Walt at Random

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.

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