Walt at Random

Physics includes optics—a critical point given at least one of the most prolific journals. This group includes 125 journals, which published 10,509 articles in 2013 and 11,165 articles in 2014.

Grades

Table 23.1. Physics OA journals and articles by grade

Table 23.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; free, pay and unknown subsets within each grade (there are no D journals with unknown APCs, and A$ journals are necessarily pay); and the average 2013 articles per journal. Boldface percentages are percentages of the whole group; others are of the grade above.

The 16 A$ journals, those charging at least $1,000 APC, are startling in their publication levels, with 13% of the journals publishing 46% of the articles. Note that APC-charging B journals (those raising some mild questions) also publish many more articles than free counterparts.

The small number of D journals (with almost no articles) includes these subgroups: C (probably ceased), four journals with 10 articles; D (dying), one journal with eight articles; E (erratic), one journal with 29 articles; H (hiatus?), three journals with 77 articles; S (small), seven journals with 29 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

Table 23.2. Physics OA journals and articles by date

Table 23.2 shows the number of free and APC-charging journals (omitting journals with unknown APCs) that actually published articles each year (including all of 2014), the number of articles, and what percentage was free. Journal counts don’t add up to 123 (that is, 125 minus the two unknowns) because some journals didn’t publish articles in any given year (or were new within the period)—although that count is tiny for 2013.

These numbers are atypical, in that the percentage of free journals—actually higher than most STEM areas—rose slightly from 2011 to 2013, then held steady for 2014, and the percentage of articles in those journals (somewhat lower than most STEM areas) also rose from 2011 to 2012, then declined, but only back to 2011 levels. Article volume rose each year, with a slightly higher percentage rise from 2013 to 2014.

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis, 58 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; six published the same number (for three of those, that number was zero); 62 published fewer articles in 2014. In terms of significant change, 50 (40%) published at least 10% more articles in 2014; 21 (17%) published roughly the same number; and 54 (43%) published at least 10% fewer articles in 2014, including nine that have not yet published any articles in 2014 (but did publish some in 2013).

Table 23.3. Physics journals by peak article volume

Table 23.3 shows the number of journals in each size category, 2013 article counts, and the percentage in no-free journals. There’s one prolific physics (optics) journal, and it charges a fairly hefty APC. The only real oddity in this chart is that sparse journals have lower no-fee percentages than you’d expect.

Fees (APCs)

Table 23.4. Physics journals and articles by fee range

Table 23.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range and the number of 2013 articles for those journals. Since the fee ranges are based on overall quartiles, the difference between the first %Fee column and 25% represents changes from the usual—namely, fewer high-fee and nominal-fee journals and more in the middle.

There’s a mild (0.44) correlation between the actual APC and number of 2013 articles. Correlation between APC and peak volume is lower (0.40).

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Table 23.5. Starting dates for physics OA journals

Table 23.5 shows physics OA journals by starting date, including the percentage of journals started in each time period that currently doesn’t charge APCs. Although journals that do charge APCs go back to the early days (noting that there were no physics OA journals in 1990-91 or 1994-95), there’s definitely a gold rush: most journals began after 2005, and until 2012, most of those new journals were APC-charging. Figure 23.1 shows much the same information (omitting the unknown journals) in graphic form; it’s a striking graph.

Figure 23.1. Physics journals by starting date

Table 23.6. Physics articles per journal by starting date

Table 23.6 shows journals that published articles in 2013, when they started, and average 2013 articles per journal. The two highest-volume journals began in 1996-97, and it’s generally interesting that journals at the end of the century have many more articles per journal than those founded more recently.

Overall, physics journals tend to charge (high) fees, publish reasonably large numbers of articles and, despite arΧiv, show a relatively low level of no-charge publishing.

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. If you’d like to see this research continued, please contribute to Cites & Insights.

This note replaces my earlier discussions of what might/might  not happen in terms of completing the scan (of those DOAJ listings not included in the earlier study) and its outcome. A much longer version will (probably) appear in the August/September 2015 Cites & Insights (if there is one), but this one has the gist.

The Obvious

• Nobody forced me to take on the extra 4,200 journals or promised any funding. It’s my own idea, and it’s interesting enough that I’ve watched almost no old movies and written nothing for C&I while doing it.
• Obviously, I’ll finish the scan. (About 918 left to go–but I’ll revisit 300-400 “not able to analyze fully” cases, so call it 1,300.)
• Obviously, I won’t entirely hide the results unless people pay for it.

The Plan

• I will prepare a detailed analysis of the results–a very-nearly-entirely-complete view of The Open Access Landscape 2011-2014. It will be a 6×9″ paperback involvingw some new ways of looking at the data that may provide better insights, along with the methods I’ve The so far.
• A shorter and simpler version of the analysis–lacking any graphs–will probably make up most or all of the October 2015 (or October/November 2015, or if I’m really feeling burned out the Fall 2015) issue of Cites & Insights, probably out in mid to late September, possibly not until October (the same time the book appears, since the issue will be derived from the book).
• The book will be available in PDF ebook and paperback print forms.

The Deadline and Terms

• From now through September 1, 2015, a $50 (or more) donation to Cites and Insights (the Paypal link is on the home page) will yield three perquisites:

1. A link to the PDF ebook for the Interim Open Access Landscape Subject Approach, with working hotlinks for chapters, tables and graphs.
2. A link to a special Lulu page where you can buy the paperback version of the same  book (186 p., 6×9″) for $7 plus shipping.
3. Most importantly, once the book is ready, a link to an exclusive PDF ebook version with working hotlinks for chapters, tables and graphs.

• After September 1, 2015, this offer is void.
• When the full book is available, the PDF ebook version (without working hotlinks) will be at least $55; the paperback (probably around 250 pages) will be at least $60.

The Unknown

What about the dataset itself, which will certainly include full details for more than 9,000 journals in DOAJ as of early June 2015, and is likely to include 9,500 or more journals?

If donations and sales warrant, or if somebody can make a convincing case, an anonymized version will be posted to Figshare.

Otherwise, not.

(In practice, while the Figshare version of the partial dataset has been viewed more than 300 times, I’ve seen no indication that anybody has credited it in any further work–or that it’s actually been used by anybody, with the possible exception of DOAJ itself, which asked for and received a special version.)

As for a five-year overview (2011-2015):

• I’d love to do it, if there’s strong indication that it will be worthwhile.
• It would be reasonably “easy,” as I’d “just” have to recheck journals for APC changes, add journals added in 2015, and revisit journals to pick up 2015 article counts. Best guess is that I could finish it by the end of March 2016, assuming that I picked up a DOAJ list in early January 2016.
• As always, I’m open to proposals: waltcrawford@gmail.com

Philosophy includes journals on specific philosophers and philosophies. Another smallish group, it’s also somewhat stagnant: the 96 journals published 1,409 articles in 2013 and 1,386 in 2014. There are no “unknown” and no C-grade journals, so tables and discussions will be briefer and clearer as appropriate.

Grades

Table 22.1. Philosophy journals and articles by grade

Table 22.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; free and pay numbers and percentages; and average 2013 articles per journal. Boldface percentages are of the whole set; others are of the grade above. Somewhat atypically, APC-charging journals do not in general publish more articles than free ones—but there are so few of them that this isn’t very meaningful.

On the other hand, there are a lot of D journals, partly because many of these journals are very narrow and have very few papers. The D journals include these subgroups: C (apparently ceased), nine journals with no articles in 2013; E (erratic), 12 journals with 143 articles; H (hiatus?), one journal with six articles; S (small), 11 journals with 44 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

Table 22.2. Philosophy journals and articles by date

Table 22.2 shows the number of free and APC-charging journals that actually published articles each year (including all of 2014); the number of articles each year; and the percentage that were free or in non-APC journals. Oddly enough, article volume peaked in 2012, although the declines since then have been quite small—and, although nearly all the journals have been free all along, the few pay journals have gone from publishing 6% of the articles to 11%.

Since there are no “unknowns” in this group, the journal counts show that at least 11 journals didn’t publish any articles in any given year—not the same 11, to be sure.

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis, 38 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013, 12 published the same number (but in eight of those cases, that number was zero), and 46 published fewer articles in 2014. In terms of significant changes, 36 (38%) published at least 10% more articles; 21 (22%) (including the same eight with no articles in 2013 or 2014) published about the same number; and 39 (41%) published at least 10% fewer articles in 2014, including five journals that published articles in 2013 but have yet to publish any in 2014.

Table 22.3. Philosophy journals by peak article volume

Table 22.3 shows the number of journals in each size category that has any OA philosophy journals, the number of 2013 articles in those journals, and the no-fee percentages. There are no prolific or large philosophy OA journals; even the three medium-sized journals are at the small end of that range, peaking at 61-79 articles. (In 2014, only one journal—the single medium-sized APC-charging journal—still hit the over-60 mark, with 65 articles.)

Fees (APCs)

Table 22.4. Philosophy journals and articles by fee range

No philosophy journal charges high APCs, but—perhaps surprisingly—two do charge medium fees (both well over $1,000). The contrasts between the two Fee% columns really boil down to the fact that the only fairly high-volume journal has a low (actually $600) APC, and more articles than the four other APC-charging journals combined. I didn’t even test correlation, given only five fee journals.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Table 22.6. Starting dates for philosophy OA journal

Table 22.5 shows philosophy OA journals by starting date, including the percentage of journals started in given date ranges that don’t currently charge APCs. The “gold rush” note, which appears to be the case for DOAJ listings in general (many more APC-charging journals founded 2006-2011) is, while technically true for this group (four of the five APC-charging journals were founded during the “gold rush”), effectively meaningless, especially since most of the journals began in 2004-2011. (Note that 1992-1995 are missing.)

Figure 22.5 shows essentially the same information as Table 22.5, and it’s a misleading graph prior to 1996. Most philosophy OA journals are fairly recent, and nearly all are free—and, as you’ll see in Table 2.6, most don’t publish many articles (with those started 2002-2003 being slightly more active than most others).

Figure 22.1. Philosophy journals by starting date

Table 22.6. Articles per philosophy 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 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.

Other Sciences covers journals that cover many different sciences, including interdisciplinary journals that appear science-focused and science-oriented attempts at megajournals that haven’t yet achieved high volumes. The group includes 118 journals, which published 11,097 articles in 2013 and 12,189 articles in 2014.

Grades

Table 21.1. Other sciences journals and articles by grade

Table 21.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; free, pay and unknown cases; and average articles per journal. As usual, since A$ implies payment, the redundant line is omitted—and in this group, there are no free C-grade journals. Boldface percentages are of the whole; others are of the grade above. Journals with APCs tend to publish more articles than free journals, and the high-priced journals tend to publish the most: that’s fairly typical.

The 14 D journals include these subgroups: C (probably ceased), five journals with no 2013 articles; D (dying), one journal, seven articles; E (erratic), two journals with nine articles; H (hiatus?), three journals with 138 articles; S (small), three journals, six articles. The H group includes one journal with 101 articles—and it did come back from hiatus, with 58 articles in the last half of 2014 (after none in the first half).

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

Table 21.2. Other sciences journals and articles by date

Table 21.2 shows the number of free and APC-charging journals that actually published articles each year, the number of articles (including all of 2014), and what percentage were free or in free journals. The 11 “unknown” journals (that is, journals that either explicitly have fees but don’t state them, or almost certainly have them but don’t state them), which published 1,821 articles in 2014, are omitted.

These are some of the lowest free percentages of any field, especially for articles, and note that the percentages of free journals and articles have declined since 2011.

It does seem clear that OA is continuing to grow in these fields, although the percentage growth declined slightly in 2014.

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis (and this time including “unknowns”), 54 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; nine published the same number; 55 published fewer articles in 2014. For significant changes, 51 (43%) published at least 10% more articles; 19 (16%) stayed about the same; 48 (41%) published at least 10% fewer articles.

Table 21.3. Other sciences journals by peak article volume

Table 21.3 shows the number of journals in each size category (based on peak count from 2011-2013), articles published by those journals in 2013; and what percentage is no-fee. Note that Table 21.3 does include unknown-APC journals. The basic message: most of the articles are in large and prolific journals, and only one of the 13 journals in those size ranges doesn’t charge fees—whereas, for small and sparse journals, APC-charging journals underperform free ones. The patterns are familiar.

Fees (APCs)

Table 21.4. Other sciences journals and articles by fee range

Table 21.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range and the number of 2013 articles for those journals. Unknowns are omitted.

Since fee ranges are based on quartiles of all APC-charging journals, deviations from 25% in the first %Fee column represent differences between other sciences and DOAJ fee-charging journals in general—to wit, far fewer high- and medium-priced journals and far more nominal APCs. On the other hand, the two top tiers do represent roughly one-quarter of the fee-based articles in each case.

Do the APCs correlate with number of 2013 articles or peak articles? Yes, to some extent: 0.50 for 2013 articles (a minimally strong correlation) and a slightly lower 0.45 for peak articles.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Table 21.5. Starting dates for OA journals in other sciences

Table 21.5 shows other sciences 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 from 2006-2011, with rapidly increasing growth in APCs—but for these journals, most are so recent that there’s nothing special about the APC-charging ones.

Figure 21.1 shows essentially the same information as Table 21.5, but in graphic form and omitting unknown journals. I use markers—square for free, diamond for APC-charging—so that the few journals prior to 2000-01 will be visible.

Figure 21.1. Other sciences journals by starting date

Table 21.6 Articles per journal by starting date for other sciences journals

Table 21.6 shows all journals that actually published articles in 2013, when they started, and average 2013 articles per journal. There are obvious oddities—the two 1996-97 journals, four 2000-01 journals and 28 2012-13 journals being standouts—and I’m not sure they mean much of anything.

Overall, this is an odd assortment of journals with the great majority of articles appearing in the bare majority of APC-charging journals.

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.

If someone was tracking my updates on the Fuller DOAJ project, they might be inclined to believe that I’ll be done with the scan in two or three more weeks–after all, I seem to be making impressive progress.

I might even have believed the same thing. But life happens: medical issues, dealing with recalcitrant equipment (non-computer in this case), other priorities…

The week ending June 14, I scanned 340 sites.

The week ending June 21, I scanned 460 sites–and felt like that was a reasonable pace.

The week ending June 28, I scanned 500 sites.

The week ending July 5, during which I hit a long series of very easy journals to check (ISRN…), I scanned 600 sites.

I knew I couldn’t keep that up–but with 2,500 or so left to go at that point, if I could average 500 per week, I’d be done in five weeks (that is, four weeks from now.)

The week ending July 12–last week–I scanned 480 sites. OK; I could still be done in another four or five weeks.

This week? I’ll be happy enough to reach 300 sites and delighted if I reach 400.

Maybe I’ll get back to 400-500 next week. Maybe not.

So: I’m reasonably comfortable in believing that I will have finished the actual scan and begun the analysis and writeup (and trying to find ways to make all this work worthwhile, one way or another) by the time I turn 70: that still gives me eight weeks.

I’m much less inclined to believe that I’ll have finished the writeup by the time I turn 70. Especially if I plan to do an August/September issue of C&I.

So, well, I can’t project how long this will take. Such is life.

This chapter covers two groups: megajournals, journals that publish articles in a wide variety of fields and had at least 1,000 articles in 2011, 2012 or 2013, and miscellany, journals so broadly defined as to include most anything (including, for example, student research journals and some interdisciplinary journals) and some fields that I couldn’t find a place for. It includes some but not all journals called “general works” in DOAJ. (Some journals in miscellany could be considered megajournals based on 2014 article counts.)

The first brief section covers megajournals in summary fashion; the rest of Chapter 20 covers miscellany in the usual manner.

Megajournals

Not including 2014 articles, there are four megajournals, all with grade A$, one with a high APC and three with medium APCs, all prolific (by definition). The four journals are all growing, at rates from 1% (but that’s on by far the largest base) to 125% between 2013 and 2014. One journal started in 2003; the others started in 2010-11.

In all, these journals published 15,523 articles in 2011; 26,512 in 2012; 36,673 in 2013; and 40,673 in 2014.

Miscellany

This diverse group includes 87 journals, which published 7,375 articles in 2013 and 8,482 articles in 2014. The rest of this chapter coves these 87 journals.

Grades

Table 20.1. Miscellaneous journals and articles by grade

Table 20.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; free, pay and unknown numbers (there were no pay journals in grade C); and average 2013 articles per journal. Boldface percentages are percentages of all miscellaneous journals; others are percentages of the grade above.

The A and A$ group is atypical: free journals average more articles than APC-charging journals—but by far the highest numbers are questionable journals, grade C.

D journals include these subgroups: C (apparently ceased), four journals, no 2013 articles; D (dying), one journal, no articles; E (erratic), four journals, 44 articles; H (possible hiatus), two journals, 34 articles; N (new), two journals, 12 articles; S (small), three journals, 19 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

Table 20.2. Miscellaneous journals and articles by date

Table 20.2 shows the number of free and APC-charging journals that published articles in each year (including all of 2014), the number of articles, and what percentage was free. The six unknown journals (that probably have APCs but don’t state them), with 1,115 articles in 2013, are omitted. Additionally, in any given year some journals don’t publish any issues.

The percentage of free journals is higher than average and reasonably constant during this period, but the percentage of free articles, which starts out strong, declined very rapidly in 2012 and stayed at a bit less than half from then on—also higher than average.

Miscellaneous journals are increasing in OA activity, although if 2014 was included in peak calculation it would move three journals to the megajournal category, resulting in a very slight reduction in 2014 numbers from 2013.

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis, 35 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 12 published the same number; 40 published fewer articles in 2014. For significant changes, 32 (37%) published at least 10% more articles in 2014; 22 (25%) were roughly the same; and 33 (38%) published at least 10% fewer articles.

Table 20.3. Miscellaneous journals by peak article volume

Table 20.3 shows the number of journals in each size category (based on 2011-2013 peaks); 2013 articles for journals in that group; and what percentage is or appears in no-fee journals. Almost by definition, prolific journals here are classed as megajournals (and three of the large journals could migrate to megajournals in 2014). This group is unusual in that the large journals dominate article publication to a much greater degree than in most topics—but the percentage trend lines are fairly typical.

Fees (APCs)

Table 20.4. Miscellaneous journals and articles by fee range

Table 20.4 shows the number of journals in each APC range and the number of 2013 articles in those journals. Since fee ranges are based on quartiles of the full study universe, deviations from 25% in the first %Fee column represent differences between miscellaneous journals and DOAJ as a whole—and the differences are extreme, with almost no expensive journals and a predominance of journals with nominal fees. It’s also unusual that journals with higher-than-nominal fees published relatively few articles in 2013.

Given the curiosities above, if there was a correlation between APC and article volume, it should be a negative one—and while the correlation is negative (-0.25), it’s too small to be statistically significant.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Table 20.6. Starting dates for miscellaneous journals

Table 20.6 shows miscellaneous OA journals by starting date, including the percentage of journals started in a given period that don’t currently charge APCs. For DOAJ as a whole, there’s a sense of a gold rush—with many APC-charging journals starting in 2006-2011, slowing down in 2012-2013.

That’s not at all the case here. Quite apart from the huge gap between two very early journals that are now OA and newer journals, with none founded between 1960 and 1995, there’s an overall jump in journals from 2008 through 2013, but the percentage of APC-charging journals, which does jump in 2004, actually declines in recent years.

Figure 20.1 shows essentially the same information as a graph, omitting the two pre-1960 journals and with markers to make journals more visible.

Figure 20.1. Miscellaneous journals by starting date

Table 20.6. Articles per miscellaneous journal by starting date

Table 20.6 shows journals that actually published articles in 2013, when they started and the average 2013 articles per journal. As is usual for this odd group of journals, the table is full of oddities, such as the very high articles per journal for the two journals from 2002-2003 and the 18 started in 2010-2011.

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.

I just finished analyzing journal 2,200 (of 4,018) in the alphabetic spreadsheet of journals that:

• are in DOAJ as of May 2015
• didn’t match my master spreadsheet of journals (grades A-D using the old grades) included in the interim Fuller Report and the ongoing series of subject posts, either by a URL match or a title match
• aren’t listed as having a 2015 start date

(If you’re wondering, 2,200 of 4,018 gets me into the Ks–past the swamp of International Journals and slightly less explosive swamp of Journals of)

Seems like an appropriate time to say how things are going and offer a slight update to my irritable comments about what will happen with all of this. (The last portion of this post, after the first update.)

Do note that all journals graded lower than D last time around–more than 800 of them–are being retested, so if some of the “X” numbers below seem high, they’re really not.

The Grades

Using the revised grading system instituted for this pass, one in which all A & B journals–and only A&B journals–will be used for most analysis. (C journals will be noted briefly, but since they’re all journals I regard as “worth avoiding,” they won’t get a lot of play.)

A: Apparently Good

1,569 journals (of the first 2,200), including the following subgrades (noting that most A journals don’t have subgrades):

• 86 apparently ceased or canceled or merged (no articles since 2012)
• 9 apparently dying (no articles in 2014 and a “dying” pattern)
• 59 erratic (some years with few or no articles)
• 40 either on hiatus or very slow in posting or something
• 1 “oneshot”–a journal with a handful of articles in 2013, none before or since
• 61 small journals

B: Deserves some attention but still probably good

156 journals in all–just under one-tenth as many as A–including these subgrades:

• 6 with more author repetition than I’d like to see
• 16 with problematic English (where English is a primary language for the journal)
• 19 “garish or other site problems”
• 34 cases where journals highlight questionable impact factors
• 30 journals with minimal author guidelines
• 17 journals with mild peer review/turnaround/editorial board issues
• 33 journals with questionable but not clearly false claims
• 1 journal with questionable but not outrageous article titles

C: Questionable journals, probably best avoided

Thirty journals in all, including:

• 20 that appear to have APCs (fees) but don’t say what they are
• 1 with clear falsehoods on the journal site
• 2 with a mix of problems bad enough to be a red flag
• 3 with major peer review/turnaround/editorial board issues
• 1 incompetent site
• 3 journals with wholly absurd article titles

X: Journals not fully analyzed

445 journals (and “journals”) in all, including:

• 11 empty journals (no articles in 2011-2014)
• 21 cases of apparent malware, as flagged by McAfee Site Advisor or Malwarebytes
• 89 non-OA, including sites that require registration to read articles and, more questionably, ones that publish entirely conference/workshop proceedings
• 90 opaque or obscure: cases where I found it too difficult to figure out the article counts, mostly because there are no tables of contents, sometimes because the issues aren’t dated (in dates I can understand)
• 7 parking/ad/blog pages
• 55 cases where Chrome/Google translate didn’t yield enough info for me to analyze the journal (sometimes because the info just wasn’t there).
• 21 reachable but unusable sites (the “incompetent site” from C could be moved hereI)
• 26 journals merged into other journals with no clear way of finding the original material
• 125 unreachable, including 404s, timeouts, DNS failures and others. Some of these will be retested. Note that I now assume that if a May 2015 DOAJ URL doesn’t work either through the Excel-to-browser link or when directly pasted into the browser address bar, the journal’s unreachable or incompetent.

The really encouraging figure there is that there have, so far, only been 55 cases out of considerably more than 1,000 where Chrome/Google’s translate wasn’t enough for me to proceed. If that continues, my final spreadsheet will represent around 97% of all DOAJ journals (lacking opaque/obscure and translate-insufficient cases).

What happens with all this stuff

I believe the final spreadsheet (“final” only in terms of 2011-2014) will be the closest thing to a comprehensive picture of Gold OA during that period that we’re going to get. (I’ve read the Outsell 2013 paper, and given that Outsell is All About the Benjamins, you wouldn’t expect a comprehensive picture.)

Obviously I’m doing this work because I care about it.

Obviously I want to see the results used.

Yes, I’d like some institutional sponsorship, both for a small amount of revenue but also–perhaps more importantly–because it would provide gravitas for the results, such that maybe some of those writing Important Articles on the Future of OA and scholarly articles would actually, you know, use the best available information as background.

Sure, I was irritable when I wrote the previous update and accompanying post. Only one print copy of the interim report had been sold, and I think there were a total of four donors with ebook copies.

Since then, the number of contributors has jumped from four to…well, four.

No, I’m not going to throw the work away. Yes, I’ll certainly make some of the major findings available in posts and in Cites & Insights.

The more detailed analysis, however, which I’d think any institution that paid $2.5K for Outsell’s OA report should consider as an essential fleshing out of the story…is not going to be given away. It’s not going to cost $2.5K either; more likely, somewhere in the $50-$60 region.

Posting the updated, comprehensive, anonymized spreadsheet? Tough to justify with no additional funding. Maybe after an embargo of sorts…

We shall see. Meanwhile, if you care about this stuff, the best way to show it is to contribute $50 to Cites & Insights, which will get you a link to the interim PDF, a special link to a site where you can buy the interim paperback for $7 plus shipping…and, when it’s ready, a link to an exclusive PDF of the comprehensive 2011-2014 report with hotlinked tables of contents and figures–a version that won’t be available for sale. This offer ends the day before I announce availability of the report.

Medicine includes all aspects of human health and exercise, including some aspects of nutrition. This is by far the largest group of journals and articles. The group includes 1,702 journals, which published 103,908 articles in 2013 and 127,207 in 2014.

Grades

Table 19.1. Journals and articles by grade

Table 19.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; free, pay and unknown (that is, almost certainly having an APC but not stating it) numbers; and average 2013 articles per journal. Boldface percentages (grades) are percentages of the full set; others are percentages of the grade above. Since all A$ journals charge APCs by definition, the redundant line is omitted.

Journals with APCs typically publish more than journals that don’t have fees—and for this group, journals with substantial fees ($1,000 and more) publish a lot more articles than others, followed closely by a fair number of unknown-APC journals.

The D journals include these subgroups: C (apparently ceased), 56 journals with 712 articles in 2013; D (dying), 25 journals with 168 articles; E (erratic), 41 journals with 339 articles; H (hiatus?), 29 journals with 945 articles; N (new), five journals with 58 articles; S (small), 66 journals with 264 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

Table 19.2. Journals and articles by date

Table 19.2 shows the number of free and APC-charging journals that actually published articles each year, including all of 2014; how many articles those journals published; and what percentage were free or in free journals.

The 69 journals with unknown APCs, which published 5,887 articles in 2013, are omitted from these tables. Journal numbers don’t add up because some journals didn’t publish articles in any given year.

It’s interesting that the percentage of free journals—one of the lowest percentages of any field—stays essentially unchanged, declining just a bit in 2014, while the percentage of free articles declines substantially year-by-year as the volume of articles increases.

OA activity in medicine is increasing at a healthy rate (although counting practices in some journals may account for a small portion of the 2014 increase).

Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis, 873 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 104 published the same number of articles; 725 published fewer articles in 2014. In terms of significant changes, 730 (43%) published at least 10% more articles in 2014; 374 (22%) published roughly the same number; 598 (35%) published at least 10% fewer, including 92 that have not (as of April 2014) published any articles in 2014 (and did publish some in 2013).

Table 19.3. Journals by peak article volume

Table 19.3 shows the number of journals in each size category (noting that peak volume doesn’t include all of 2014—in fact, nine journals published more than 1,000 articles in 2014); 2013 articles for that group; and what percentage is no-fee.

There are prolific journals in medicine, and the number of such journals is growing. Most articles appear in large and medium-sized journals, and the vast majority of large and prolific journals charge fees. Except for the anomalies at top and bottom, these figures follow the typical pattern: free percentage drops as article volume rises.

Fees (APCs)

Table 19.4. Journals and articles by fee range

Table 19.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range and the number of 2013 articles for those journals. Since the fee ranges were based on quartiles for all OA fee-charging journals, you’d expect the first %Fee column to be right around 25%, especially since medicine is such a large percentage of all OA (and more so of all fee-charging OA). But that’s not how it works out: in fact, most high-fee journals (more than $1,450) are in medicine, constituting nearly half of all fee-charging medicine journals…and that’s balanced out by relatively few low-fee and nominal-fee journals.

Indeed, a majority of articles in fee-charging journals in 2013 appeared in journals with very high fees.

How high can you go, in this field where there’s clearly money available and being taken advantage of? A dozen journals charge more than $3,000 per article; 176 in all charge at least $2,000 per article.

Is there a statistical correlation between number of articles and size of APC? Not really—the coefficient is 0.11, far too low to be significant.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Table 19.5. Starting dates for medicine OA journals

Table 19.5 shows medicine OA journals by starting date, including the percentage of journals started within a date range that currently don’t charge APCs. For DOAJ as a whole—and emphatically so for medicine—there’s a sense of a gold rush beginning in 2006, with lots more APC-charging journals. In general, the gold rush seemed to decline after 2011, but it’s still fairly robust for medicine. Namely, prior to 2006, with the single odd exception of 1990-91 (when three currently-fee journals and two free journals started), at least two-thirds of journals launched in any given period are free—but starting in 2006, most newly-launched journals charge APCs.

Figure 19.1 shows very much the same information as Table 19.5, but separates out the “unknown” journals. Note that free journals began to pick up in 1992 and maintained a solid lead through 2004, after which APC-charging journals zoomed ahead.

Figure 19.1. Medicine OA journals by starting date

Table 19.6. Articles per journal by starting date

Table 19.6 shows journals that actually published articles in 2013, when they started, and the average 2013 articles per journal. You could read this table as saying “old journals rule,” since the highest articles-per-journal averages are for pre-1960, 1992-93, and 1960-69 journals respectively. On the other hand, that huge number of journals launched 2010-2011 is also doing pretty well.

Overall, the slogan for medical OA could be “come and get it” or “there’s gold in them thar ills.” The money’s there; journals have emerged to take it.

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.