Walt at Random

GOA4 came out on May 3, 2019. The Country supplement came out on May 18, 2019. (Barring unexpected delays, the experimental Subjects and Publishers supplement will appear sometime next week–that is, somewhere around June 4-8, 2019.)

So it’s time to start reporting readership for the new edition and stop reporting GOAJ2 and Gray OA figures. As always, readership figures omit most of the last day of each month, because of the tools available.

All links available from the project home page, as always.

GOA4: 2013-2018

• The dataset: 107 views, 12 downloads.
• GOA4: 491 PDF ebooks and one paperback.
• Countries 4: 144 PDF ebooks

GOAJ3: 2012-2017

• The dataset: 1,369 views, 169 downloads
• GOAJ3: 3,261 PDF ebooks + 384 copies of first few chapters (C&I 18.3)
• Countries: 968 PDF ebooks
• Subject supplement (C&I 18.4): 476 downloads
• One paperback

I’m pleased to announce that Gold Open Access by Country 2013-2018 is now available. It includes a profile of each country with at least ten gold OA journals active in 2018, and summary notes on each country with one to nine gold OA journals.

Just for fun, I’ve added a thought experiment: if all journals were OA, what would likely expected costs be–under several scenarios and comparing different sets of countries.

As usual, links to the free PDF and nominally-priced trade paperback ($7, of which I get $0.12) are at https://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html

To get directly to the book:

Paperback: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/gold-open-access-by-country-2013-2018/24756367

Ebook: https://waltcrawford.name/goacntry4.pdf

There will be a third book in a few weeks, beginning with profiles for each subject and adding brief profiles for a range of publishers with large groups of OA journals–specifically including some of the many university publishers. As with the first two parts, it will be available as a free (CC BY) PDF or as a nominally-priced 6×9″ cream paper trade paperback (price set at production cost rounded up to the nearest $0.50).

I’m delighted to announce publication of Gold Open Access 2013-2018: Articles in Journals (GOA4).

As always, links to the modestly priced trade paperback, free PDF ebook, and dataset are at the project page, https://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html.

Should you wish to skip that step:

• The $6 paperback is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/gold-open-access-2013-2018-articles-in-journals-%28goa4%29/24700518
• The free PDF ebook is available at https://waltcrawford.name/goa4.pdf
• The dataset is available at https://figshare.com/articles/Gold_Open_Access_2013-2018_GOA4_/8079893

All three have CC-BY licenses.

SPARC sponsors this project.

Highlights and changes

This report covers 12,150 fully-analyzed journals (out of a universe of 12,415)–and not only did article count finally exceed 600,000, it exceeds 700,000 2018 articles.

As usual, most articles in biomed and STEM involve fees of some sort, while most articles in H&SS (humanities and social sciences) do not–and, as usual, most journals do not have fees.

The incorrect term APC has been replaced by fee (which includes submission fees, processing/publishing fees and required membership dues). The apparently confusing term free has been replaced by no-fee.

Dropped: the visibility metric and the APCLand/OAWorld distinction.

Added: A look at the four iterations of GOA/GOAJ, and a comparison of journals added (or changed such that matching didn’t work) to DOAJ in 2018 with those continuing from GOAJ3.

Changed: A new Key Facts table should make it possible to get a quick picture of the journals and articles, fee and no-fee article percentages, distribution by subject segment, and average article cost for each element–and, for all but the overall picture, how this group (subject, country, publisher category, etc.) compares to the whole dataset. A number of tables have been modified to emphasize article percentages and cost per article. Oh, and the series name has changed to reflect the fact that it always has been about articles in journals.

Coming Soon

Gold Open Access by Country 2013-2018 (paperback and free PDF ebook)

Gold Open Access 2013-2018: Subject and Publisher Profiles (paperback, free PDF ebook, and probably all or part of two Cites & Insights issues)

And, to be sure, the May 2019 Cites & Insights, consisting of the first few chapters of GOA4. I’m reconsidering this: it seems like a waste of time and was only read 300 or so times last year. There may or may not be a brief “backgrounder” issue related to GOA4.

“Soon”? A few weeks in each case, depending on other events.

And, for those fond of new colors/minerals/whatever: Yes, of course gold OA includes so-called “platinum” and “diamond” OA.

Added May 4, 2019: A few of you who downloaded the book very early may notice a fairly obvious error on the back cover. Since the cover’s purely decorative, it’s not a fundamental error–but I’ve corrected it now. If you really wonder what the error is: buy the trade paperback. Since the print on the rear cover is striclty a decorative element, I’m not planning to redo the paperback.