of them are less than $1,000. However, in a lot of cases the prices are low when a journal first starts Open Access, and then after a year or two the prices will increase. So it could be that these inexpensive ones are new journals. Withing that distribution, the average APCs for these four publishers ranges from $2,065 to $3,115. One question that this distribution brings to my mind is: if article processing charges are there just to cover the costs for publishing and then a some left over for profit, why do they vary so much? Why does it cost some journals $8,900 to publish an article where other journals can do it for $500?  Something doesn’t make sense.

We do see that there are some outliers that are much more expensive than the average. At the far right-hand side that there is one journal that has an APC that is more than $11,000; that’s Nature. And then the second-highest one is nearly $10,000; and that is Cell. And then there is a cluster of 18 journals that have an APC of $8,900. They are all from the same publisher. Another outlying cluster of journals has APCs that are $6,500. So what is going on here? If you go back and look at the scatter plot, those journals that are $6,500 and $8,900 are not only high impact journals, they span the range. I predict that over time, the impact factor of all of these high-priced journals will go up, because authors associate high price with a high prestige journal. It’s going to allow the journal to become more and more selective, and that’s going to drive up the impact factor.

Let’s go back to the question: Can a mainstream, elite journal be considered predatory? I think if we look at the definition and characteristics of a predatory journal the answer would be no. They are not giving false and misleading information, deviating from the best editorial and publication practices, they don’t have a lack of transparency, and they don’t use spam emails and other aggressive solicitation methods. So, their behaviors are not on the predatory behavior list, for the most part. But, I think if we look at the Merriam-Webster definition, in my opinion, these high article processing charges are definitely exploitive. And I think that because of this exploitation, they are bordering on predatory behavior. It doesn’t make them a predatory journal, but I feel like it is predatory behavior because they are taking advantage of the academic’s lack of price sensitivity and their willingness to pay high APCs to get into the best journals.

What do you think about it? Do you have a different opinion? If you can explain why article processing charges are so high and why they are having hyperinflation, leave a comment.