Archive for May, 2015

The Open Access Landscape: 14. Language & Literature

Friday, May 29th, 2015

Language and literature includes linguistics and a number of other fields, as well as author-specific journals and the like. The group includes 262 journals, which published a total of 6,243 articles in 2013 and 5,816 articles in 2014.

Grades

Grade Journals %J Articles %A A/J
A

189

72%

5,542

89%

29

Free

183

97%

4,235

76%

23

Pay

6

3%

1,307

24%

218

B

14

5%

458

7%

33

Free

10

71%

175

38%

18

Pay

4

29%

283

62%

71

D

59

23%

243

4%

4

Free

57

97%

177

73%

3

Pay

1

2%

9

4%

9

Unk

1

2%

57

23%

57

Table 14.1. Journals and articles by grade

Table 14.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; free, pay and unknown numbers; and average articles per journal. Boldface percentages (grades) are percentages of the whole set; other percentages are percentages of the grade above. There are no A$ or C journals, but an unusually high percentage of D journals. Otherwise, as usual, the few pay journals publish many more articles per journal than the free ones—to an extreme in this case.

The large percentage of D journals breaks down into these subgroups: C (apparently ceased), 20 journals with a total of one article in 2013; D (dying), two journals with four articles; E (erratic), 13 journals with 124 articles; H (hiatus?), three journals with 45 articles; S (small), 21 journals with 69 articles. The overall picture is fairly clear: with 23% of the journals, D journals account for only 4% of the articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

2014 2013 2012 2011
Journals

219

239

248

229

%Free

95%

95%

96%

96%

Articles

5,787

6,186

5,802

4,862

%Free

71%

74%

76%

77%

Table 14.2. Journals and articles by date

Table 14.2 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 or were in free journals.

The single “unknown” journal did not publish in 2011 or 2012 and is omitted from the table. Journal numbers don’t add up because some journals—at least 14 in any given year—didn’t publish articles in each year.

The percentage of free journals is extremely high and fairly typical for the humanities; the percentage of free articles has declined over the years and is actually lower than average for humanities fields.

Is OA activity in language and literature declining? Possibly, but there’s some evidence that one journal (with very high article counts that were extrapolated from sample issues) may have been overcounted for 2013; that overcount would result in roughly equal article counts for 2012 through 2014. It does appear that, after the sharp jump in 2012, there has been very little growth and possibly some decline in activity, although annuals in this area frequently post articles very late, so there may still be some 2014 growth to come.

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis, 115 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 37 published the same number; and 110 published fewer articles in 2014. For significant changes, 109 (42%) published at least 10% more articles; 53 (20%) published roughly the same number (including 13 that didn’t publish any articles in either year); and 100 published at least 10% fewer articles in 2014 (including 29 that have yet to publish any articles).

Journals No-Fee % Articles No-Fee %
Prolific

1

100%

1,120

100%

Large

3

0%

994

0%

Medium

9

56%

741

35%

Small

90

96%

2,134

92%

Sparse

159

99%

1,254

99%

Table 14.3. Journals by peak article volume

Table 14.3 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. The single prolific journal may be a measuring error (it was well under 1,000 in both 2012 and 2014, although it’s definitely a large journal). The main message here is that almost all language and literature journals are small or sparse—95% of them, in fact.

Fees (APCs)

APC Jour. %Fee %All Art. %Fee %All
High

0

0

Medium

1

9%

0%

9

1%

0%

Low

5

45%

2%

874

55%

14%

Nominal

5

45%

2%

716

45%

12%

None

250

96%

4,587

74%

Table 14.4. Journals and articles by fee range

Table 14.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range and the number of 2013 articles for those journals. The %Fee for journals for all OA journals is 25%; as should be obvious, what few of these journals charge fees have much lower fees. (In fact, there are only two journals charging more than $353.)

Oddly enough, there is a mild statistical correlation between APC level and number of articles published, but it’s a negative correlation (-0.34)—that is, as APCs go down the number of articles rises. I don’t think it’s a particularly meaningful correlation.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Year Total Free%
1960-69

4

100%

1970-79

3

100%

1980-89

6

83%

1990-91

1

100%

1992-93

3

100%

1994-95

5

100%

1996-97

9

100%

1998-99

16

100%

2000-01

16

94%

2002-03

23

100%

2004-05

28

96%

2006-07

28

100%

2008-09

51

100%

2010-11

47

85%

2012-13

22

91%

Table 14.5. Starting dates for language & literature OA journals

Table 14.5 shows language & literature 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 new APC-charging journals between 2006 and 2011, and while there aren’t really enough APC-charging language & literature OA journals to constitute a “rush” of any sort, it’s true that seven of the eleven started in 2010-2011, part of the substantial growth in new OA journals from 2008 through 2011.

Figure 14.1 shows essentially the same information as Table 14.5 in graph form, with markers for pay journals so the two early instances appear. (None of these journals started before 1960, although one started in 1960.)

Figure 14.1. Language & literature journals by starting date

Table 14.6 (below) shows journals that published articles in 2013 by starting date, the number of articles published in 2013 and average articles per journal. To the extent that anything stands out, it’s the relatively high articles per journal in journals founded at the turn of the century, those founded in 2006-2007 and those that started in 2010-2011. None of these averages are particularly high for journals in general.

Year Journals Articles Art/Jrnl
1960-69

4

76

19

1970-79

3

55

18

1980-89

4

125

31

1990-91

1

5

5

1992-93

2

22

11

1994-95

4

68

17

1996-97

8

153

19

1998-99

16

256

16

2000-01

16

619

39

2002-03

21

311

15

2004-05

25

506

20

2006-07

24

1,392

58

2008-09

46

604

13

2010-11

44

1,533

35

2012-13

22

518

24

Table 14.6. 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.

Looking for the right PDF tool

Monday, May 25th, 2015

Never mind. After doing some more looking, reading reviews, talking to one store, and seeing a Memorial Day sale, I’ve ordered Power PDF fromNuance,  the same people who now own Dragon Naturally Speaking. At $80 (including shipping), it’s a reasonable chance to take.

Help.

Here’s the situation: I’ve pretty much entirely moved to my new PC from my old one. I’ve got Office 2013, Windows 8.1, Paint.net, most of what I need.

But…

I’d like to correct a problem I’ve had for some years. Namely, Acrobat 9 (which I do own) doesn’t integrate with recent versions of Word, at least not under Windows Vista or 7, at least on my old machine. (It appears to, but the addin doesn’t work). So, for some years now, I’ve been using Acrobat as a PDF Printer in Word when I need size compression or very high quality photos/graphics in the output, Word’s “Create PDF” when I need working hyperlinks. That’s really clumsy.

My needs are fairly straightforward in terms of going beyond Office 2013’s improved PDF facilities:

  1.  Distillation when needed. (Example: the Word-generated version of the donation-only The OA Landscape 2011-2014: An Interim Subject View is roughly 8MB–but the Acrobat-as-printer version, which lacks working hyperlinks, is just over 2MB. C&I folks may note that the single-column versions, minimized for online viewing, are 2-4 times as large as the two-column print-optimized versions: that’s the Acrobat-vs-Word difference.)
  2. Integration into Word would  be nice.
  3. The ability to retain full 300dpi photos/graphics for high-quality Lulu books. (Word doesn’t seem to do this on save-as-PDF; Acrobat’s printer driver can be set up with options that work)
  4. Ability to combine multiple PDFs into a single price.

Oh,, yes, and one more thing:A reasonable price for a non-subscription program that comes on a disc.

I don’t think I should need to pay twice as much for these capabilities as I did for Office 2013 itself. $299 strikes me as pretty high. ($14.99/month? Not gonna happen–and, again, that’s nearly twice the price of Office 365!)

Yes, I’m on a budget. So far, donations for that book/to support C&I would cover one-third of the cost stated above.

Suggestions?

A “staycation” of sorts

Saturday, May 23rd, 2015

If the next Cites & Insights is late or peculiar or both, or if I’m slow to respond to some things, or… well, here’s a reason of sorts.

I’m likely to be on an odd sort of “staycation” (from retirement?) for some weeks, because of a mix of factors:

  • Our slow process of destroying the front lawn and replacing it with something more suitable (I’ve been spending 45-90 minutes 4-5 days a week either shoveling out grass & sod or going back to shake out as much soil as possible before adding the rest to green waste, for a couple of months now, and although there’s still several weeks/months to do, I’ve cleared the area my wife–the brains of the outfit–plans to use for anything but a 2″ redwood bark ground cover) is heating up: we have a big bunch of bark & landscaping material showing up mid-week, my wife’s either capped or refitted eight of 13 sprinkler heads, we have some of the plants and will be getting more. This means taking more time carrying around stones/small boulders and hauling/spreading bark as needed.
  • I’ve moved from my 7-year-old (or is it 8?) Gateway notebook, used with an even older MS Natural wireless keyboard & mouse and a 19″ Sony second display, to a brand-new Toshiba Satellite (Fry’s had an excellent two-day/while-they-last sale for a model that’s most likely on its way out: non-touch screen, for example–but it’s just old enough to have a VGA output, which means I can still use the Sony). I’m also trying to switch to the notebook’s own keyboard & touchpad,  because my wrists have been acting up and the mouse may be part of the problem. (That means the Toshiba’s 17″ widescreen display is now my primary display and the Sony 19″ 4×3 is secondary, the reverse of the Gateway setup. Among other things, this means my typing speed is down enormously and my error rate is up enormously. I’ll give it a two-month trial before considering giving up and going back go a Natural. (I checked: neither MS nor Logitech seems go make an ergonomic keyboard with built-in touchpad.)
  • Apart from the slow curve of relearning to type and mouse around (before I turned off tap-to-click, I was cursing up a silent storm), this also means learning Windows 8.1 instead of 7 (that part will be OK), learning/customizing Office 2013 (also probably OK), finding & downloading the other software I use (I’ve already done Windows Easy Transfer), and figuring out what to do about quality, flexible, “distilled” PDF creation. This will be a slow process
  • Did I mention that my wrists are acting up? And now, a healthy dose of what’s probably bursitis–in other words, right now I’m  *feeling* 69 years old.

This too shall pass, but it may slow me down for a week or four.

Update Tuesday, May 26, 2015

OK, so I was discouraged on Saturday, one shoulder hurt like hell, both wrists were acting up, and I was silently cursing about all those clicks I was apparently making when I was just trying to use the touchpad. And typing so badly that moving to two-finger mode might have been an improvement.

Three or four days can make a big difference.

  • I’m reasonably comfortable with the Toshiba now (and I turned off tap-to-click, because for me it  becomes think-for-a-half-second-while-touching-trackpad to click, and I don’t want that). Gmail, for some reason, still seems to want to treat cursor hovers as clicks, and I don’t know why, but otherwise things are more or less OK.
  • In a while, I’ll do some more W8.1 investigation (is there a way to get an old-fashioned Start Menu?), but for now it’s OK–the Toshiba comes up in desktop mode, things are more or less where they should be (the fact that you can’t make desktop shortcuts for Office programs–yes, they’re on the taskbar–is going to be a nuisance when I want two separate instances of Excel, but I’ll deal with that later. If it’s not fixable, I can always re-download LibreOffice and use it’s spreadsheet for the second instance…but I’ll worry about that a little later. (Or maybe Excel 2013 works like Word has for some years: you can peel off instances as needed.)
  • The Toshiba itself, a bargain model, is fine–and I do like the speed with which W8.1 comes up! (2-3 seconds from Sleep, ab. 10 seconds, maybe less, from Hibernate, ab. 30 seconds from full shutdown) It’s enough more powerful that the daily Malwarebytes & Windows Defender scans don’t slow me down, even though it’s at the bottom of the iN hierarchy (a fourth-generation i3).
  • I’ve ordered PowerPDF and hope that will meet my needs for PDF creation/handling.
  • Still to do: restore SSH FTP (waiting for instructions from Blake), probably a couple of small programs to reload, probably more tweaks, and need to build a new weekly backup routine. But I’m far enough along that I’ve only had the Gateway powered up for 10 minutes out of the last three days.
  • I think my typing speed (adjusting for errors) is back up to, say, 80% of normal–and my wrists and shoulder are considerably better.

Overall: I’m still assuming I’ll operate at a slower pace for another few days, but that’s at least partly because I want to be as useful as possible in hauling bark and rocks around. The next Cites & Insights may be a little late (and will be a peculiar and short issue), but probably not very late (unless there are SSH issues), and I’m starting to look at detailed plans for extending the 2014 project.

Sure would be nice to get more OA supporters/C&I contributors, though…

The Open Access Landscape: 13. History

Friday, May 22nd, 2015

History includes most aspects of cultural research focused on the past and a number of regional, national and state studies journals. The group includes 136 journals, which published a total of 2,739 articles in 2013 and 3,090 in 2014.

Grades

Grade Journals %J Articles %A A/J
A

86

63%

2,395

87%

28

Free

85

99%

2,370

99%

28

Pay

1

1%

25

1%

25

A$ pay

1

1%

19

1%

19

B

7

5%

149

5%

21

Free

6

86%

137

92%

23

Pay

1

14%

12

8%

12

D

42

31%

176

6%

4

Free

42

100%

176

100%

4

Table 13.1. Journals and articles by grade

Table 13.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; free and pay numbers; and average articles per journal. History OA journals are unusual in several ways, among them—on the good side—the lack of any C or Unknown journals and the nearly complete absence of pay journals. As usual, bolded percentages (grades) are percentages of all history journals and articles, while others (free and pay) are percentages of the grade above, and the redundant “Pay” line for A$ is omitted.

History journals are also anomalous in that the APC-charging journals do not publish more articles than the free ones.

There’s a larger than usual percentage of D journals, including these subgroups: C (ceased), eight journals with no articles in 2013; D (dying), four journals with 25 articles; E (erratic), seven journals with 54 articles; N (new), one journal with two articles; S (small), 22 journals with 95 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

2014 2013 2012 2011
Journals

118

126

123

116

%Free

97%

98%

98%

98%

Articles

3,090

2,739

2,927

2,721

%Free

98%

98%

99%

99%

Table 13.2. Journals and articles by date

Table 13.2 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 in (or were) free journals.

One of the three APC-charging journals didn’t start publishing until 2013, which may explain the tiny decline in free-article percentage. As usual, there are some journals that don’t publish articles in any given year—ten in 2013, for example. In any case, virtually all OA history journals are free, and the field is growing, although it’s still small (and will probably stay that way).

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis, 73 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 12 published the same number of articles (including five that stopped publishing in 2012 or before); 51 published fewer. In terms of significant change, 65 (48%) published at least 10% more articles in 2014; 25 (18%) published about the same number of articles; 46 (34%) published at least 10% fewer, including 13 journals that, so far, haven’t published any articles in 2014. Most of those 13 are annuals and may publish 2014 articles later in 2015; one is now flagged as malware, which means I won’t look at it.

Journals No-Fee % Articles No-Fee %
Prolific

0

0

Large

2

100%

773

100%

Medium

3

100%

310

100%

Small

41

95%

966

95%

Sparse

90

99%

690

98%

Table 13.3. Journals by peak article volume

Table 13.3 shows the number of journals in each size category, 2013 articles for journals in that group, and what percentage are in no-fee journals. Not surprisingly, there are no prolific history journals; perhaps surprisingly, the handful of APC-charging journals are small or sparse, and most articles appear in small and sparse journals.

Fees (APCs)

APC Jour. %Fee %All Art. %Fee %All
High

0

0

Medium

1

33%

1%

19

34%

1%

Low

1

33%

1%

12

21%

0%

Nominal

1

33%

1%

25

45%

1%

None

133

98%

2,683

98%

Table 13.4. Journals and articles by fee range

Table 2.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range and the number of 2013 articles for those journals. Given the tiny number of fee-charging history journals, the table is essentially meaningless, but is included for consistency.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Year Total Free%
1970-79

2

100%

1980-89

3

100%

1990-91

2

100%

1992-93

1

100%

1994-95

1

100%

1996-97

8

100%

1998-99

4

100%

2000-01

12

100%

2002-03

14

100%

2004-05

17

94%

2006-07

11

100%

2008-09

20

95%

2010-11

27

100%

2012-13

14

93%

Table 2.5. Starting dates for history OA journals

Table 13.5 shows history OA journals by starting date, including the percentage of journals starting in each date range that currently don’t charge APCs. The sense of a gold rush from 2006-2011 that I find in DOAJ in general isn’t there for history: although the rate of journal creation increased significantly in 2008-2011, only one APC-charging journal was created between 2006 and 2011.

Figure 13.1 shows essentially the same information as Table 2.5 but in graphic form, with markers for the three cases where pay journals did begin.

Figure 13.1. History journals by starting date

Year Journals Articles Art/Jrnl
1970-79

2

31

16

1980-89

3

43

14

1990-91

2

523

262

1992-93

1

251

251

1994-95

1

20

20

1996-97

7

234

33

1998-99

4

51

13

2000-01

12

181

15

2002-03

11

161

15

2004-05

16

248

16

2006-07

10

159

16

2008-09

18

298

17

2010-11

25

303

12

2012-13

14

236

17

Table 13.5. Articles per journal by starting date

Table 13.5 includes only those journals that published at least one article in 2013 and shows, for journals started in each date range, the average articles per journal. There are two obvious points of interest in this table: some of the large and medium journals began more than 20 years ago.

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.

The OA Landscape in summary form: Act now!

Tuesday, May 19th, 2015

Update May 22, 2015:

  • The book is now available and will continue to be available until the next phase is complete (maybe mid-September 2015)
  • Donations will now be responded to with an email that includes two links: one to a Dropbox file for the ebook (which is just under 8MB–Word’s save-as-PDF creates hyperlinked contents but yields big PDFs) and one to a private Lulu page where you can purchase the 6×9″ paperback version (186+xvi pages) for $7 plus shipping.

The full set of 29 subject discussions that extend this summer’s Library Technology Report issue “The State of Open Access Journals: Idealism and Opportunism” has been posted, and will appear on Fridays from now through September 11, 2015. (Oops: The actual title is Open Access Journals: Idealism and Opportunism.)Later this week, or possibly next week, I’ll be creating a PDF ebook that combines all of the posts with the following refinements:

  • Since it’s a single book, I’ll eliminate redundant explanations from chapters 2-29, leaving only text that’s significant for the particular chapter.
  • Each “book chapter” already has a second figure, not in the blog posts, showing stacked bars for each year with the number of free, paid and unknown-status articles.
  • I’ll be adding a paragraph to the Fees section for each chapter offering the following information, all based on 2014 numbers: maximum potential revenue from APCs, assuming there were no waivers or discounts; the average charge per article in APC-charging journals; the average charge per article for all articles in the subject area; and–one that requires a little more work–the median APC based on article count for articles involving fees–that is, the dollar amount at which half of the articles in APC-charging journals in 2014 cost that much or more and half cost that much or less. That median number is in some ways the most telling number for fee levels; it ranges from $105 to $2,177 (and no, medicine is not the highest, although it’s by far the highest total revenue amount, the only one in the nine-figure range).

The PDF will have hotlinks for the table of contents and table of figures and tables. Current working title is The OA Landscape 2011-2014: An Interim Subject View

Later–once I’ve finished migrating to a new computer and put together the draft text for the July Cites & Insights–I’ll start working on a much more ambitious book that complements the Library Technology Report rather than extending it. That effort will involve rethinking some of the grades, moving much of the analysis so that it’s based on 2014 rather than 2013, attempting to integrate at least 200 or so 2014 titles and possibly some portion of the “non-English” titles, revisiting grades for some items, backfilling some numbers…and maybe even using a May 2015 DOAJ download as the foundation, rather than sticking with the May 2014 one. Best guess is that this effort will take most of the summer; my target is to have it ready by September 14, 2015 or before. (While I’m still a young man, before I turn a decrepit 70…) [Then, I’ll start working on ways to fund and/or justify an entirely new in-depth 2016 study of the OA landscape 2011-2015.]

Getting the PDF of An Interim Subject View

This PDF will not be available via Lulu, and indeed, won’t actually be for sale directly at all. It will, however, be used as an enticement for those of you who either care about this OA research or care about Cites & Insights to step up to the plate.

To wit:

I’m soliciting donations of $25 or more to Cites & Insights. You can donate from the home page or–for that matter–right here:

The button below opens a secure link to PayPal so that you can donate money to Cites & Insights, using PayPal or a credit card.

Once the interim book is ready, and continuing until the more extended version is ready, I’ll either send the PDF as an email attachment or send a link to a Dropbox file to all those who contribute at least $25 (and yes, I’ll count this as income, not donations). The PDF doesn’t have DRM. I count on your honesty and good will to not distribute huge numbers of copies, but anybody contributing personally who wishes to send the PDF to their library as an institutional resource is encouraged to do so.

For a donation of $50 or more, you’ll get the interim edition–and when the more extended book is done, you’ll get that as well, in an exclusive edition that has hotlinked table of contents and table of figures/tables. (That book will be available from Lulu, probably for $40 ebook, $45 print book, but neither of those versions will have hotlinks.)

All donations will be considered as encouragements for me to continue the OA research and also continue Cites & Insights.

Oh, and by the way, this offer is retroactive to mid-April 2015, which only affects one person long active in OA and scholarly publishing–they’ll get both books.

Semi-relevant sidenote: Remember when blog posts used to get lots of non-spam comments? Some still do; mine basically don’t, and I don’t even turn on comments by default. A legitimate comment and question on a very recent post was actually the first non-spam comment I’ve had in just over a year!

Note added 4 p.m. May 19, 2015

If you really want the interim report in print book form, there are two ways to do that:

1. If you have access to an Expresso Book Machine or something similar, the PDF is a formatted 6×9″ book that should work perfectly, as long as some provision is made for a cover. (I’ve never used an EBM, but this will be a PDF-A file that would be acceptable to Lulu, which means it should be fine for an EBM.) Current size is about 215 pages; that may shrink very slightly.

2. I could make provisions for limited-time purchase through Lulu, at cost of production, if you really need a print copy and have no other way to get one. (I’d have to gin up a cover…)

Most of you probably don’t want the print book anyway, but just in case…

See new message at the top: a $7 paperback is available to donors,

OA articles involving APCs: More complete 2014 table

Sunday, May 17th, 2015

On May 6, 2015, I posted “Percentage of OA articles involving APCs” showing on a subject-by-subject basis the percentage of OA articles in a given subject area that involved APCs (that is, appeared in journals charging APCs, although some articles have waivers).

That post included a full set of 28 topics or non-topics for 2013, sorted from the topic most likely to involve APCs to the one least likely, and a partial list for 2014–because I hadn’t yet finished the project of adding full-2014 numbers to my set of 6,490 journals (in DOAJ  as of May 7, 2014, capable of being analyzed by an English-reading person, actually OA and not ruled out for other reasons).

I’ve finished that pass now, and can provide a full table for 2014. (Later this week, I think, there will be an announcement on availability of a combined report on that work–one that goes beyond the weekly postings.)

That table appears below. I should also note, in passing, that the total number of articles in the 6,490 journals went from around 366 thousand in 2013 to nearly 408 thousand in 2014–a growth rate of more than 10%, although some fields show less OA activity in 2014. Note that these numbers still ignore some 2,000 journals that didn’t appear to have any English interface, so they’re probably still 10%-18% too low.

Anyway, here’s the table:

Subject %APC
Mega 100%
Biology 80%
Computer science 75%
Physics 72%
Engineering 70%
Chemistry 70%
Ecology 68%
Medicine 65%
Other Sciences 64%
Mathematics 61%
Earth Sciences 54%
Agriculture 54%
Zoology 52%
Religion 51%
Psychology 51%
Economics 46%
Technology 45%
Sociology 44%
Miscellany 40%
Media & Communications 37%
Language & Literature 28%
Political Science 25%
Anthropology 22%
Education 19%
Arts & Architecture 17%
Law 12%
Philosophy 11%
Library Science 4%
History 2%

Want to encourage this research?

Read this post and respond.

The Open Access Landscape: 12. Engineering

Friday, May 15th, 2015

Engineering
journals were distinguished from Technology journals based on narrower subjects and journal titles. This group includes 245 journals, which published 19,336 articles in 2013—and 21,495 in 2014.

Grades

Grade Journals %J Articles %A A/J
A

146

60%

8,192

42%

56

Free

108

74%

4,219

52%

39

Pay

38

26%

3,973

48%

105

A$ pay

11

4%

1,792

9%

163

B

43

18%

7,521

39%

175

Free

6

14%

427

6%

71

Pay

37

86%

7,094

94%

192

C

19

8%

1,356

7%

71

Free

3

16%

67

5%

22

Pay

6

32%

186

14%

31

Unk

10

53%

1,103

81%

110

D

26

11%

475

2%

18

Free

23

88%

325

68%

14

Pay

2

8%

150

32%

75

Unk

1

4%

0%

0

Table 12.1. Journals and articles by grade

Table 12.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; free, pay and unknown numbers; and average articles per journal. The boldface percentages (grades) are percentages of all engineering journals and articles; others (free, pay, unk) are percentages of the grade above. All A$ journals charge APCs, so the Pay line is omitted.

Possibly noteworthy: a fairly high percentage of journals are slightly questionable—grade B—including a number of high-volume journals that charge APCs.

The small number of D journals includes these subgroups: C: 13 journals with 171 articles; D: two journals, 21 articles; E: three journals, 62 articles; H: five journals, 209 articles; S: three journals, 12 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

2014 2013 2012 2011
Journals

218

230

209

178

%Free

58%

59%

59%

63%

Articles

20,186

18,233

13,388

8,893

%Free

25%

28%

32%

47%

Table 12.2. Journals and articles by date

Table 12.2 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 eleven “unknown” journals (with 1,103 articles in 2013) are omitted. The journal numbers still don’t add up to 245 because there are some journals that didn’t publish articles in any given year—for example, four journals didn’t publish articles in 2013.

These are fairly striking numbers. While the percentage of free journals isn’t a lot lower than average for all of OA, it’s declined somewhat since 2011. What’s really changed is the number of articles in what’s clearly a growing field of OA publishing: just under half were in no-fee journals in 2011, while only one-quarter are in such journals in 2014. That’s during a period in which the number of articles more than doubled, while the number of journals publishing in any given year only increased by one-quarter.

Clearly, OA activity is increasing in engineering fields, even without considering journals founded in 2014. In all, 122 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 19 published the same number of articles; 104 published fewer. Looking at significant change, 96 (39%) published at least 10% more articles; 62 (39%) published at least 10% more articles; 62 (25%) stayed about the same; and 87 (36%) published at least 10% fewer articles, including 16 that have not yet published any articles in 2014. (The counts in this paragraph do include “unknown” journals.)

Journals No-Fee % Articles No-Fee %
Prolific

2

0%

2,231

0%

Large

23

13%

9,061

5%

Medium

55

47%

4,110

47%

Small

118

68%

3,423

67%

Sparse

47

66%

511

61%

Table 12.3. Journals by peak article volume

Table 12.3 shows the number of journals in each size category; 2013 articles for journals in that group; and what percentage is no-fee or in no-fee journals. Note that the peak is based on 2011 through the first half of 2014; there would be six journals in the Prolific category if all of 2014 was included.

Larger journals dominate engineering, and as the journal size goes up, the percentage of free journals goes down, radically for the two largest categories (which account for considerably more than half of all 2013 articles).

Fees (APCs)

APC Jour. %Fee %All Art. %Fee %All
High

5

5%

2%

897

7%

5%

Medium

21

22%

9%

1,433

11%

8%

Low

36

38%

15%

3,177

24%

17%

Nominal

32

34%

14%

7,688

58%

42%

None

140

60%

5,038

28%

Table 12.4. Journals and articles by fee range

Table 12.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range and the number of 2013 articles in those journals. To the extent that the first %Fee figures diverge from 25%, they represent deviations from the norm for all of OA—in this case, a much lower percentage of high-priced (more than $1,450) journals and somewhat higher percentages of low- and nominal-fee journals. It’s interesting that the nominal-fee journals ($8 to $200) publish most of the articles that appear in APC-charging journals.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Year Total Free%
Pre-1960

1

100%

1970-79

1

100%

1980-89

3

100%

1992-93

2

50%

1994-95

1

100%

1996-97

2

50%

1998-99

6

83%

2000-01

15

67%

2002-03

15

93%

2004-05

9

67%

2006-07

25

68%

2008-09

34

44%

2010-11

76

54%

2012-13

55

44%

Table 12.5. Starting dates for engineering OA journals

Table 12.5 shows engineering OA journals by starting date, including the percentage for each date range that currently don’t charge APCs. The overall sense of a gold rush from 2006 through 2011 is certainly apparent here—except that it continues into 2012-2013, with most new journals (except 2006-2007) APC-charging and many more journals than in previous periods. (No journals began in 1960-69 or 1990-1.)

Figure 12.1. Engineering journals by starting date

Year Journals Articles Art/Jrnl
Pre-1960

1

21

21

1970-79

1

43

43

1980-89

3

202

67

1992/93

2

264

132

1994-95

1

11

11

1996-97

2

358

179

1998-99

5

120

24

2000-01

15

1,023

68

2002-03

14

637

46

2004-05

9

848

94

2006-07

24

916

38

2008-09

34

3,501

103

2010-11

74

5,153

70

2012-13

55

6,239

113

Table 12.6. Articles per journal by starting date

Figure 12.1 shows essentially the same information as Table 12.5 but in graphic form—and I think it makes the gold rush clearer. Table 12.6 shows the number of journals beginning in each time period that actually published one or more articles in 2013, the number of articles, and average articles per journal. Other than two earlier cases involving just two journals in each period, the most interesting periods may be 2004-05, 2008-09 and 2011-2012, in each case with relatively high average articles per journal.

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.

The Open Access Landscape: 11. Education

Friday, May 8th, 2015

Education is the second-largest set of journals in the humanities and social sciences, and could have been larger—some STEM journals could have gone here. Although the group includes 319 journals (fifth largest overall), the journals only published 7,332 articles in 2013 (and slightly fewer, 7,038, in 2014), fewer than 14 other groups.

Grades

Grade Journals %J Articles %A A/J
A

233

73%

5,823

79%

25

Free

218

94%

5,160

89%

24

Pay

15

6%

663

11%

44

A$ pay

1

0%

29

0%

29

B

28

9%

1,044

14%

37

Free

14

50%

381

36%

27

Pay

14

50%

663

64%

47

C

3

1%

88

1%

29

Pay

1

33%

36

41%

36

Unk

2

67%

52

59%

26

D

54

17%

348

5%

6

Free

50

93%

334

96%

7

Pay

4

7%

14

4%

4

Table 11.1. Journals and articles by grade

Table 11.1 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 the journals; others (free, pay, unk.) are percentages of the grade above. Since A$ implies a fee, the redundant Pay line is omitted.

While it’s true, here as for most fields, that journals with APCs publish more articles (in general) than those without, the differences aren’t enormous: in general, these journals aren’t huge.

There are a fair number of D journals (but relatively few articles), including these subgroups: C: eleven journals but only 24 articles; E: 12 journals with 86 articles; H: eight journals with 141 articles; S: 23 journals, 97 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

2014 2013 2012 2011
Journals

296

304

296

268

%Free

89%

89%

90%

92%

Articles

6,939

7,280

7,195

6,023

%Free

81%

81%

81%

89%

Table 11.2. Journals and articles by date

Table 11.2 shows the number of free and APC-charging journals that actually published articles each year (including all of 2014), how many articles they published, and what percentage were free. The two “unknown” journals (with 52 articles in 2013) are omitted. Additionally, there are always some journals that don’t publish articles in a given year, especially with as many small journals as in education—e.g., 15 journals didn’t publish any articles in 2013.

Open access education journals are predominantly free—92% in 2011, declining only slightly by 2014. More than four out of five articles appear in no-fee journals, and after a sharp drop in 2012 that percentage has stayed constant since.

While there are certainly some annuals and other journals that have yet to post 2014 articles, it does appear that there’s been some decline in publishing activity. On the other hand, 214 of the 341-article drop is accounted for by three journals (two with APCs, one free) that either haven’t published any articles in 2014 or, in one case, is now flagged as hosting malware and so wasn’t reached or counted.

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis, 133 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 29 published the same number; 157 published fewer articles. In terms of significant change, 115 (36%) published at least 10% more articles; 65 (20%) were relatively unchanged; 139 (44%) published significantly fewer articles, including 23 that have yet to post any 2014 articles. It’s curious but probably not meaningful that, if you omit the 23 journals with no 2014 articles, the number of journals with significantly more articles is almost precisely the same as the number with significantly fewer.

Journals No-Fee % Articles No-Fee %
Prolific 0 0
Large 2 50% 315 65%
Medium 26 62% 1,880 61%
Small 134 89% 3,641 86%
Sparse 157 93% 1,496 92%

Table 11.3. Journals by peak article volume

Table 11.3 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. Not only are there no prolific OA education journals, there are almost no large ones and very few medium-sized (60 to 199 articles); in fact, nearly half of the journals are sparse, publishing fewer than 20 articles per year. As usual, the percentage of free journals goes down as the article volume goes up.

Fees (APCs)

APC Jour. %Fee %All Art. %Fee %All
High

0

0

Medium

6

17%

2%

238

17%

3%

Low

12

34%

4%

405

29%

6%

Nominal

17

49%

5%

762

54%

10%

None

282

89%

5,875

81%

Table 11.4. Journals and articles by fee range

Table 11.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range and the number of 2013 articles for those journals.

Percentages in the first %Fee column that are higher or lower than 25% show deviations from overall OA patterns—and in this case the pattern’s very clear. There are no high-priced OA education journals, very few medium-priced (only two of them over $1,000), and a larger handful of low-priced and nominal-fee journals. It’s curious that nominal-fee journals publish more articles (overall and on average) than those with low and medium fees.

Given the figures in the table, you might expect a negative statistical correlation between APC and article count (that is, the numbers get higher as the fee gets lower), but while the correlation is negative (-0.14), it’s not statistically significant.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Year Total Free%
1960-69

1

100%

1970-79

0

1980-89

6

83%

1990-91

2

100%

1992-93

4

100%

1994-95

4

100%

1996-97

13

92%

1998-99

12

100%

2000-01

23

96%

2002-03

19

95%

2004-05

44

98%

2006-07

32

100%

2008-09

43

84%

2010-11

77

83%

2012-13

38

68%

Table 11.5. Starting dates for education OA journals

Table 11.5 shows education OA journals by starting date, including the percentage of journals started in a given date range that don’t currently charge APCs. (It omits one free journal that started in 2014 and was in DOAJ early enough to be in the study universe.)

For DOAJ journals as a whole, there’s a sense of a gold rush for APC-charging journals starting in 2006. There really aren’t enough APC-charging education journals to constitute a gold rush, and the field in general only started to grow rapidly in 2004—but it is noteworthy that only five APC-charging journals started before 2008, and 24 of the 35 APC-charging journals started in 2010-2013.

Figure 11.1 shows essentially the same information as Table 11.5, but as a graph with lines for free and APC-charging journals. I’ve included markers for pay journals so that the data points (one journal each) in 1980-89 and 1996-97 show up.

Figure 11.1. Education journals by starting date

Year Journals Articles Art/Jrnl
1960-69

1

61

61

1970-79

0

1980-89

6

216

36

1990/91

2

50

25

1992/93

4

132

33

1994-95

4

60

15

1996-97

13

475

37

1998-99

12

328

27

2000-01

22

577

26

2002-03

18

469

26

2004-05

41

705

17

2006-07

32

697

22

2008-09

41

984

24

2010-11

73

1,775

24

2012-13

37

803

22

Table 11.6. Articles per journal by starting date

Table 11.6 shows the number of journals started in each date range that actually published articles in 2013, the number of articles, and average articles per journal. It’s mildly interesting that older journals tend to have more articles than younger journals.

The overall picture for education OA journals is clear enough: many specialized journals, many of them with very few articles, with only a few charging APCs.

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

Percentage of OA articles involving APCs

Wednesday, May 6th, 2015

Heather Morrison recently posted “Which subjects are most likely to charge article processing charges?” at Sustaining the Knowledge Commons.  It’s an interesting post, and since my own (non-sampled, all journals in DOAJ  as of May 2014 that I was able to evaluate as a English-speaker, 6,490 of them that actually have articles available) in-depth study won’t be out (as an issue of Library Technology Reports; the anonymized data is available here) until this summer, I thought I’d add my own figures.

Except that, the more I work with the data, the more I feel that the most relevant figures really aren’t what percentage of OA journals charge APCs (something over a third, but definitely a minority overall) but what percentage of OA articles appear in journals that charge APCs (a majority overall, but not in the humanities and social sciences).

So here are two quick tables, the first covering the set of 29 topic groups (two of which aren’t really topics) and 2013 articles, the second covering 23 of the 29 and 2014 articles (I haven’t quite finished revisiting 2014 article counts). Both tables are in descending order by percentage of articles that appeared in journals that clearly charge APCs. (There are some journals where it’s just not clear, but those journals only represent 2%-3% of articles.) (The two non-topics are “mega”–four multidisciplinary journals publishing more than 1,000 articles per year–and “miscellany,” journals that didn’t fit into one of the other slots.)

Table 1: Percentage of 2013 articles appearing in APC-charging journals, all topics

Topic 2013
Mega 100%
Biology 74%
Computer science 72%
Ecology 70%
Chemistry 68%
Engineering 68%
Physics 68%
Mathematics 60%
Other Sciences 60%
Medicine 58%
Earth Sciences 54%
Religion 53%
Agriculture 53%
Zoology 47%
Miscellany 47%
Economics 47%
Technology 46%
Psychology 44%
Sociology 35%
Language & Literature 26%
Media & Communications 24%
Education 19%
Anthropology 16%
Political Science 15%
Arts & Architecture 15%
Philosophy 10%
Law 7%
Library Science 4%
History 2%

And here’s the partial table, for all of 2014 (note: this is newer data than in the published report):

Topic 2014
Mega 100%
Biology 80%
Computer science 75%
Physics 72%
Engineering 70%
Chemistry 70%
Ecology 68%
Medicine 65%
Other Sciences 64%
Mathematics 61%
Earth Sciences 54%
Agriculture 54%
Economics 46%
Miscellany 40%
Media & Communications 37%
Language & Literature 28%
Anthropology 22%
Education 19%
Arts & Architecture 17%
Law 12%
Philosophy 11%
Library Science 4%
History 2%

In case it’s not obvious (and it probably isn’t), the missing seven are the last alphabetically, from Psychology through Zoology.

These figures can’t be directly compared to Morrison’s because of different assumptions and different subject groupings (and because I’m looking at articles rather than journals), but they may provide an additional point.

Additional Note, added 5/7/15

Heather Morrison attempted to post a comment on this, including multiple links–which caused it to be treated as spam. Rather than post the comment here, given that I’ve added a significant comment to her comment, I’ll link you back to the comment at her post. (If that sounds complicated, just go look.)

Completion Note, added 5/17/15

The full table for 2014 is now available here, along with the overall total showing more than 10% growth in OA articles from 2013 to 2014–to just under 408,000 in 2014 (which may still be 10%-18% low).

The Phantom AcroRd Problem

Monday, May 4th, 2015

I’m posting this in the hopes that someone knows an easy fix.

I use Adobe Reader XI, absolutely the most current edition, as a default PDF reader (launched in browsers, by Word when I create a PDF, etc.). It’s just fine. EXCEPT

It has a nasty habit of staying running–always as two AcroRd32 processes–after I’ve shut it down. Indefinitely. And chewing up 40-50% of CPU in a lot of cases. Doing nothing, as far as I can tell–at least nothing I want it to do.

Admittedly, my notebook is old (around seven years old) and weak by today’s standard (an early Core 2 Duo CPU, three gig of RAM). Yes, I’ll replace it one of these months…but, in fact, it’s fast enough for pretty much anything I’m doing. Or at least it is when AcroRd32 (two, or four, or six, or eight processes, no applications) isn’t chewing up all the power.

(There’s another slight issue: when I move five PDFs from one directory to another, Adobe Reader seems to think it needs to start up five times, and once I shut it down five times, there are ten AcroRd32 processes…)

Latest example: I started up this morning, coming out of hibernation; noticed that even after the 10 minutes or so it takes for malware to do its scan, the fan was running at a high speed, even though I was just checking email. This surprised me and worried me; I’d really rather not have the notebook burn out before I get around to replacing it.

Finally, just for fun, booted up Task Manager, and voila: two AcroRd processes, using up nearly 50% of CPU, even though the last time I looked at a PDF was around 4 p.m. yesterday. Closed the processes, and within a minute the fan was down to its quietest level (or off altogether–I know I can’t hear it now).

Any suggestions?