French institutions pay €30 million a year to publish open access, study reveals
The French government’s coordinator on open science has expressed his alarm at a study showing that French institutions now pay €30 million annually in article-processing charges (APCs) to publishers of scholarly journals. This is a threefold increase since 2013 and is in addition to €85 million in annual subscription charges, the study found.
Marin Dacos, the research ministry’s national coordinator for open science, wrote on Twitter of the study, which was commissioned by the ministry: “It has been talked about for a long time, but rarely on the basis of reliable estimates. Now we know how much publishing costs cost for France (€30m per year!) and we have a credible estimate of trends for the next 10 years.”