New preprint is out! We combine our recent open dataset of #APC prices with the publication counts per journal-year from @OpenAlex to estimate how much the academic community has paid in APCs over the last five years.
A: $8.349 billion ($8.968 billion in 2023 US dollars) spent on APCs.
$2.5B in 2023 alone.
We also find that median APCs paid are higher than median listed fees for both gold (paid: $2,450 vs listed: $2,000) and hybrid ($3,600 vs $3,230).
