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The incorrect term APC has been replaced by fee (which includes submission fees, processing/publishing fees and required membership dues). The apparently confusing term free has been replaced by no-fee.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