To start a new series of GOA comments here and on the GOAJwcc Twitter account, here’s a table that isn’t directly available in any GOA edition because it combines figures from all seven. To wit, the growth in average article fee (for articles in fee-charging journals), average article cost (which includes all DOAJ journals), and plausible total revenue.
Here’s the table:
| Year | Average fee | Increase | Cum Inc | Revenue ($K) | Increase | Cum Inc | Average cost | Increase | Cum Inc |
| 2015 | $1,192 | $376,733 | $665 | ||||||
| 2016 | $1,407 | 18% | 18% | $419,887 | 11% | 11% | $803 | 21% | 21% |
| 2017 | $1,557 | 11% | 31% | $493,242 | 17% | 31% | $876 | 9% | 32% |
| 2018 | $1,569 | 1% | 32% | $649,415 | 32% | 72% | $913 | 4% | 37% |
| 2019 | $1,673 | 7% | 40% | $873,263 | 34% | 132% | $1,023 | 12% | 54% |
| 2020 | $1,848 | 10% | 55% | $1,277,135 | 46% | 239% | $1,203 | 18% | 81% |
| 2021 | $1,997 | 8% | 68% | $1,752,551 | 37% | 365% | $1,374 | 14% | 107% |
Note that “Average fee” includes all journals that charge some sort of fee (usually APCs, but also submission and membership fees) while “Average cost” includes all articles in DOAJ-listed journals. The average is always weighted: all likely fees divided by all articles.
Note that the year-to-year increases in average fees are, while almost always higher than inflation, not typically outrageous. The huge numbers are the overall revenue increases, because most article growth in gold OA has been in fee-charging journals.
