Walt at Random

Media & Communications includes film, performance, communication theory and some related fields. It’s a relatively small group, with 79 journals, which published a total of 1,667 articles in 2013 and 2,003 in 2014.

Grades

Table 18.1. Media & communications journals and articles by grade

Table 18.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; free, pay and unknown numbers; and average articles per journal. Several lines are missing, as there are no OA media & communications journals charging more than $1,000 (or more than $600, for that matter), no B-grade journals with APCs, and the only C journal gets that grade because it probably has an APC but doesn’t state it.

Boldface percentages are percentages of the full set; others are percentages of the grade above, only relevant for A and D. As usual, journals with APCs tend to publish more articles than those without—about four times as many, for A journals.

D journals include these subgroups: C (probably ceased), three journals with 25 articles; D (dying), two journals with 18 articles; E (erratic), one journal with two articles; N (new), one journal with two articles; S (small), eight journals with 13 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

Table 18.2. Media and communications journals and articles by date

Table 18.2 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 the free percentage. The unknown-class journal (with 44 articles in 2011, 2012 and 2013, but 60 in 2014) is omitted. The figures don’t add up to 79 because of new journals and journals that, in any given year, didn’t publish any articles—e.g., six of them in 2014.

The percentage of free journals is high, as is typical for the humanities and social sciences, but is declining slightly. The percentage of articles appearing in free journals was very high but has declined substantially, to a level that’s on the low side for HSS.

OA activity is clearly increasing for media and communications, 15% to 22% per year at this point, and much of that growth appears to be in fee-charging journals.

Journal-by-journal, 36 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; nine published the same number; 34 published fewer articles in 2014. For significant changes, 30 journals (38%) published at least 10% more articles in 2014; 20 (25%) published roughly the same number; 29 (37%) published at least 10% fewer articles in 2014, including six that have yet to publish any at all. (One of those seems to have disappeared.)

Table 18.3. Media and communications journals by peak article volume

Table 18.3 shows the number of journals in each size category (based on the highest year 2011-2013), 2013 articles for journals in that group, and the free percentages. There are no prolific journals in this area. The table is revealing: while most articles in 2013 appeared in small and sparse journals and the vast majority of those journals don’t charge APCs, the single large journal accounts for a substantial percentage of all articles—and that journal more than doubled its article count in 2014. The overall pattern is typical (percentage of free journals and articles goes down as article frequency goes up), but there really aren’t many journals that aren’t small or sparse.

Fees (APCs)

Table 18.4. Media and communications journals and articles by fee range

Table 18.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range that has any journals (the highest APC for any media and communications journal is $590, still in the Low quartile) and the number of 2013 articles for those journals. We’re dealing with so few APC-charging journals that the percentages are silly, but I suppose it’s worth noting that the two nominal-APC journals publish almost nothing, while the four with low APCs publish a fair number of articles. For what it’s worth (not much), there’s a mild statistical correlation (0.30) between APC level and peak article volume.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Table 18.5. Starting dates for media and communications OA journals

Table 18.5 shows media and communications OA journals by starting date, including the percentage of journals started in a given period that currently don’t charge APCs. The apparent gold rush for APC-charging journals from 2006 through 2011 (for DOAJ as a whole) really isn’t evident here—but in general, OA publishing in this area bloomed starting in during that period, with more than half of all the journals starting during those six years. For that matter, there aren’t any really old journals—the earliest began in 1985 (two of them), and there were no others until 1994.

Figure 18.1 shows much the same data as Table 18.5 in graphic form; there are markers for both free and pay journals (square for free, diamond for pay) so that isolated instances (e.g., all pay journals) are visible.

Figure 18.1. Media and communications journals by starting date

Table 18.5. Articles per media and communications journal by starting date

Table 18.6 shows journals that actually published articles in 2013, when they started, and average 2013 articles per journal. The most prolific journals began in 2006; the single journal started in 1998-89 is also fairly prolific.

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 and probably some additional analysis added in each chapter), let me know, either in a comment or by email to waltcrawford at gmail dot com.

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