No Double Dipping Policy

If journals are both subscription-based and support Open Access they are often called ›Hybrid Open Access journals‹ or just ›Hybrid journals‹. Publishers of Hybrid journals are suspected to ›double dip‹ because they receive Article Processing Charges (APCs) from the authors of Open Access articles and charge the journal subscribers for the same content.

To avoid double dipping we calculate per journal and year the APC portion of the subscription sales plus APCs and reduce next year's subscription price by the respective percentage. Further factors can have an impact on the calculation, e.g. the development of subscriber numbers, of journal- or company-related costs, of the inflation rate, of regular non-subscription revenues etc.

Example of use:

On the basis of the calculation of the APC portion in 2019 considering the inflation rate an the average decrease of subscriptions within the past two years, we were able to reduce the subscription price for 2021 (stated in August 2020) of the journal Sozialer Fortschritt by 4 %. This journal's subscription price has been reduced again for 2022 by 2 % taking the same factors into account.