Dear Jorge, good question!
One could study it by taking paired data, let us say: average article processing fee (APF) and Impact Factor (IF). (Admittedly a lot of data gathering work!)
The first thing would be to make a scatter plot and look wether the data are compatible with a linear or at least monotonic relation between APF and IF. One can use Pearson's correlation coefficient (linear relation) or Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (monotonic relation). (Caution needs to be exercised when assessing the significance and accuracy of these correlation numbers since the standard packages usually assume Gaussian distributions, w´hich very likely seems not to be the case for either APF or IF. (One may study the distributions using histograms or, more advanced, kernel estimation.)
If the data appear incompatible with a monotonic function, then this is a challenge to go beyond the scatterplot analysis; nonlinear measures (mutual information) could help, but it may be difficult to assess the associated uncertainties.
My gut feeling is that at first order the model may be monotonic: high-IF journals should not rely in first instance on making money from APF, while low-IF (especially "predatory") "journals" should rely on APF more strongly.
I have not check the research literature whether such analyses have already been done.
I am sorry if this answer is too long, but I thought to take this opportunity to illustrate the usefulness of statistical science.
Best wishes Manfred Am 11.04.2017 um 18:29 schrieb Jorge A. Santiago-Blay:
Are page charges related to Impact Factor? Dear Colleagues: I just finished listening to a great talk of recent scholarly publication trends and, as I reflect on the talk, I wonder if any of you know whether there is a relationship between the Thomson Reuters IF and page charges for scholarly journals. If any of you know, please send me an email to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Apologies for potentially duplicate emails. Gratefully, Jorge Jorge A. Santiago-Blay, PhD blaypublishers.com <http://blaypublishers.com> 1. Positive experiences for authors of papers published in */LEB/* http://blaypublishers.com/testimonials/ 2. Free examples of papers published in */LEB/*: http://blaypublishers.com/category/previous-issues/. 3. /Guidelines for Authors/ and page charges of */LEB/*: http://blaypublishers.com/archives/ /./ 4. Want to subscribe to */LEB/*? http://blaypublishers.com/subscriptions/ http://blayjorge.wordpress.com/ http://paleobiology.si.edu/staff/individuals/santiagoblay.cfm
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