Archive for January, 2020

GOA4: January 2020 update

Friday, January 31st, 2020

Readership for the new edition and GOAJ3. I changed hosts in January, and in the process lost statistics for January 1-20, 2016–and I’m no longer bothering to report paperback sales (essentially none) or GOAJ3 Cites & Insights numbers. (These figures lack 1/31: I may be able to fix that in February.)

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

GOA4: 2013-2018

  • The dataset: 439 views, 137 downloads.
  • GOA4: 1,746 PDF ebooks
  • Countries 4: 389 PDF ebooks
  • Subjects and Publishers: 300 PDF ebooks

GOAJ3: 2012-2017

  • The dataset: 1,735 views, 314 downloads
  • GOAJ3: 3,699 PDF ebooks
  • Countries: 1,141 PDF ebooks

A few notes on the first 4,000

Tuesday, January 28th, 2020


Followup: some notes on the first 4,000 journals–partly to show just how unrepresentative any sample is. Compare this to the first 3,000… (I sort by publisher, then journal, because that speeds things up).

A few items do seem interesting.

  • Of the 3,747 journals for which data has been recorded (253 are either unavailable or have malware issues), 1,363 (36%) have fees.
  • Of that 1,363, I find that 11 have submission fees–and 24 others have both submission and processing fees. 121 others have fees that vary based on article length (I don’t record that if the surcharge begins at 11 pages or higher).
  • In 79 of the 1,363 cases, I gathered the fee status and amount from the DOAJ record because it was not easy to locate within the journal’s website.
  • Malware is still with us: 100 of the 214 for which I don’t yet have data recorded were flagged by Malwarebytes–an uncomfortably high figure. 109 others don’t seem to be there or are unworkable…and two aren’t OA journals, AFAICT.
  • In 78 cases where I do have data, the URL in DOAJ did not yield the website but a journal title search in Chrome did yield the website.
  • Some of the numbers in the 3,000-journal notes are typos caused by sloppy editing. I’ll go fix those now…



Gold Open Access 2014-2019: Announcement and a Question

Monday, January 27th, 2020

There will be a Gold Open Access 2014-2019: Articles in Journals (GOA5), probably out in summer or very late spring. It will be similar to GOA4, but covering a lot more journals (starting with more than 14,000!). As before, thanks to SPARC for underwriting this project and assuring that all results are freely available.

As usual, there will be a spreadsheet on figshare, a free PDF ebook (also available as a paperback priced at the cost of production), and another free/nominal PDF ebook detailing journals by country.

The question: should I do the final piece, a second version of Gold Open Access 2013-2018: Subject and Publisher Profiles?

To put it another way: do a significant number of you find those profiles valuable–enough to warrant an extra week or two of my time? (That’s partly to do a little publisher normalizing, mostly to generate the tables and add a sentence or two on each publisher.)

Last year’s version saw 279 ebook downloads, about half as many as the previous year’s subject coverage in Cites & Insights. I find the profiles interesting, but I’m not sure they’re worthwhile. If I drop the extra publication, I’ll expand the subject coverage in Gold Open Access 2014-2019, making that book a little longer–and the publisher profiles will just disappear.

If you have an opinion, you can comment here or send me email at waltcrawford@gmail.com. Comments are typically open for two weeks.

Trouble finding Cites & Insights?

Sunday, January 26th, 2020

If you get a 404 when attempting to reach Cites & Insights or any issue of the now-closed magazine, please change “citesandinsights.info” in the URL to “cical.info” and it should work.

I’m attempting to get the aliasing problem solved. (The original domain was always cical.info, with citesandinsights.info as an alias.)

FIXED, and it’s possible it was just my failure to clear a cache. All domains running properly (and the new host, A2Hosting, has fabulous tech support).

FIXED (and maybe never broken) at the domain level but not at the issue level: if you look for an issue and get a 404, make the change above.

Here’s the current status:

  1. The “real” Cites & Insights has always been at cical.info, now hosted by A2Hosting rather than lishost.org. It continues to be available and will be (barring disasters) through at least 2022.
  2. That site is static–other than possible messages on the home page (e.g., changes in paperback pricing), there will be no new or modified content.
  3. I’m working on the citesandinsights.info issues. As part of that work, that domain might disappear entirely for a little while. URLs may yield various error messages (e,g., 404, failure to find domain, security certificate errors). In all cases, if the URL is correct, just change citesandinsights.info to cical.info and it should work just fine. NOTE: As of 4:15 pm Pacific Standard Time on January 28, 2020, I find that URLs are working properly in Edge, Chrome and–once I added a PDF-viewing extension–Firefox. Unless I hear differently, I’m calling this problem resolved.

A few notes on the first 3,000

Tuesday, January 21st, 2020

Followup: some notes on the first 3,000 journals–partly to show just how unrepresentative any sample is. Compare this to the first21,000… This is not at all a representative sample (I sort by publisher, then journal, because that speeds things up).

Some typos correcvted 1/28

A few items do seem interesting.

  • Of the 2,826 journals for which data has been recorded (174 are either unavailable or have malware issues), 1,086 have fees.
  • Of that 1,086, I find that ten have submission fees–and 20 others have both submission and processing fees. 101 others have fees that vary based on article length (I don’t record that if the surcharge begins at 15 pages or higher).
  • In 68 of the 1,086 cases, I gathered the fee status and amount from the DOAJ record because it was not easy to locate within the journal’s website.
  • Malware is still with us: 78 of the 174 for which I don’t yet have data recorded were flagged by Malwarebytes–an uncomfortably high figure. 71 others don’t seem to be there or are unworkable…and two aren’t OA journals, AFAICT.
  • In 56 cases where I do have data, the URL in DOAJ did not yield the website but a journal title search in Chrome did yield the website.
  • At DOAJ’s request, I’ve sent them the spreadsheet segment involving malware and unavailability. If the project continues, I’ll do that for every 3,000 journals.

If you’re looking for C&I..

Tuesday, January 21st, 2020

At this point, cical.info will get you to the version of Cites & Insights that will stick around for at least two more years. (That was the original domain: citesandinsights.info is a pseudonym.) I’m working on getting the pseudonym restored.

Meanwhile, waltcrawford.name is now on its long-term host…

As for Walt at Random: working on it.

A little plug for A2Hosting.com. my new host: VERY service-oriented and fast.

A few notes on the first 2,000

Tuesday, January 14th, 2020

Followup: some notes on the first 2,000 journals–partly to show just how unrepresentative any sample is. Compare this to the first 1,000… This is not at all a representative sample (I sort by publisher, then journal, because that speeds things up).

A few items do seem interesting.

  • Of the 1,866 journals for which data has been recorded (134 are either unavailable or have malware issues), 692 have fees. (Easy explanation: BMC’s 360-odd journals are in the second 1,000; almost all have fees.)
  • Of that 692, I find that ninehave submission fees–and 19 others have both submission and processing fees. 60 others have fees that vary based on article length (I don’t record that if the surcharge begins at 11 pages or higher).
  • In 345 of the 946 cases, I gathered the fee status and amount from the DOAJ record because it was not easy to locate within the journal’s website.
  • Malware is still with us: 65 of the 134 for which I don’t yet have data recorded were flagged by Malwarebytes–an uncomfortably high figure (but about half of those are in one series). 52 others don’t seem to be there…and two aren’t OA journals, AFAICT
  • In 34 cases where I do have data, the URL in DOAJ did not yield the website but a journal title search in Chrome did yield the website.

Paperback version of C&I 19 now available

Monday, January 13th, 2020
ci19

The paperback version of Cites & Insights 2019, including indexes that are exclusive to that version, is now available from Lulu for $25. (I plan to adjust all C&I prices to a standard level, for the final year of availability, in the near future.)

The cover for this final paperback builds on nine previous cover images.

You can find it directly at http://www.lulu.com/shop/walt-crawford/cites-insights-19-2019/paperback/product-24393000.html

(or just go to Lulu and search for Cites & Insights 2019).

If you hurry, you can use coupon code ONEFIVE and save 15%–good through January 16.

A few notes on the first 1000

Tuesday, January 7th, 2020

I’ve started gathering data for GOA5–articles from 2014 through 2019–and have reached the first milestone, the first 1,000 journals. This is not at all a representative sample (I sort by publisher, then journal, because that speeds things up)–to suggest that 7% of a wildly heterogeneous set of journals is representative would be to commit the kind of error that only true academics can get away with.

But a few items do seem interesting.

  • Of the 946 journals for which data has been recorded (54 are either unavailable or have malware issues), 273 have fees.
  • Of that 273, I find that seven have submission fees–and 19 others have both submission and processing fees. 46 others have fees that vary based on article length (I don’t record that if the surcharge begins at 11 pages or higher).
  • In 221 of the 946 cases, I gathered the fee status and amount from the DOAJ record because it was not easy to locate within the journal’s website.
  • Malware is still with us: 23 of the 54 for which I don’t yet have data recorded were flagged by Malwarebytes. 29 others don’t seem to be there…
  • In 21 cases where I do have data, the URL in DOAJ did not yield the website but a journal title search in Chrome did yield the website.

That’s it for now. Nothing earth-shattering. Are submission fees a growing trend? It’s way too early to say.