Four other publishers, among the top 24 publishers for journal-provided “gold” open access papers, have each received about ?500,000, according to an analysis of 55 research institutions conducted by RCUK.
RCUK’s report, Review of the Implementation of the RCUK Policy on Open Access, reveals that the 55 research organisations spent more than ?10 million on article processing fees for gold open access in the first year of the policy.
This accounted for more than 6,500 papers with an average article processing charge of about ?1,600 including VAT. This is ?472 less than the average cost assumed by the Finch Group when calculating the size of the RCUK block grant for open access.