Walt at Random

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

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)

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.

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)

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

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

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

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