Correlation Between Cost of Publication and Journal Impact. Comprehensive Cross-sectional Study of Exclusively Open-Access Surgical Journals.

OBJECTIVES: As open-access journals have become increasingly common, it has provided more options for researchers to publish their work and improved access of information to the public. However, some open-access journals charge the authors processing fee on submission. In certain cases, this can be rather expensive. This study is the first study to specifically assess the cost of publishing in exclusively open-access, peer-reviewed surgical journals, and their correlation with journal impact, in the form of 6 bibliometrics.

DESIGN AND SETTING: This is a cross-sectional study. A list of journals is compiled using the SCImago Journal & Country Rank and Directory of Open Access Journals. 6 indices are measured - impact factor, SCOPUS h-index, SCImago journal rank indicator (SJR), Eigenfactor, Article Influence Score and Google h5 index. The cost of publication (in USD$) of a research article (maximum of 6 pages) is used as a baseline.

RESULTS: 89 research journals are included. The median cost of publication is USD$100 (range [0-2580]). 47% are free of charge. 13% can cost more than USD$2000 per article. SJR and Google h5 index appear to be the only indices that correlate linearly with the cost (p = 0.015 and 0.041, respectively), although the correlations are weak. 3 indices, namely impact factor, SJR and Article Influence Score appear to have very strong correlations with each other (Pearson coefficient > 0.90).

CONCLUSIONS: From this study, the cost of publishing in open-access journals bears little correlation to their impact; this poses a dilemma for researchers without significant funding. Therefore, authors and funders must consider cautiously when submitting to these journals.