Archive for September, 2015

The Gold OA Landscape and Cites & Insights 15:9 – Update 1

Friday, September 18th, 2015

The Gold OA Landscape 2011-2014 appeared September 10, 2015 in PDF ebook form and September 11, 2015 in paperback form. Cites & Insights 15:9 (October 2015), which is an excerpted version of the book, appeared September 12, 2015. (The link here is to the single-column version, for good reason.)

So it’s basically been a week since the most comprehensive study of serious Gold OA (as evidenced by listing in the Directory of Open Access Journals) was made available. I thought a status update might be in order–especially since the availability of anonymized data for this project, and continuation of this research for 2015 (done in 2016), depend so heavily on the takeup of this report.

The Issue

As of 5:09 a.m. this morning (September 18, 2011), Cites & Insights 15:9 has been downloaded 956 times; it may very well have reached the thousand mark by now. That’s a gratifying number: it means lots of people are interested. It’s also gratifying that people are apparently paying attention: more than 90% of those downloads are of the more-readable 6×9″ single-column version.

(“More readable” in this special case because tables that use all of a 6×9″ book text body are involved–although the single-column version is generally more readable if you’re reading online. Normally, I prefer and push the two-column print-oriented version, the one I actually try to make look good. This is by no means a normal issue.)

If one out of every ten people who download this issue find it worthwhile enough to contribute $10 to Cites & Insights (link on the home page), we’d already be two-thirds of the way to assuring full availability of the anonymized dataset and one-third of the way toward continuing this research next year. But that’s like saying “if all refereed articles were published in OA using the apparent efficiencies of SciELO, it would cost less than $250 million a year for the world’s entire output, saving close to $10 billion for other purposes”–it may be true, but it makes some wildly improbable assumptions.

The Book

As this is written (9:15 a.m. on September 18, 2015), people or institutions other than me have purchased two copies of the book–one each paperback and PDF. That’s a start–and about one-sixteenth of the “dataset availability” goal or one-26th of the “continued research” goal.

I’d love to announce more general availability of the paperback, but Lulu’s requirements are that I have to not only order but “approve” a copy of the book first. I haven’t received the book yet, so can’t do that yet…and it can be up to eight more weeks after that before the book shows up on Amazon or Ingram. So, well, it’s gonna be a while. (Meanwhile, to be sure, each copy purchased through non-Lulu sources would only count one-third as much for my goals.)

The Goals

Basically, both acknowledgment of the work (and the 956 downloads help a lot there!) and some modest revenue from book purchases, C&I contributions, or some direct form of funding.

I’ll probably do more posts, now and then, pointing out interesting things in the data. I’ll do more status updates when/if there are significant changes.

The Gold OA Landscape: Are facts irrelevant?

Thursday, September 17th, 2015

I’m adding a prefatory wrap to this post, having realized that I was hasty in apparently attacking the statements in a UK factsheet–when what I’m actually questioning is the definition of the universe involved.

I’m not changing the post’s title because that just gets confusing–and I’m not withdrawing “Are facts irrelevant?” because it’s a question that keeps arising when I read various discussions. I do believe that a small sampling operation done by academics or official bodies will be treated considerably more seriously than a 100% scan done by the great unwashed (“independent scholars” like me), and that “facts” can be very fuzzy things, especially when definitions of universes are involved.

And I do believe that it is at best misleading to treat every journal whose publisher says “Sure, if you pay us a huge sum of money we’ll make your article OA, but we won’t lower subscription prices” as being equivalent to a true Gold OA journal in defining the OA market. Misleading, but not technically falsifiable. If it’s true that UK scholars are gravitating toward the double-dipping approach, that’s a shame–but maybe UK universities and libraries are so well-funded that it’s not an issue. I wouldn’t know; poor American universities like Harvard and UC clearly aren’t.

Now that I’ve confused the situation even more, and felt every day of my 70 years in the process, I’ll step away and provide the original post.

The original post follows, with some updates at the end.


First off, a little deal: Lulu will pay for the USMail shipping (or give 50% off ground shipping) if you use coupon code FGA915 now through September 21, 2015. Not a big savings, but something (apparently only one person took advantage of the 20% sale, but that’s 100% of the book sales to date.)

Then this: “Monitoring the transition to Open Access,” a September 2015 “factsheet” from UniversitiesUK, includes this paragraph:

Levels of Article Processing Costs (APCs) vary widely. Most journals charge between £1,000 and £2,000; only small minorities, concentrated in a few publishers, charge either less than £1,000 or more than £2,000.

I don’t find qualifying statements (“most journals that UK authors publish in…” or “most biomed journals that UK authors publish in…”) so I’ll take that at face value.*

My spreadsheet, based on actual visits to every journal in the Directory of Open Access Journals as of June 2015, shows the following (assuming $1,550 to $3,100 as the dollar equivalent of the ranges in that paragraph):

  • More than £2,000 ($3,100): 23 journals publishing 3,091 articles in 2014.
  • Between £1,000 and £2,000 ($1,550 to $3,100): 548 journals publishing 73.609 articles in 2014.
  • Some APC but less than £1,000 ($1 to $1,550): 1,899 journals publishing 198,996 articles in 2014.

I am unsure of the arithmetic system in which 1,899+23 is a “small fraction” of the universe of DOAJ-listed APC-charging journals (2,470 in this count). It looks like 77.8% to me (and 73% of the articles) to me.

Here’s the thing: They’re funded. I’m not. They’re official. I’m not. And that “fact” sheet will get a lot more coverage than my work: count on it.

Am I going to respond directly to them? I’m getting old and tired, and wouldn’t really know who to respond to anyway. And there’s probably some huge unstated asterisk in their paragraph that makes it correct for some set of circumstances.

Anyone wanna bet that it will not be used as though there was no such asterisk?


*UPDATE: OK, I now realize the hidden asterisk: This factsheet is treating “hybrid” journals as part of the overall universe, I don’t doubt that “hybrid” journals typically charge very high APCs–after all, that’s part of their game.

Therefore, what we really have is further evidence that “hybrid” OA is mostly a scheme to make sure that high publisher profits aren’t disturbed by OA.

What I study is Gold OA–journals that immediately make all of their peer-reviewed articles available for online reading. And apparently UK authors are more comfortable with “hybrid” OA.


Second update: 

On one hand, I’m tempted to pull this post as overreacting, since there is a way of defining the universe that may make their assertions correct (if half of subscriptions are actually hybrid–which seems high, and if so impresses me that the UK group was able to determine the status of 20,000+ journals, then, yes, assuming most of those APCs are in the somewhat outrageous £1,000 to £2,000 range, it only takes, say, 6,000 such hybrids to make 1,922 into a “small fraction.”

I simply question whether it’s meaningful to call “hybrid” journals OA journals in any real sense, unless they’ve actually published a significant number of OA articles and stated a clear policy for adjusting subscription prices to reflect the extra income from APCs. To me, double-dipping isn’t OA; it’s a scheme to protect publisher profits.

So I’m going to leave this post up. I believe gold OA is an important part of OA. Serious gold OA–best defined by the contents of DOAJ–is what I look at. You can define the universe in such a way as to swamp that area of study, to be sure.

The Gold OA Landscape 2011-2014 PDF now explicitly site-licensed

Tuesday, September 15th, 2015

If you’re thinking about acquiring The Gold OA Landscape 2011-2014 in PDF form for your library, you might want to know this:

In addition to adding this statement in the Cites & Insights Book banner (at the bottom of this blog, the Cites & Insights home page and my personal website):

All Cites & Insights PDF ebooks are explicitly site-licensed for mounting on a library’s server and providing to authenticated users. That includes The Gold OA Landscape 2011-2014, A Library Is…, Beyond the Damage and any others.

I’ve revised the PDF version to add the following text on the copyright page:

This PDF ebook is explicitly licensed to be stored on a library’s server and made available to authenticated users of that library without concurrency limits.

Hope this helps; the price hasn’t changed and it’s still the first and only comprehensive (not sampled) study of serious gold open access publishing, that is, journals included in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

More information in the original announcement.

oa14c300

Gunslinger Classics Disc 11

Sunday, September 13th, 2015

OK, so it’s been a while since my last old movie post. In fact, when I went to add the fourth movie to this part of the six-disc Word document, I noticed that the last time the document had been edited was May 10, 2015—so it’s been, lessee, four months and two days since I’ve watched an old movie. You can blame open access journals for that, I suppose: I found the research process more interesting than the old movies. (Then it took me a little while to figure out what Word 2013 did with the post-to-blog process. Still there, but now it’s a template rather than a separate File tab.)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The Man from Utah, 1934, b&w. Robert Bradbury (dir.), John Wayne, Polly Ann Young, George Hayes, Yakima Canutt, George Cleveland. 0:52.

This flick—which embeds maybe 15 minutes of plot into a 51-minute movie largely through lots of rodeo “action” and really embarrassing “Indians from thousands of reservations in full regalia” stuff—begins by giving us young John Wayne as a singing cowboy. That’s truly odd: it sounds like somebody else strumming a ukulele and singing, after which Wayne is holding a guitar up in one hand as if to say “what the heck am I doing holding a guitar while I’m riding?”

That’s it for the singing cowboy, and probably a good thing. Otherwise, Wayne’s a broke drifter who, in short order, prevents a bank robbery in the town he’s just ridden into (where a pre-“Gabby” George Hayes is a U.S. Marshal looking out for a rodeo gang), rows a boat to get to the rodeo, gets involved with the gang, double-crosses them, figures out their methods, wins the rodeo, prevents another bank holdup…and, of course, gets the girl. (One IMDB review says there’s no gunplay. The reviewer must have seen a different picture.)

As B programmers go, this is pretty mediocre. If you love rodeo action and some trick riding (thanks to Yakimah Canutt, I imagine), you might find it OK. And for that, I’ll give it, charitably, $0.50.

Utah, 1945, b&w. John English (dir.), Roy Rogers, Trigger, Gabby Hayes, Dale Evans, Peggy Stewart. 1:17 [0:53[

I’m a sucker for Roy Rogers movies—I think he’s the best singer and actor of the singing cowboys, and Trigger is, well, Trigger. Dale Evans doesn’t hurt. But I was less enchanted by this flick than I expected to be, maybe because it’s either too clever for its own good or too dumb.

The basic plot: Dale Evans is a lead showgirl in Chicago and, along with her friends, trying to deal with a promising new musical that’s run out of funds—so she decides to go to Utah to sell the ranch her grandfather willed to her, which she’s never seen. She wires ahead to Roy Rogers, foreman at the Bar X, who conspires with Gabby (who owns a wretched little farm next to the fine Bar X) to figure out how to keep her from selling, which would presumably result in sheep taking over the cattle range. His method (after some byplay involving an attempt to shoot Rogers and some trick riding) is to pretend that Gabby’s ranch is really the Bar X, so she’ll figure it’s not worth selling…but it backfires, because the crooks who wanted to pay her $20-$25,000 so they can sell the Bar X for $100,000, convince her to sell what she believes to be the Bar X for $5,000 (with a worthless $1,000 check as a downpayment).

There’s more, and it all ends well, with the musical now called Utah! and starring…well, you can guess. Except that, along the way, Rogers’ attempt to be clever set up a situation where everybody was worse off, and he does a jailbreak as part of his attempt to sour the deal. One IMDB review says Rogers acted like “a bit of a jerk” in this flick, and that’s about right: the plot’s mostly about his trying to undo the harm he caused in the first place. For that matter, George ‘Gabby’ Hayes is considerably more misogynistic than usual, and it gets a little wearing. As usual, Rogers uses fists rather than guns, always looks great, and sings up a storm—but it was more than a little disappointing. Chances are, cutting it down from a feature-length 1:17 to a second-feature-length 0:53 didn’t help—24 minutes is a lot to lose. Still, probably worth $0.50.

Lights of Old Santa Fe, 1944, b&w. Frank McDonald (dir.), Roy Rogers, Trigger, George ‘Gabby’ Hayes, Dale Evans, Lloyd Corrigan. 1:18 [0:56]

Easy complaint: This movie doesn’t belong in a “Gunslingers” set—which is true for some of the others as well, but even more so here. One gun gets drawn briefly at one point, but it’s just as quickly taken out of action—and what this is, basically, is a musical. There’s a ballet number and another dance number, there’s a number by the Sons of the Pioneers without Roy Rogers, Dale Evans does a song or two (and at least two with Rogers), and Gabby Hayes shows that he can sing straight if he so chooses.

The plot? There’s not much of it. Evans is the owner of a struggling rodeo (with Gabby as the manager), inherited from her father, just out of college, being courted by a rival rodeo owner. Rogers and the Sons are first signed by the rival, then let go—apparently because they want to be riders, not just singers—and try to Save the Day for Evans’ rodeo. But one of the rival’s hands sabotages them on the way to Albuquerque, setting horses loose, setting one wagon on fire thus panicking the other horses and destroying other wagons. Rogers tries to trick Evans into believing the rodeo actually happened, using a radio broadcast, but the trick is discovered shortly thereafter. Evans is about to sign over her rodeo and herself (as a bride) to the rival when…ah, but of course it all works out in the end. Hmm: Turns out the original was 22 minutes longer, a full-length feature, with—probably—more plot and even more music.

In any case, lots of good music, Dale Evans, Roy Rogers, Trigger, Gabby Hayes. Seen for what it is, it’s an entertaining not-quite hour. If you’re looking for a shoot-em-up or a traditional western, you’ll hate this; if you like Rogers, Evans, Trigger and cowboy music, you’ll like it just fine. $1.00.

The Star Packer, 1934, b&w. Robert N. Bradbury (dir. & screenplay), John Wayne, Verna Hillie, George Hayes, Yakima Canutt. 0:53.

Another “B” programmer with lots of horse riding and, this time, lots of shooting as the town’s cattlemen take on the surprisingly large gang, but it’s not all that good a movie. It’s interesting on at least two counts: George Hayes is most definitely not “Gabby” in this flick, as he’s the serious upstanding Matt Mattlock (who’s also, to be sure, “The Shadow” and gangleader)—and Yakima Canutt, certainly the greatest stuntman in the first few decades of moviemaking (with 253 screen credits!) actually plays a character, not just doubling for stunt riding. The character’s named “Yak” and is a Native American—which Canutt wasn’t—and he’s John Wayne’s sidekick.

The basic plot: A gang is raiding all the cattle and stagecoaches in this town, and three sheriffs have been shot down in the main street mysteriously; “The Shadow” is in charge. Wayne and Yak show up and, in short order, solve the mystery, save the girl (she shows up as half-owner of Mattlock’s ranch—well, he’s not really Mattlock either—and shows spunk, and of course winds up married to Wayne), and save the town. Eh. Some fancy horse riding. Not a lot else. Maybe $0.75

Cites & Insights 15:9 (October 2015) out

Saturday, September 12th, 2015

The October 2015 Cites & Insights (15:9) is now available for downloading at http://citesandinsights.info/civ15i9.pdf

The issue is 36 pages long–but you may find the 73-page single-column version at http://citesandinsights.info/civ15i9on.pdf easier to read, and it’s slightly more complete. (I had to delete columns from some tables to get them to fit into the narrower column without reducing type to 6 or 7 points, which I regarded as unreadably small.)

The issue consists of one essay:

Intersections: The Gold OA Landscape 2011-2014   pp. 1-36

This is an excerpted version of the book of the same name, including roughly half the text, none of the dozens of graphs, and about one-third of the overall content (at least by pagination).

It provides all the overall numbers for this first comprehensive study of serious gold OA publishing (where I define “serious” as “included in the Directory of Open Access Journals“), and a few examples of what’s in the subject coverage–but it omits most subject details and a number of secondary aspects of the overall coverage.

It should give you a good picture of where things stand with gold open access throughout the world, not just in English-speaking (or English-publishing) countries. While some of you (and your libraries) should and will find the book worth purchasing (I hope), this report should be enough for many of you.

The only added material is a brief introductory note with links to the book site.

The Gold OA Landscape in paperback–and a 20% sale!

Friday, September 11th, 2015

oa14c300The Gold OA Landscape 2011-2014 is now available in paperback form–and from now through Monday, September 14, 2015, you can get it for less than the PDF version.

I believe every OA publisher should have a copy of this book to see what’s going on in the field in general–where by “the field” I mean serious OA as evidenced by journals being in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

I believe many libraries, librarians and OA advocates should have this as well.

For more information and reasons why you might want to have this book, see yesterday’s announcement of the PDF ebook version.

The paperback has the same copy and appearance, except for one paragraph on the copyright page–and a different ISBN: 978-1-329-54762-9

The link at the start of this post takes you to the sales page for this book; here it is again for convenience. If you’re having trouble with links, here’s the URL:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-gold-oa-landscape-2011-2014/17264390

But there’s one more thing you need to know: GRAND20

That’s the coupon code that gets you 20% off any print books or calendars at Lulu, today through 9/14/15. I believe it can only be used once, but for as many books as you’d like.

Note: This book will eventually be available through Amazon, Ingram, etc…maybe. I don’t know how long it will take; I don’t know what prices they’ll offer; I do know I get about 1/3 as much in net revenue from those sales.

The Lulu price is $60. That gets you a 220 pg. trade paperback on very high quality paper, representing hundreds of hours of research, analysis and writeup. And, of course, with the coupon code, that’s $48–enough of a savings to cover postage ($3.99 for USPS, I think) with quite a bit left over.

By the way: the product page has a preview covering Chapter 1. Some day soon, the October 2015 Cites & Insights will have extended excerpts from the book (perhaps 1/3 of it in all, with no graphs). And, as explained in yesterday’s post, availability of the data and continuation of this project will depend on sales or on other sources of revenue.

 

The Open Access Landscape: 29. Zoology

Friday, September 11th, 2015

Zoology includes veterinary medicine as well as marine biology. The group includes 178 journals, which published 9,581 articles in 2013 and 9,176 in 2014.

Grade

Grade Journals %J Articles %A A/J
A

115

65%

7,090

74%

62

Free

74

64%

3,772

53%

51

Pay

41

36%

3,318

47%

81

A$ pay

8

4%

673

7%

84

B

20

11%

588

6%

29

Free

11

55%

233

40%

21

Pay

9

45%

355

60%

39

C

10

6%

925

10%

93

Free

1

10%

300

32%

300

Pay

2

20%

38

4%

19

Unk

7

70%

587

63%

84

D

25

14%

305

3%

12

Free

16

64%

181

59%

11

Pay

9

36%

124

41%

14

Table 29.1. Zoology journals and articles by grade

Table 29.1 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 whole group; others are of the grade above.

As usual, journals with APCs tend to publish more articles than free journals (except for the anomalous questionable free journal with lots of articles).

The relatively small number of D journals includes these subgroups: C (apparently ceased), six journals with a total of two articles in 2013; D (dying), two journals, 17 articles; E (erratic), four journals, 90 articles; H (hiatus?), four journals, 157 articles; S (small), nine journals, 39 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

2014 2013 2012 2011
Journals

157

166

161

152

%Free

59%

59%

60%

61%

Articles

8,695

8,994

10,517

8,712

%Free

45%

50%

45%

52%

Table 29.2. Zoology journals and articles by date

Table 29.2 shows the number of free and APC-charging journals that actually published articles each year, the number of articles published and the percentage that didn’t involve APCs. “Unknown” journals (those that apparently have, but do not clearly state, APCs) are omitted. There are some journals that don’t publish any articles in any given year.

The percentage of free journals is slightly below average for STEM and has stayed fairly steady; the percentage of free articles is somewhat above average for STEM, and seems to bounce back and forth.

OA activity in zoology does appear to have slowed down since 2012 and, very slightly, since 2013.

On a journal-by-journal basis, 80 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; ten published the same number (including three with no articles in either year); 88 published fewer articles in 2014. Looking at significant changes, 58 (33%) published at least 10% more articles in 2014; 43 (24%) published about the same number; 77 (43%) published at least 10% fewer articles, including a dozen journals with articles in 2013 but none (so far) in 2014.

Journals No-Fee % Articles No-Fee %
Large

16

38%

3,553

38%

Medium

48

46%

3,689

47%

Small

64

61%

1,867

56%

Sparse

50

70%

472

74%

Table 29.3. Zoology journals by peak article volume

Table 29.3 shows the number of journals in each size category, 2013 articles for those journals and the no-fee percentages. There are no prolific zoology journals, and as usual the free percentages go down as the volume of articles goes up.

Fees (APCs)

APC Jour. %Fee %All Art. %Fee %All
High

7

10%

4%

600

13%

7%

Medium

12

17%

7%

438

10%

5%

Low

25

36%

15%

2,110

47%

23%

Nominal

25

36%

15%

1,360

30%

15%

None

102

60%

4,486

50%

Table 29.4. Zoology journals and articles by fee range

Table 29.4 shows how many journals are in each fee range and 2013 articles for each fee range; this table also omits unknown journals. For the full study, fee ranges are based on actual quartiles, so each of the first four %Fee figures should be around 25%. Notably, zoology journals tend to be lower-priced.

There is essentially no correlation between APC level and article count, either peak count or 2013 count: the numbers are 0.01 and 0.03 respectively.

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Year Total Free%
Pre-1960

3

67%

1970-79

1

100%

1980-89

6

67%

1990-91

2

50%

1994-95

8

25%

1996-97

5

60%

1998-99

12

92%

2000-01

14

79%

2002-03

19

53%

2004-05

17

88%

2006-07

16

56%

2008-09

28

43%

2010-11

33

42%

2012-13

14

50%

Table 29.5. Starting dates for zoology OA journals

Table 29.5 shows zoology OA journals by starting date and the percentage of journals started in each date range that currently doesn’t charge APCs. The “gold rush” for DOAJ as a whole is a rapid increase in APC-charging journals beginning in 2006 and slowing down after 2011; for zoology, the rapid growth started in 2002-03 and resumed in 2006-11.

Figure 29.1 shows essentially the same information in graphic form, omitting unknown journals.

Figure 29.1. Zoology journals by starting date

Year Journals Articles Art/Jrnl
Pre-1960

3

68

23

1970-79

1

51

51

1980-89

6

390

65

1990-91

2

56

28

1994-95

8

969

121

1996-97

5

569

114

1998-99

12

838

70

2000-01

14

439

31

2002-03

18

1,009

56

2004-05

15

571

38

2006-07

16

600

38

2008-09

28

1,953

70

2010-11

31

1,552

50

2012-13

14

516

37

Table 29.6. Zoology articles per journal by starting date

Table 29.6 shows journals that published articles in 2013, the number of articles and average articles per journal. It appears that journals founded in 1994-97 publish a lot of articles, with other deviations as well.

Overall, zoology and related topics show fairly typical STEM patterns but a somewhat atypical drop in activity since 2012.

Definitions and notes

See The Open Access Landscape: 1. Background for definitions and notes

This completes the series of subject posts based on my study of 6,490-odd journals–but I’ve now completed a much broader study, encompassing essentially all of DOAJ as of early June 2015 and using Google/Chrome translation to make sense of 3,00h0-odd non-English journals (although 20 still couldn’t be handled). The study–The Gold OA Landscape 2011-2014–is now available as a PDF ebook and will shortly be out in paperback.

The Gold OA Landscape, 2011-2014: PDF ebook available now

Thursday, September 10th, 2015

I’ve just published the PDF edition of The Gold OA Landscape, 2011-2014 at Lulu.com.

(A $60 trade paperback version will be available as soon as I get a second ISBN and “design” a cover for it–this one has a minimalist pseudo-cover. Most likely tomorrow or Saturday, possibly later. A portion of the book, without any of the graphs, will appear as the October 2015 Cites & Insights when I have time to put it together, probably some time next week.)

This is a 219-page 6″ x 9″ PDF (205+xiv), which should work well on most e-devices with reasonably large screens. The ISBN is 978-1-329-54713-1. The price is $55. (Lulu sometimes has sales, which show up on the lulu.com home page; the discount comes out of Lulu’s share, so I’m fine with the sales.)

The link shown–repeated here–yields the product page, including a preview of Chapter 1, which includes the biggest numbers and some overall notes. There are 40 chapters in all, 28 of which are 4-page subject chapters that expand enormously on the series of blog posts in this blog (adding more than half again as many journals) and include some new information, e.g., the countries publishing the most articles for each subject.

Why you (or your library, or especially if you’re an OA publisher or advocate) should buy this book

Actually, I think the paperback version is easier to use, but then I’m a print guy. And if you’re wondering: I tried to create an ePub version, which would have been available at Amazon, Nook, iStore, etc….but while Lulu’s doc-to-ePub converter is reasonably good, I couldn’t get the 80-odd graphs to come out right, and when I tried the results in Calibre’s emulation of a Kindle Fire, I found the tables to be difficult to read (no borders, for example). PDFs preserve the careful formatting of the book…

Some good reasons to consider this book:

  1. It’s the first comprehensive study of actual publishing patterns in gold OA journals (as defined by inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals as of June 15, 2015).
  2. I attempted to analyze all 10,603 journals (that began in 2014 or earlier), and managed to fully analyze 9,824 of them (and I’d say a fully multilingual group would only get 20 more: that’s how many journals I just couldn’t cope with because Chrome/Google didn’t overcome language barriers).
  3. The book offers considerable detail on 9,512 journals (that appear not to be questionable or nonexistent) and what they’ve published from 2011 through 2014, including APC levels, country of publication, and other factors.
  4. It spells out the differences among 28 subject groups (in three major segments) in what’s clearly an extremely heterogeneous field. The 28 pictures of smaller groups of journals are probably more meaningful than the vast picture of the whole field.
  5. If enough people buy this (either edition), an anonymized version of the source spreadsheet will be made available on figshare.
  6. If enough people buy this (either edition), it will encourage continuation of the study for 2015.
  7. Mostly, it’s good to have real data about OA. Do most OA articles involve fees? It depends: in the humanities and social sciences, mostly not; in STEM and biomed, mostly yes. Do most OA journals charge fees? It depends–in biology, yes, but in almost all other fields, no.

And so on…

Anyway: If you prefer e-reading, take a look and maybe buy it. If you prefer print, wait for another post.

 

It’s out: Open-Access Journals: Idealism and Opportunism

Thursday, September 10th, 2015

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.)

The Open Access Landscape: 28. Technology

Friday, September 4th, 2015

Technology journals were distinguished from engineering journals based on broader subject coverage or the word “technology” in the title. As with engineering, it’s a somewhat fuzzy group. The group includes 138 journals, which published 9,738 articles in 2013 and 10,718 articles in 2014.

Grades

Grade Journals %J Articles %A A/J
A

71

51%

4,420

45%

62

Free

55

77%

3,514

80%

64

Pay

16

23%

906

20%

57

A$ pay

8

6%

1,507

15%

188

B

30

22%

2,317

24%

77

Free

9

30%

974

42%

108

Pay

21

70%

1,343

58%

64

C

5

4%

1,140

12%

228

Pay

3

60%

656

58%

219

Unk

2

40%

484

42%

242

D

24

17%

354

4%

15

Free

18

75%

300

85%

17

Pay

6

25%

54

15%

9

Table 28.1. Technology journals and articles by grade

Table 28.1 shows the number of journals and 2013 articles for each grade; free, pay and unknown numbers; and average articles per journal. There are no free C journals or unknown D journals. Boldface percentages are of the whole group; others are of the grade above.

These journals are unusual in that, other than the high-priced A$ journals, free A and B journals actually average more articles than those charging APCs—and unfortunate in that the handful of questionable C journals published lots of articles.

D journals include these subgroups: C (apparently ceased), six journals with no 2013 articles; D (dying?), five journals with 28 articles; E (erratic), four journals with 183 articles; H (hiatus?), six journals, 156 articles; S (small), three journals, 19 articles.

Article Volume (including all of 2014)

2014 2013 2012 2011
Journals

125

129

128

107

%Free

58%

60%

61%

61%

Articles

10,348

9,254

7,868

5,635

%Free

54%

52%

49%

58%

Table 28.2. Technology journals and articles by date

Table 28.2 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 was free. Journals with unknown APCs are omitted, and there are always some journals not publishing in any given year.

The percentage of free journals is fairly typical of STEM—but unusual in that it hasn’t changed significantly. The percentage of articles in those journals is high for STEM, and has actually increased since 2012, the only year in which a majority of articles involved APCs.

Technology OA is clearly increasing, at a reasonably brisk rate that has slowed down slightly since 2012. Looked at on a journal-by-journal basis (and including unknowns), 67 journals published more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 13 published the same number (in five cases, no articles in either year); 58 journals published fewer articles in 2014. For significant changes, 59 journals (43%) published at least 10% more articles in 2014 than in 2013; 28 (20%) published roughly the same number; 51 (37%) published at least 10% fewer articles in 2014, including six that published articles in 2013 but not (yet) in 2014.

Journals No-Fee % Articles No-Fee %
Large

15

47%

5,023

37%

Medium

35

60%

3,019

64%

Small

50

56%

1,332

54%

Sparse

38

68%

364

73%

Table 28.3. Technology journals by peak article volume

Table 28.3 shows the number of journals in each size category (based on peak articles in 2011-2013), articles for journals in that group, and what percentage doesn’t involve APCs. There were no prolific technology journals in 2011-2013, but one journal has passed the 1,000-article mark in 2014. APC-charging large journals published proportionally more articles than free ones, where APC-charging sparse journals published slightly fewer articles than free ones—but these numbers don’t particularly follow typical patterns except for the lower free percentages in large journals.

Fees (APCs)

APC Jour. %Fee %All Art. %Fee %All
High

5

9%

4%

1,355

30%

15%

Medium

13

24%

10%

403

9%

4%

Low

20

37%

15%

823

18%

9%

Nominal

16

30%

12%

1,885

42%

20%

None

82

60%

4,788

52%

Table 28.4. Technology journals and articles by fee range

Table 28.4 shows the number of journals in each fee range and 2013 articles for those journals. For this study as a whole, the first %Fee column will be about 25% in each cell, as the fee ranges are based on actual quartiles. Here, very few journals charge the highest fees—but those journals publish a disproportionately large number of articles. Oddly enough, journals with nominal fees also publish a disproportionately large number of articles.

There’s a slight positive correlation between peak article levels and APC amount and a slight negative correlation between 2013 article counts and APC amounts. Neither correlation is large enough to be statistically meaningful (0.21 and -0.18 respectively).

Starting Dates and the Gold Rush

Year Total Free%
Pre-1960

1

100%

1970-79

1

100%

1980-89

1

100%

1998-99

4

75%

2000-01

5

80%

2002-03

9

67%

2004-05

15

73%

2006-07

13

69%

2008-09

16

69%

2010-11

47

47%

2012-13

26

50%

Table 28.5. Starting dates for technology OA journals

Table 28.5 shows technology OA journals by starting date, including the percentage of journals started in a given date range that currently charge APCs. Note that there were only three journals prior to 1998, all of them free. The gold rush for APC-charging journals isn’t terribly evident in Table 28.5 (for DOAJ as a whole, the percentage of APC-charging journals rises considerably in 2006 through 2011), but there is a surge of sorts later on, as shown in Figure 28.1. Note that there are very few APC-charging journals until 2008-09—but more new APC-charging journals than free journals after that. (Figure 28.1 omits 1960-69 and 1990-97.)

Figure 28.1. Technology journals by starting date

Year Journals Articles Art/Jrnl
Pre-1960

1

9

9

1970-79

1

445

445

1980-89

1

12

12

1998-99

4

528

132

2000-01

5

1,186

237

2002-03

8

516

65

2004-05

14

872

62

2006-07

13

958

74

2008-09

13

372

29

2010-11

46

2,643

57

2012-13

25

2,197

88

Table 28.6. Technology articles per journal by starting date

Table 28.6 shows journals that published articles in 2013, how many articles they published, and average articles per journal. The anomalies are obvious: the very large journal from the ’70s and large journals from the turn of the century.

Overall, OA technology journals tend to have a higher percentage of articles in free journals than most of STEM, but a fairly typical percentage of non-fee journals. The topic shows continuing gains in article count (with article counts in non-fee journals actually increasing faster than in APC-charging journals since 2012).

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.