Article processing charge expenditure in Chile: The current situation

Abstract

The National Agency of Research and Development from Chile is propos-ing, for thefirst time, a national OA policy aiming to ensure access to thescientific knowledge contained in publications resulting from research pro-jects and graduate thesis. Since no information regarding APC expenditurein Chile is available, this study examined the cost of APC for the 2019publications that included at least one Chilean affiliation. The total expen-diture for the year 2019 was estimated at USD 9,129,939. The resultsconfirm that almost one third of the total APC was spent on publicationsfrom Health & Medical Sciences, research area with the highest APC (USD6000). Furthermore,five commercial publishers collected 52% of the totalAPC expenditure. Unfortunately, the cost of publishing in some journals isso high that it causes detrimental effects on the research capacity ofunder resourced individuals. In the Chilean scenario, APC is not well suitedto scale as most universities do not have an OA budget to supportresearchers that are eager to publish their work in OA journals. Perhapsthe implementation of an OA policy ought to be accompanied by sustain-able APC funding grants aimed at supporting under resourced researchersthat want to make their research freely available.