Walt at Random

If you think the work I’m doing related to The Open Access Landscape 2011-2014 (and potentially 2011-2015) is valuable, read on–understanding that I really need some form of feedback this week (by May 1, 2015).

If you don’t think it’s valuable, feel free to skip the rest of this.

Anybody still here?

If so, then here’s the moderately short version (followed by the three pieces of the longer version):

I need feedback this week to decide how to proceed. Feedback can be a comment on this post, a message to me (waltcrawford@gmail.com), a response to the messages I’ll probably put up on various social networks… It should reach me by May 1, 2015.

Why by May 1, 2015? Because if I’m going to do something like an IndieGoGo campaign (see under “The Possible Campaign”), I’d want to discuss it in the June 2015 Cites & Insights. That would mean writing a new “The Front” before I start to revise and prepare the issue, which I plan to publish early next week.

Why IndieGoGo rather than Kickstarter? Because, at least the last time I looked, Kickstarter requires a video, and I’m not a video person and don’t really have the equipment–hardware and software–to do a decent little intro.

After my last experience staging such a campaign, I’m a little gunshy–and the 100% lack of  feedback based on the message at the end of every weekly post, and the extra post, doesn’t make me less gunshy.

Positive feedback does not commit you to contribute to the IndieGoGo campaign or, alternatively, to buy the book (PDF or paperback) when it comes out, which it probably will whether I do the campaign or not. It only says that you might consider it. I will not pester you–there won’t be individual emails saying “Well? Why haven’t you coughed up?”

The lack of positive feedback won’t necessarily doom the project. It will pretty much doom any crowdfunding campaign or putting much additional effort into the current project. It might or might not doom what I really want to do next year (see The Long-Term Goal below). Good feedback and a successful campaign would assure more effort and help assure the long-term goal.

That’s the moderately short version. The rest of this message consists of three parts: Potential additional refinements for 2011-2014; The Possible Campaign Outline; The Long-Term Goal.

Potential Additional Refinements for 2011-2014

Here’s what I’d probably do with good feedback and a successful campaign:

• Add the 220 (or so) 2014 additions to DOAJ to the spreadsheet.
• Do selective rechecking for 2013 values.
• Redo key measures based on 2014 rather than 2013 counts.
• Introduce new measures of article-quantity distribution, one based on quartiles of peak-article-count, one based on quartiles of cumulative article count for 2014 (that is, the range of 2014 article volumes that makes up one-quarter of all articles)
• Try out making these two local and global (that is, showing the local quartiles for a given topic and showing how local distribution differs from global distibution)
• Rework all of the chapters to add topics to table/figure captions, add new measures, and provide narrative summaries of the distinctive aspects of a topic’s OA journals.
• As soon as the Library Technology Reports is issued, change the publication dates on remaining blog posts (which will not include any of these refinrements) so that new chapters appear twice a week rather than once a week.

The Possible Campaign Outline

If I did an IndieGoGo campaign for The Open Access Landscape 2011-2014, it would have a base goal of $1,000 and stretch goals of $1,500, $3,000 and $5,000, as follows:

Base Goal: Prepare and Issue Refined 2011-2014 Study

With refinements as shown above, to the extent that they’re easily doable. Issue results as a PDF ebook and a paperback book (with possible casebound option depending on campaign results).

Note in the perks below that the base goal might include making the ebook/PDF version free.

Note also that, if anybody contributes at the $75 and higher levels, the base goal also involves preparing an indexed version of Ethics and Open Access: A Cites & Insights Reader in late 2015/early 2016.

Stretch Goal 1: $1,500: Post anonymized data to Figshare

Additionally, all revenue in excess of $1,250 would count toward the long-term goal (see below).

Stretch Goal 2: $3,000: Probable move to long-term goal

See below.

Stretch Goal 3: $5,000: Long-term Goal becomes Action Plan

See below.

The Perks

• $25: Option A: Acknowledgment in the book and a free copy of the exclusive PDF version (with in-PDF autograph on title page, and with working links in contents and figures table). At least a $40 value.
• $25: Option B: Same as Option A, but with explicit preference to make regular PDF version freely available. (Otherwise, it will cost $40 for those not participating in the campaign.)
• $50: Options A and B: Same as $25, plus 40% discount off a paperback copy of the book. (Planned price $45, so discounted price would be $27.) At least a $58 value.
• $75: Option A: Same as $50 (and assumes Option B) plus a free PDF exclusive edition of Ethics and Open Access: A Cites & Insights Reader. (Exclusive: working links.) At least a $98 value.
• $75: Option B: Like $75A, but instead of the 40% discount, a free PDF of The Open Access Landscape 2011-2015 in late 2016, if that project goes forward. (If not, I’ll come up with something else.) At least a $98 value.

All levels from here on include acknowledgment, the free exclusive PDF version and the free exclusive PDF Ethics and Open Access,  plus whatever’s stated at the level. If at least 20 contributors choose Option B or any level higher than $50, the non-exclusive PDF version of the 2011-2014 book will be made freely available.

• $100: Add a free copy of the paperback. At least a $125 value.
• $125: Add a free signed copy of the paperback. Priceless!
• $150: Like $125, plus a free PDF of the 2011-2015 book. At least a $170 value.
• $175: Add a free casebound copy of the 2011-2014 book.
• $200: Add a free signed casebound copy of the 2011-2015 book.
• $225: Everything–a free signed casebound copy and a free PDF of the 2011-2015 book.

The Long-Term Goal

Prepare The Open Access Landscape 2011-2015 during 2016.

• Start with the DOAJ dataset as of early 2016 (say January 6 or so).
• Gather data for as many journals as possible, including selective use of Google Translate to try to deal with journals with no English interface–and more extensive use of alternative methods to locate journals where the URL in the DOAJ dataset doesn’t work.
• Recheck existing data in all cases.
• Refine grading system and assign all new grades.
• Prepare the project.
• File the anonymized spreadsheet with Figshare.
• (Propose a summary version in Library Technology Reports.)

If an IndieGoGo campaign yields more than $1,500 but less than $5,000, I’d do a later campaign (probably late Fall 2015) to try to raise the rest–that is, looking for $3,500 in new funding for the 2011-2015 project.

There it is. Lunacy? A good idea? Somewhere in between?

Let me know. By May 1, 2015, if at all possible.

Ecology includes environmental fields. This topic includes 153 journals, which published a total of 8,295 articles in 2013 and 8,754 in 2014.

Grades

Table 9.1. Journals and articles by grade

Table 9.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; the free, pay and unkown numbers; and average articles per journal. Boldface percentages (grades) are percentages of all ecology journals, where others (Free, Pay, Unk) are percentages of the grade above. All A$ journals are pay, and the redundant row is omitted.

As seems fairly typical, particularly for STEM, the A$ journals publish by far the most articles per journal, and—with the exception of D journals, an odd group—journals with APCs generally publish more articles than those without.

The small number of journals with much smaller numbers of articles proportionally include these subgroups: C (apparently ceased), three journals and a total of one article; D (dying): five journals, 22 articles; E (erratic): one journal, 23 articles; H (hiatus?): five journals, 142 articles; S (small): three journals, ten articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

Table 9.2. Journals and articles by date

Table 9.2 shows the number of free and APC-charging journals that published articles each year, including all of 2014; how many articles those journals published; and what percent was free or in free journals. The seven unknown journals (with 284 articles in 2013 are omitted from Table 9.2. The number of journals still may not add up, as there’s at least one journal that didn’t publish articles in any given year—exactly one in the case of 2013.

The percentage of free journals is relatively low for OA in general and didn’t change significantly. The percentage of articles in free journals is quite low and basically unchanged. The number of articles grows each year, even ignoring journals that began too late to be included in this study, although with somewhat lower growth from 2013 to 2014.

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis, 65 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013, 79 published fewer, and nine published the same number. For significant change, 62 (41%) published at least 10% more articles; 26 (17%) published roughly the same number; and 65 (42%) published at least 10% fewer—including eleven journals that either didn’t publish any articles (yet) in 2014 or, in a couple of cases, have become problematic (e.g., popping up potential malware).

Table 9.3. Journals by peak article volume

Table 9.3 shows the number of journals in each size category, 2013 articles for journals in that group, and what percentage is or is in no-fee journals. There are no prolific ecology journals. All but one of the large journals charges APCs, and that one isn’t as large as the rest. Notably, the bulk of no-APC journals are either small or sparse.

Fees (APCs)

Table 9.4. Journals and articles by fee range

Table 2.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range and the number of 2013 articles in those journals; the seven “unknown” journals are omitted. %Fee is the percentage of all fee-charging journals; $All is the percentage of all journals and articles (except unknowns).

These are unusual numbers—specifically, not only are there very few high-APC journals ($1,451 and up), but those journals don’t publish very many articles. Since fee ranges are based on overall quartiles, any deviations from 25% in the first %Fee column represent differences between ecology journals and OA as a whole—far fewer high-priced journals and moderately more with low and nominal prices (but most of the articles are in low-APC and medium-APC journals).

Is there a statistical correlation between APC level and peak articlke volume? No; the Pearson’s Coefficient is a very low 0.06

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Table 9.5. Starting dates for ecology OA journals

Table 9.5 shows ecology OA journals by starting date, including the percentages of journal starting in a given date range that currently don’t charge APCs. There’s a sense of a gold rush for DOAJ journals as a whole, with many more APC-charging journals starting in 2006, and that seems to be true here, except starting earlier. Relatively few journals started before 2004, but most of those that did are free; since 2004, most typically charge APCs (with 2006-07 a break in the pattern).

Figure 9.1 shows essentially the same information as Table 9.5 but as a graph with lines for free and APC-charging journals. Markers appear for APC-charging journals so that isolated periods are visible (e.g., 1960-69, 2000-01). Note that no ecology OA journals began before 1960.

Figure 9.1. Ecology journals by starting date

Table 9.6 shows journals that published articles in 2013, when they started, and the average articles (in 2013) per journal. Interesting rows are 1970-79, 1996-97 and 2000-01, with distinctly more prolific journals than in most other years.

Table 9.6. Articles per journal by starting date

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

Earth Sciences include geography, geology, oceanography, some related fields (including some aspects of tourism)—and astronomy. This topic includes 189 journals, which published a total of 7,109 articles in 2013 and 7,541 in 2014.

Grades

Table 8.1. Journals and articles by grade

Table 8.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade, the fee, pay and unknown numbers, and average articles per journal. Boldface percentages (grades) are percentages of all earth sciences journals, while others (free, pay, unk.) are percentages of the particular grade—e.g., 8% of the journals are grade B and 25% of those journals are free.

A$ means an APC of at least $1,000, so the redundant Pay line is omitted. As is usually the case, these journals have the most articles per journal—and, also as usual, it’s generally the case that APC-charging journals in a particular grade publish more articles than ones that don’t charge fees.

The small number of D journals—with a much smaller percentage of articles—include these subgroups: C: nine journals, 30 articles; D: four journals, 21 articles; E: one journal with four articles; H: five journals with 134 articles; N: one journal, seven articles; S: eight journals, 32 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

Table 8.2. Journals and articles by date

Table 8.2 shows the number of free and APC-charging journals that actually 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 16 articles in 2013) are omitted. The journal numbers don’t quite add up because there are journals in any given year that don’t publish any articles—e.g., four journals in 2013. (Some of those that haven’t published any articles in 2014 may be annuals or others with long delays in posting articles.)

The percentage of free journals is high for STEM and didn’t change significantly over these four years. While the percentage of articles in free journals is also high for STEM, it did drop from a majority in 2011 to 46% in 2013 and 2014.

OA activity in the earth sciences continues to grow, even without considering journals that entered DOAJ after May 7, 2014. Growth did slow in 2014, but only slightly.

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis, 82 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; eleven published the same number of articles; 96 published fewer articles in 2014 than in 2013. In terms of significant change, 76 (40%) published at least 10% more articles, 29 (15%) were relatively unchanged; and 82 (43%) declined by 10% or more, including eleven journals that have yet to post any 2014 articles.

Table 8.3. Journals by peak article volume

Table 8.3 shows the journal in each size category (based on the journal’s largest volume in 2011, 2012, 2013 or the first half of 2014), 2013 articles in that group, and what percentage is in no-fee journals. There are no prolific OA journals in the earth sciences. All but one of the small number of large journals charge APCs, and a majority of medium-sized journals also charge APCs—whereas most small and sparse journals are free. The pattern is fairly consistent with other OA fields.

Fees (APCs)

Table 8.4. Journals and articles by fee range

Table 8.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range (High: $1,451+; Medium: $601-$1,450; Low: $201-$600; Nominal: $8 to $200) and the number of 2013 articles for those journals.

Since fee ranges are based on quartiles for all fee-charging journals in this OA study, deviations from 25% in the first %Fee column represent differences between earth sciences and OA in general—and the differences are striking: almost no journals with high APCs (one journal publishing so few articles that it’s less than 0.5% of all earth sciences articles), relatively few with nominal fees—and a lot with medium fees.

Is there a statistical correlation between APC level and volume of articles in a journal’s peak year? Not really: the coefficient is 0.13, too low to be considered significant.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Table 8.5. Starting dates for earth sciences OA journals

Table 8.5 shows earth sciences OA journals by starting date, including the percentage of journals started within 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. Here, the rush seems to have begun in 2004-05, the first period with more than two new journals in which more than 17% charged APCs. The real surge, however, is in 2008-2011, with the most new journals and relatively high APC-charging percentages.

Figure 8.1 shows essentially the same information as Table 8.5, but as a graph with lines for free and APC-charging journals (leaving out the two unknowns). While APC-charging journals never do catch up with free journals (unlike most of STEM), the big jump is obvious. This graph is a little unusual in that there’s a sharp jump in 2002-03, all but one of the new journals free, then a drop for four years before the high growth in free and APC-charging journals in 2008-2011.

Figure 8.1. Earth sciences journals by starting date

Table 8.6. Articles per journal by starting date

Table 8.6 shows only those journals that published articles in 2013, when they started, how many articles they published in 2013 and the average number of articles per journal. To the extent that any periods stand out, they’re the high averages for 2004-2005 (primarily because the three most active journals in 2013 were all started in that period) and the surprisingly low averages for journals started in 2006-07 and 2010-11. (Many OA journals take a while to get going, so the low averages for 2012-2013 may not mean very much.)

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

If you haven’t seen any of The Open Access Landscape posts, they’re not hard to find. If you don’t give a damn about OA or these subject-oriented discussions, then you should move along: nothing to see here.

If you do care, then please read on and comment if appropriate.

Status

It now seems probable that (barring death, disease, family crises or being so unnerved by the end of FriendFeed that I just stop doing everything) I will include full-2014 article counts in all of the subject posts.

I’ve been nibbling away at the 1,702 OA journals in medicine, and now have 1,400 of them done. It’s been good to do them 50 to 100 at a time, not only to get them all done but because a bunch of the journals insist on putting up a picture with each article in the tables of contents, and I can only take so many of those medical pictures at one sitting…

It also seems probable that (with the same caveats) I’ll do the full series. (If I disappeared tomorrow, you’d see six more posts–I’m a little ahead.)

Possibilities

As I noted in “The Front” in the May 2015 Cites & Insights, each post in this series begins as a draft chapter in a possible book–and I’m already adding one more table to each chapter after posting it (using Word’s blog template and publish-to-blog capabilities). That essay includes a somewhat compressed example of the additional table, which I find to be quite revealing.

I’d like to do the book–but it only makes sense to do it if I believe there will be some sales. That’s why I’ve invited comments (or direct email) on each post to express interest. To date, there have been no expressions of interest. That may (or may not) doom the project.

There are also some possibilities that could make the book more interesting and cause it to deviate further from the series of posts, depending on how much additional work I wished to do. For example:

• I could add the 220-odd journals in DOAJ that began in 2014 and aren’t already in the study (six 2014 journals are there already), making Table x.2 and the discussion of whether OA in a given subject appears to be growing or declining even more complete. (That would also mean replacing Figure x.2, the new figure at the end of each current draft chapter.) In this case, I’d only modify those portions of the discussion, not the rest. Level of effort: Moderate (maybe an extra half-week to do the data gathering and 15-30 minutes per chapter, or 7-14 hours overall, to update the tables and discussions).

This would still not make this book a full 2011-2014 up-to-date picture or replacement for the Library Technology Reports issue, as I wouldn’t be including a detailed over view and–more significantly–I haven’t done any backfilling (adding or updating 2013 and sometimes 2012 figures for late article postings), I wouldn’t be adding what must be hundreds of earlier journals added to DOAJ since May 2014, I wouldn’t be modifying any grades or subgrades based on new data (e.g., a few “dead” journals have come back to life), and most of the analysis would still be based on 2013 rather than 2014 data.

• I could add new analysis of article distribution by journal size, based on 2014 article counts and with segments based on actual data rather than my own sense of appropriate levels. (That is: I’d do running totals for all journals and for each subject, starting with the most prolific journal and continuing downward, then assign overall segments based on, say, the article count range representing one-quarter of all articles, etc.–then applying those ranges to subjects. Very similar to what I’ve done with fee levels.) Level of effort: Also moderate–no new data gathering, but more new analysis and adding new tables and text to all chapters. Worth: Another interesting way of looking at the data.
• Theoretically, I could move to 2014 data for all of the tables that involve article counts (tables x.1, x.3, x.4, x.6–basically everything except table x.5 and figure x.1) and update the tables and text. Level of effort: Significant, as it means essentially rewriting most of each chapter.
• Theoretically, I could add more journals–both new additions to DOAJ and, using Chrome as a browser and Google’s translate facilities, more of the non-English journals. At that point, the only thing that would make this not a full 2011-2014 picture would be the lack of backfilling and grade changing. I could even do limited backfilling, looking at journals with no 2013 articles or 2013 counts that are less than 2/3 of 2014 counts. Level of effort: Major, both investigation and rewriting everything.

I guess the question is whether any or all of these are worth doing, and “worth” at some point needs to include a financial aspect, at least a limited one.

These all lead up to the issue of whether it will make sense to do a five-year 2011-2015 study, rechecking all data. That wouldn’t take as long as the current study has taken, because I understand some of the article-count shortcuts better and because I could reuse a lot of the data, but it would still be a multi-hundred-hour project. I really want to do it; I’m looking for ways to make it realistic.

For either of these–whether to do an expanded 2011-2014 job with one or more of the bullets above included, and whether to plan on a 2011-2015 study in the first half of 2016–feedback is needed. Feedback might include whether it would be ludicrous to do an Indiegogo fundraiser in either or both cases, or whether there are other sources of (relatively modest) funding (e.g., doing all four bullets and a really good book for 2011-2014 might be at the $2,500-$4,000 level, where doing just the first or first two bullets might be justified at $1,000-$2,000; the 2011-2015 project would look like $5,000-$10,000 total, depending partly on how much goes out in perks). My first Indiegogo attempt was a disaster, but that was in a whole different area.

Comments? Advice? Sources of funding?

I won’t make any serious decisions about the 2011-2014 project until I finish the subject pass, which I’m guessing is going to be late May or sometime in June; the book wouldn’t come out until the LTR issue does, and with added bullets might be as late as September or October 2015. The 2011-2015 project couldn’t begin until mid-January 2016 in any case.

Computer Science includes software, data processing, AI, robotics and portions of what might be considered information science. This topic includes 338 journals, which published a total of 23,281 articles in 2013 and essentially the same number (not allowing for new journals), 23,153, in 2014.

Grades

Table 7.1. Journals and articles by grade

Table 7.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade, the free, pay and unknown numbers, and average articles per journal. Boldface percentages (grades) are percentages of all computer science journals or articles, while others (free, pay, unknown) are percentages of the particular grade. So, for example, 18% of the journals are grade B, and 27% of that 18% are free.

Since A$ means an APC of $1,000 or more, all A$ journals are Pay, so that line doesn’t appear. As is fairly typical, those journals average many more articles per journal than other A journals—but, unusually, they average fewer articles per journal than the highly questionable C journals and just more than the large number of APC-charging B journals. Across the board and as usual, however, journals with APCs publish more articles—on average—than journals without APCs.

The D journals, which as usual include relatively few articles, include these subgroups: C: five journals with 33 articles in 2013; D: ten journals, 37 articles; E: 12 journals, 41 articles; H: 11 journals, 393 articles; S: 22 journals, 83 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

Table 7.2. Journals and articles by date

Table 7.2 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 12 “unknown” journals (with 1,018 articles in 2013, a fairly large number for journals that conceal their APCs) are omitted. The numbers still don’t add up to 338 because some journals don’t publish articles in any give year—ten of them in 2013, for example.

Although most computer science OA journals don’t charge APCs, the percentages here are lower than for OA as a whole or STEM, and show a slow decline (that is, increase in APC-charging journals) over recent years. The article percentages are distinctly low even for STEM, and the percentage of free articles has been steadily declining.

Without the “unknown” journals, total OA articles increased marginally in 2014, after a modest increase from 2012 and a huge increase from 2011. It’s quite possible that OA activity in computer science fields has plateaued, although new journals may change that picture.

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis, 120 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 20 stayed the same; 198 published fewer articles in 2014. In terms of significant change, 111 journals (33%) published at least 10% more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 58 (17%) were relatively unchanged; and 169 (precisely half) published at least 10% fewer articles in 2014—including 42 that, so far, have not published any articles in 2014 (but a few of those are tricky cases, because one publisher’s archival controls seem to be malfunctioning).

Table 7.3. Journals by peak article volume

Table 7.3 shows the number of journals in each size category, 2013 articles for journals in that group, and what percentage is free or in no-fee journals. The pattern here is not terribly unusual: the prolific journals all charge APCs, nearly all of the large ones also do, and two-thirds of the small and sparse ones don’t.

Fees (APCs)

Table 7.4. Journals and articles by fee range

Table 7.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range and the number of 2013 articles for those journals. “Unknowns”—journals with APCs that aren’t stated—are left out of these calculations.

Since fee ranges for the OA universe were established based on actual quartiles (that is, 25% of fee-charging journals are in each range from High through Nominal), deviations from 25% represent differences between computer science OA journals and OA as a while. Here’ the differences are fairly clear: computer science journals are far less likely to charge high or even medium APCs than fee-charging OA journals as a whole—and the journals with relatively high fees don’t publish a large percentage of articles.

There is no statistical correlation (-0.06) between APC level and volume of articles; given the broad figures, a negative correlation might be expected.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Table 7.5. Starting dates for computer science OA journals

Table 7.5 shows computer science journals by starting date, including the percentage of journals started in a given date range that currently do not charge APCs.

For DOAJ as a whole, I get a sense of a gold rush of new APC-charging journals from 2006 through 2011, diminishing somewhat since then. Not surprisingly, there are no very early computer science OA journals: before 1980, there just wasn’t much of a field there. The gold rush seems clear enough: from 1992 through 2005, at least three-quarters of OA journals do not charge APCs—but that percentage drops sharply in later years as the number of new journals rises sharply. Figure 7.1 shows essentially the same information as Table 7.5, but as a graph with lines for free and APC-charging journals, including markers so that certain dates show up. I think the graph is fairly clear: almost no APC-charging journals as free journals started rising—then a huge surge in APC-charging journals through 2010-2011.

Figure 7.1. Computer science OA journals by starting date

Table 7.6. Articles per journal by starting date

Table 7.6 shows journals that published articles in 2013, when they started, and average articles per journal. Two time periods stand out: journals that began in 2004-2005 have considerably more articles per journal than others, with 1994-95 not too far behind.

Comments

Computer science is generally a newer field than most other broad topical divisions. While the emergence of hundreds of OA journals, most of them charging APCs, suggests a gold rush, most of those journals charge relatively modest fees—and the ones with four-digit APCs don’t publish a high percentage of articles.

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