Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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187. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills further to Parliamentary Question No. 82 of 10 October 2013, if he will instruct the Higher Education Authority to provide the information sought; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [55310/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I refer to the Deputy's request for information on the number of research articles from Irish higher education institutions published in journals that appear in the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and on the Beall's list, and the amount of fees paid for same. The HEA has consulted with institutions and the following data has been gathered.

I set out below details of PLOS papers per Irish higher education institution published in 2011 and 2012. Please note that the number of citations for recent years (i.e. 2012) is usually lower than that for earlier years as it takes time for citations to accrue. This is reflected in the tables below.

Information on the PLOS pricing model is also set out below. The PLOS publication pricing has many variables and may be discounted or waived in certain cases. For example, published authors are entitled to institutional membership discounts. In addition papers published by Irish higher education institutions would have multiple authors, including international collaborators, with publishing costs being shared. This, along with the multiplicity of associated research funders, some of whom pay publication costs, makes it impossible to determine the cost to individual Irish institutions with any degree of accuracy.

Unfortunately, the information in relation to Beall's list is not readily available and would involve a substantial amount of staff resources within each higher education institution to ascertain whether any articles appeared on such a list.

PLOS Pricing criteria (source: ). To provide open access, PLOS journals use a business model in which expenses — including those of peer review, journal production, and online hosting and archiving — are recovered in part by charging a publication fee to the authors or research sponsors for each article they publish. Prices are as follows:

- PLOS Biology US$2900

- PLOS Medicine US$2900

- PLOS Computational Biology US$2250

- PLOS Genetics US$2250

- PLOS Pathogens US$2250

- PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases US$2250

- PLOS ONE US$1350

PLOS is committed to the widest possible global participation in open access publishing. To determine the appropriate fee, we use a country-based pricing model, which is based on the country that provides 50% or more of the primary funding for the research that is being submitted. Research articles funded by Upper Middle and High Income Countries incur our standard publication fees. Corresponding authors who are affiliated with one of our are eligible for a discount on this fee. Such authors will be informed of the discount applicable after submission of their manuscript.

Fees for Low and Lower Middle Income Countries are calculated according to the for manuscripts submitted after 9am Pacific Time on September 4, 2012 (this program is not retroactive).

- Group One: Countries from this will not be charged for publishing

- Group Two: Countries from this will be charged a flat $500

Our fee waiver policy, whereby PLOS offers to waive or further reduce the payment required of authors who cannot pay the full amount charged for publication, remains in effect. Editors and reviewers have no access to whether authors are able to pay; decisions to publish are only based on editorial criteria.

Number of PLOS papers per Irish HEI published in 2011

Number of PLOS papers per Irish HEI published in 2012