Earlier this year, in a comment stream on a blog post about open access and fees, one commenter (from the commercial journal field) asked whether there were any actual numbers on how many articles were published in gold OA journals that don’t charge APCs or other author-side fees.
At the time, another commenter responded with my figures from the partial study of gold OA journals, the one that didn’t include journals without English-language interfaces. The total from 2012 through 2014 was around 470,000 articles.
The Gold OA Landscape 2011-2014 includes graphs showing free and paid article counts overall and for each segment and subject, and shows overall article counts and the percentage of free articles, making it easy to calculate approximate counts, but I didn’t actually include the figures that create the graphs; that would have been redundant and I was trying to keep the book as short as possible. And the excerpted version in Cites & Insights didn’t include graphs at all.
So, for what it’s worth, here are some key figures for articles published in serious gold OA journals (those listed in DOAJ ) and graded A or B in my study) that do not charge APCs or other author-side fees.
Overall
Among the DOAJ journals included in The Gold OA Landscape 2011-2014 (grades A & B), 7,048 did not charge APCs. Those journals published 177,855 articles in 2011, 198,552 articles in 2012, 206,561 articles in 2013 and 206,588 in 2014. That’s a total of 789,556 articles during the four-year period in serious gold OA journals without author-side fees.
Biology and Medicine
For this segment, there were 57,627 articles in 2011, 63,411 in 2012, 64,735 in 2013 and 66,057 in 2014, for a total of 251,830 articles during the four-year period in serious gold OA journals without author-side fees.
Science, Technology, Engineering and Math
Serious gold OA journals without APCs or other author-side fees in this segment published 52,892 articles in 2011; 59,593 in 2012; 64,637 in 2013; and 65,088 in 2014, for a total of 242,210 articles during the four-year period.
Humanities and Social Sciences
Serious gold OA journals without APCs or other author-side fees in this segment published 67,350 articles in 2011; 75,556 in 2012; 77,189 in 2013; and 75.443 in 2014, for a total of 295,538 articles during the four-year period.
Surprised that there were more no-fee articles in the humanities and social sciences than in either biomed or STEM? You shouldn’t be.
By the way, today (Monday, October 26, 2015) is the last day to get 30% off this or any other Lulu books using coupon code OCTFLASH30.
