Walt at Random

Political Science
includes military and defense topics and most governmental affairs areas. In all, 129 OA journals in this area published 2,402 articles in 2013 and 2,579 in 2014.

Grades

Table 24.1. Political science journals and articles by grade

Table 24.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; free, pay and unknown numbers; and average articles per journal. Boldface percentages are of the full group; others are of the grade above.

This group is typical of humanities and social sciences in that the vast majority of journals don’t charge APCs and publish the vast majority of articles. Otherwise, it’s distinctive in several ways: There are no C-grade journals; there are an unusually high percentage of D-grade journals; the two $1,000-and-higher A$ journals published very few articles; in general—with the exception of B-grade journals—APC-charging journals published fewer articles than free journals. (The B-grade situation involves one high-volume journal.)

The sizable D group includes these subgroups: C (probably ceased), eight journals publishing ten articles in 2013; D (dying), three journals, 13 articles; E (erratic), seven journals, 62 articles; S (small), 14 journals, 52 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

Table 24.2. Political science journals and articles by date

Table 24.2 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 what percentage was free. The “unknown” journal (with its handful of articles) is omitted. In any given year, some journals don’t publish any articles.

The extremely high percentage of free journals hasn’t declined significantly, but the percentage of articles in those journals, while still high, has declined; the sharp decline in 2014 is mostly due to a single journal that more than doubled its article count.

OA activity in political science continues to grow, albeit slowly.

Looking at individual journals, 58 published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 19 published the same number (including five where that number is zero); 52 published fewer articles in 2014. For significant change, 48 (37%) published at least 10% more articles in 2014; 32 (25%) stayed about the same; 49 (38%) published at least 10% fewer articles in 2014, including an even dozen that published at least one article in 2013 but none so far in 2014 (or, in one or two cases, didn’t report to DOAJ and weren’t directly countable).

Table 24.3. Political science journals by peak article volume

Table 24.3 shows the number of journals in each size category, 2013 articles for journals in that group, and what percentage is in no-fee journals. There are no prolific political science journals and only one large one, which does charge; none of the medium-sized journals charge APCs. There’s no real pattern in the numbers.

Fees (APCs)

Table 24.4. Political science journals and articles by fee range

Table 24.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range (there are no high-APC political science journals) and the number of 2013 articles for those journals. Given the tiny numbers, there’s no point comparing the breakdown to general patterns—basically, what few APC-charging journals there are mostly charge nominal fees, and the ones that charge higher fees don’t publish much of anything.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Table 24.5. Starting dates for political science OA journals

Table 24.5 shows political science OA journals by starting date and the percentage of journals started in a given date range that don’t currently charge APCs. The “and the Gold Rush,” seemingly true for DOAJ as a whole (that is, a sudden rush of APC-charging journals from 2006 through 2011), isn’t significant for this group—although it’s interesting that more than half of the journals, free or not, started during those six years. Note that there were no currently-OA journals started during the 1970s or from 1990 through 1993.

Figure 24.5 shows essentially the same information in graphic form, and does include all dates for consistency.

Figure 24.1. Political science journals by starting date

Table 24.5. Political science articles per journal by starting date

Figure 24.5 shows journals that published articles in 2013, when they started, how many 2013 articles they published and average 2013 articles per journal. Given the small numbers involved elsewhere, the most interesting item is probably that journals started in 2010-2011 averaged somewhat more articles than earlier and later journals—but since the most prolific journal started in 2010, that’s not very meaningful.

Overall, political science OA journals are noteworthy mostly for being primarily free and mostly not having all that many articles.

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.

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