ALA TechSource has now mailed out copies of Open-Access Journals: Idealism and Opportunism to subscribers of Library Technology Reports–and if you’re not a subscriber, you or your library can purchase the whole report or chapters of it from the LTR website.
You can read the first chapter for free, including the big numbers (it’s standard practice for LTR to make first chapters open access).
I think this is worth reading and buying. It’s the distillation of the first general phase of my multiphase investigation into the realities of gold OA–looking at all the journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals that have English-language interfaces, and tracking their articles from 2011 through the first half of 2014.
It’s concise (38 pages) with selected tables and graphs to provide a quick but thorough summary of gold OA at that time, with concluding chapters on sideshows and leftovers (specifically a certain “blacklist”), dealing with OA journals (including a quick way to spot most troublesome journals and “journals”), and libraries and OA journals.
It’s even been professionally edited.
I’m proud of the report and think it’s worth your time. (Admittedly, I’m within days of releasing a much broader report, covering thousands more journals and all of 2014, but that report won’t be as concise and will completely lack the key additional material in Chapters 6-8. You need both.)
