Pearson correlation coefficient between article processing charges and journal indicators for gold open access articles by Indian authors

a statistical analysis

Abstract

Many Indian authors publish their research in open access journals through the gold access route and paying the Article Processing Charge (APC) to the publishers. In view of this, there can be the Pearson correlation coefficient between APCS and journal indicators. This study evaluates the Pearson correlations of APC with journal indicators for gold open access (OA) articles published by Indian authors. Furthermore, the relationship between APCs and CiteScore, SNIP, and SJR is established through the statistical description. The study followed the quantitative and qualitative methodology. Data were extracted from Scopus about the CiteScore, SNIP, SJR, citations, and the APCs charges were obtained from the journal’s websites. The final obtained data of 22308 gold OA articles published in the total 1946 OA journals indexed in Scopus were included in the study. Its CiteScore, SNIP, and SJR were obtained from the Scopus citation database to study the relationship between the APCs and indicators. The data were analyzed using SPSS and MS Excel to find the Pearson correlations of APCs with the journal’s indicators. The mean (average) and median of APCs for gold OA articles are USD 1682.63 and USD 1029.604, respectively. The study revealed that ‘Health Sciences’ contributed the highest number of articles and spent the highest amount of APCs, followed by ‘Physical Science.’ Pearson correlation coefficient recorded a negative correlation for APC to the number of articles and positive and statistically highly significant correlation of APCs with citations, CiteScore, SNIP, and SJR. In contrast, the correlation of CiteScore with SNIP and SJR has a very high positive correlation as (r = 0.785, p < 0.001) and (r = 0.827, p < 0.001), respectively. The limitation of the study is actual APC paid by Indian authors to the OA journals, which is not available. Only APCs mentioned on the journal’s website are a source of information. The correlation between APCs and SJR is a positive and highly significant relationship, and the relationship of SJR with CiteScore and SNIP is also highly positive.