Walt at Random

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.

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