Walt at Random

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.

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