Walt at Random

Arts & Architecture includes most areas I’d consider to be in the fine arts (there are very few OA architecture journals) including music, art and dance—but note also two later topics, language & literature and media & communications. Due to original DOAJ subject assignment, or my own failures, there seem to be a few journals here that might properly belong in sociology. This topic includes 150 journals, which published a total of 2,647 articles in 2013.

Grades

Table 4.1. Journals and articles by price

Table 4.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; the fee, pay and unknown numbers; and average articles per journal. Note that boldface percentages (grades) are percentages of all arts & architecture journals, while others are percentages of the particular grade—so, for example, 73% of the journals were grade A and 97% of that 73% were free.

There are no journals in this group with APCs higher than $999. The handful of APC-charging journals does include those with the most articles, as is typically the case.

The small number of D journals (and tiny number of articles!) includes these subgroups: C: nine journals, no articles in 2013; D: one journal with two articles in 2013; E: nine journals with nine articles in 2013; H: one journal with 27 articles in 2013; N: one journal with seven articles in 2013; S: 16 journals with 52 articles in 2013—small journals are not that unusual in this area.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

Table 4.2. Journals and articles by date

Table 4.2 shows the number of free and APC-charging journals that published articles in each year, including all of 2014; how many articles those journals published; and what percentage were free.

The two “unknown” journals (with 15 articles in 2013) are omitted. The journal numbers still don’t add up because there are journals that didn’t publish articles in any given year—18 of them in 2013, for example.

The percentages of free journals and articles are fairly typical of humanities journals—nearly all free across the board. In this case, there’s not even the fairly typical trend of lower free percentages in recent years.

Among this set of journals, OA activity appears to be increasing, with 2013 dropping slightly from 2012 and but 2014 bouncing back significantly.

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis, 79 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 17 published the same number (including eight cases where that number was zero); 54 published fewer articles. In terms of significant change, 74 journals (49%) grew by at least 10%; 26 (17%) were relatively unchanged; and 50 (33%) declined by at least 10%, including 14 that have yet to post any 2014 articles (some of which may be small journals with long posting delays).

Table 4.3. Journals by peak article volume

Table 4.3 shows the number of journals in each size category, 2013 articles for journals in that group, and what percentage is in no-fee journals. While there are no prolific journals in arts & architecture, there are two large ones, both with APCs—but nearly all the action is in small and sparse journals. Of course, 20 to 59 articles per year (small) seems perfectly reasonable for a journal in arts & architecture—as does, for that matter, 10 to 16 articles per year.

Fees (APCs)

Table 4.4. Journals and articles by fee range

Table 4.4 shows the number of journals (that published articles in 2013) in each fee range and the number of 2013 articles in those journals, omitting unknown cases. There are no high-APC journals here: the highest APC is $519 and two of the four nominal cases are truly nominal at $30 or less.

For what it’s worth—which, with so few data points, isn’t much—there is a negative correlation (-0.50) between APC level and number of articles in a journal’s peak year: that is, journals with smaller APCs tended to publish more articles. That’s unusual.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Table 4.5. Starting dates for arts & architecture OA journals

Table 4.5 shows arts & architecture OA journals by starting date, including the percentage of journals started in a given date range that currently don’t charge APCs. For DOAJ journals as a whole, there’s a sense of a gold rush for APC-charging journals starting in 2006. As you’ll see in Figure 4.1, that’s true (as far as it goes) for arts & architecture: omitting unknown cases, there are no APC-charging journals starting earlier than 2006, but only a handful since then.

Figure 4.1. Arts & architecture OA journals by starting date

Table 4.6. Articles per journal by starting date

Table 4.6 shows journals that published articles in 2013, when they started, and the average articles per journal. I don’t think there’s anything especially noteworthy here.

Comments

Mostly small and very small journals, almost all of them without fees: that’s the picture here and it’s much as you’d expect. Very small (what I call “sparse”) can also frequently mean two things: long delays for online posting and years when there simply aren’t any articles. Both of those come into play here, I believe—if 2014 counts were taken in, say, July 2015, I suspect there would be more journals represented, but not all 150 by any means.

 Definitions and notes

See The Open Access Landscape: 1. Background for definitions and notes

If you’re interested in a book-form version of this material (with an additional bonus graph added in each chapter), let me know, either in a comment or by email to waltcrawford at gmail dot com

This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2015 at 7:10 am and is filed under open access. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.