What’s the Best Open Access Option?

All you need to know about open access.

Some time ago, I tweeted asking about the best cost/benefit for open access (OA) publishing in computational chemistry.

This year I already spent well over € 10k with #openaccess charges. @ACSPublications or @SpringerNature charges more than € 3k per paper. It’s nonsense!

Which journal has the best cost/benefit to publishing #CompChem?

— Mario Barbatti (@MarioBarbatti) July 4, 2020

I’ve got a lot of interesting feedback, and I’d like to share with the community some of this information.

Before going on, let me warn you that I’m no specialist on this OA topic. Likely, some of the information below may be imprecise or even mistaken. Thus, check everything by yourself, and if you know better, just let me know, and I can fix it here.

The starters

Let me start by defining a few terms and concepts.

Concerning the paper, there are three different objects:

Original Manuscript (OM): This is the version of the manuscript that the authors prepared and submitted to a journal.
Accepted Manuscript (AM): This is the final version of the manuscript prepared by the authors when it is accepted, but still before any enhancement or formatting by the publisher.
Version of record (VoR): This is the final version of the paper with the journal formatting.

Concerning the type of access, we have:

Preprint: The authors self-archive the OM in a public repository (like ArXiv or ChemRxiv). Anyone can access and read the work without paying any fee or subscription.
Green OA: The authors self-archive the AM or VoR in a public, non-commercial repository (like HAL or Zenodo). Anyone can access and read the work without paying any fee or subscription.
Gold OA: Anyone can access and read the VoR at the journal’s website without paying any fee or subscription. The article processing charge (APC) is paid by the authors.
Diamond OA: Anyone can access and read the VoR on the journal’s website without paying any fee or subscription. Authors don’t pay APC either. Third-party organizations and donations usually fund Diamond OA journals.
Paid access: To access a paper, the reader should have a journal subscription (usually institutional) or pay for the paper.

Concerning journals, there are two categories:

Full OA: The journal only publishes Gold OA papers.
Hybrid OA/subscription: The journal publishes Gold OA and paid access papers.

Journal’s menu

I collected information about journals relevant to my field (physical chemistry, computational chemistry, molecular physics). This information includes the journal impact factor (2019), type of publication (Full OA / Hybrid), Green OA availability, and Gold OA publication charges.

Journal	Publisher	Type	JIF	Preprint	Green OA	Gold OA (Eur)
ACS Omega	ACS	Full OA	3.512	yes	Immediate	1052
J Chem Info Model	ACS	Hybrid	4.956	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	3367
J Phys Chem A	ACS	Hybrid	2.781	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	3367
J Phys Chem Lett	ACS	Hybrid	6.475	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	3367
JACS	ACS	Hybrid	15.419	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	3367
JCTC	ACS	Hybrid	6.006	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	3367
J Chem Phys	AIP	Hybrid	3.488	yes	Free, no embargo	2947
Chem Phys	Elsevier	Hybrid	2.348	yes	Free, embargo 24 months	2670
Chem Phys Lett	Elsevier	Hybrid	2.328	yes	Free, embargo 24 months	2670
Comput Theor Chem	Elsevier	Hybrid	1.926	yes	Free, embargo 24 months	2870
Results Chem	Elsevier	Full OA	-	yes	Immediate	880
F1000Research	F1000Research	Full OA	2.30	yes	Immediate	1134
Open Res Europe	F1000Research	Full OA	-	yes	Immediate	0
Molecules	MDPI	Full OA	4.411	yes	Immediate	1830
Sci Rep	Nature	Full OA	4.379	yes	Immediate	1690
PeerJ Phys Chem	Peer J	Full OA	-	yes	Immediate	1004
Plos One	PLOS	Full OA	3.240	yes	Immediate	1470
Chem Sci	RSC	Full OA	9.825	yes	Immediate	0
RSC Adv	RSC	Full OA	3.361	yes	Immediate	876
Chem Comm	RSC	Hybrid	6.222	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	1870
New J Chem	RSC	Hybrid	3.591	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	1870
PCCP	RSC	Hybrid	3.676	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	1870
R Soc Open Sci	The Royal Society	Full OA	2.963	yes	Immediate	1440
Phil Trans A	The Royal Society	Hybrid	4.226	yes	Free, no embargo	2040
SciPost Chem	SciPost	Full OA	-	yes	Immediate	0
J Mol Model	Springer	Hybrid	1.810	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	2590
Theor Chem Acc	Springer	Hybrid	1.702	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	2590
Top Curr Chem	Springer	Hybrid	9.060	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	3060
Mol Phys	Taylor & Francis	Hybrid	1.962	yes	Free, 12 months embargo	3095
Angew Chemie Int Ed	Wiley	Hybrid	15.336	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	4000
ChemPhysChem	Wiley	Hybrid	3.102	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	3200
Int J Quantum Chem	Wiley	Hybrid	2.444	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	3150
ChemPhotoChem	Wiley	Hybrid	2.444	yes	Free, embargo 12 months	2900

The information in this table is from July 2021 and may be outdated. For the current status and APC of each journal, visit the publisher’s website. The APCs for Gold OA are in Euros and don’t include VAT. For converting some values, I used the exchange rate of 1 EUR = US$ 1.19 = 0.86 GBP (July 05, 2021). Institutional, regional, and other discounts may apply.

The impact factor for F1000Research is from Scopus. All others are from the 2020 release of Clarivate Journal Citation Reports.

So, how is the preprint today?

Usually, authors can submit their paper as a preprint before submitting it to a journal. I have heard of journals that may not accept it, but in my field, preprints are generally welcome. Note that all journals in this list accept submission of manuscripts that have already appeared as a preprint.

Many institutions and funding agencies require preprint self-archiving or even Green OA. My university, for instance, requires that we self-archive the AM at the French repository HAL.

Feeling a Green OA option?

In H2020 grants (like ERC and FetOpen), Green OA with a maximum 6-month embargo is mandatory, as defined in Article 29.2 of the grant agreement. It means that the AM of a paper funded by these grants must be free to anyone no later than six months after publication.

Most journals will impose some restrictions on Green OA. As I show in the Table, in my field, they usually only allow Green OA after 12 12-month embargo.

This means that H2020 grantees cannot count on this option, as they should have Green OA no later than six months.

Two notable exceptions among the hybrid journals are the J Chem Phys and Phil Trans A. Both allow free and immediate Green OA of the AM!

In the full OA journals, when authors pay for Gold OA, Green OA of both AM and VOR is usually allowed as part of the license.

Gold and Diamond OA: Who is paying the bill?

The publication fees (APC) for Gold OA are generally scorching!

Among the publishers, RSC has the most reasonable fees. ACS has the highest fees.

Note, however, that the final ACS price may be much lower than the full price in the Table, as authors may have institutional and ACS membership cumulative discounts. The price may drop from €3387 to about €2760. But it can also go higher if the authors opt for a CC-BY license.

Curiously, the APC doesn’t correlate with the impact factor, as we see in the figure above. On the contrary, publishing Gold OA in a journal with a JIF lower than two is pretty expensive, reaching €3150 in Int J Quantum Chem.

Between JIF 2 and 4, there are several reasonably priced journals; the cheapest option is RSC Adv, €832.

The sweet spot, of course, is Chem Sci, which is for free!

Besides Chem Sci, there are a few other Diamond OA journals around. Open Res Europe (you must be an H2020 grantee to submit there), SciPost Chem (I’m a member of their Editorial College), and Peer J Phys Chem.