Walt at Random

I’ve completed the first pass, and posted a Google Sheet with 1,290 problematic journals–22 xn (apparently not gold OA), 622 xm (malware or certificate problems), and 646 xx (unreachable or unworkable). Here’s the link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qEkowH_-tUkmoeYcwou6AqNZOfG5hMD2PqDtPxUovYY/edit?usp=sharing

If you’re in a position to help get these fixed, with special emphasis on the malware cases, note that the FINAL PASS will begin on May 15, 2020–a pass of those that haven’t been fixed earlier. (At that point, I’ll distinguish between malware inclusions that can be blocked but leave the journals reachable–usually bad “free service” modules like counters or contact mappers–and journals that can’t be reached.)

DOAJ is working on these as well. Last year, their efforts reduced hundreds and hundreds of malware cases to a mere 17 (and three more with malware inclusions). Can we do as well this year?

If you’re wondering where the trouble hotspots are, they’re actually on the “Sheet 1” worksheet. The most difficult cases:

43 other countries have 9 or fewer each.

Incidentally, of my two “aspirational goals” for this year’s GOA project, one is a clear success, the other possible but not likely:

• Clear success: There were definitely more than 800,000 articles in serious gold OA journals (that is, those in DOAJ) in 2019.
• Possible but not likely: 14,000 fully-analyzed journals. Of the 14,128 scanned, 96 are “xd” journals–ones with no articles more recent than 2013, usually because a renamed or merged journal replaced them. With no articles in the 2014-2019 period, those aren’t fully analyzed–and that leaves only 32 to spare, including 22 that appear not to be OA. I think it unlikely that the xm+xx count can be reduced to nine or less, but one can always hope.

Otherwise? I won’t know the overall fee/nofee percentage until all the retesting is done, but so far the fee percentage seems to be right around 30%, which is what I’d expect: very few existing no-fee journals switch to fees (APCs and otherwise) and most newly-added journals are also no-fee.

• Of the 869 journals for which data has been recorded (131 are either unavailable or have malware or other issues), 58 (7%) have fees. (These are almost all university-based.)
• Of that 58, I find that one is a membership fee, two are questionable (internal disagreement in the site or some other problem) and 13 consist of both submission and processing/publishing charges.
• For 115 of the no-fee journals, I wasn’t certain of the no-fee status until I checked DOAJ.
• Problematic cases include 55 malware cases, one that isn’t an OA journal, and 73 that couldn’t be reached or were unworkable. There was also one “xd” (renamed/ceased duplicate).
• This is the last “thousand” note. Once I finish the last 1,128 in the first pass, I’ll send DOAJ a final group of problematic journals and post a new Google Sheet with the full set of problems–WAY too many of them.
• I’ll recheck journals that seemed likely to have additional 2019 articles and most “xx” journals, and do a final pass for problematic journals beginning May 15.
• Yes, of course I’m slowing down. If you’re at full productivity during the current situation, I’d wonder why.

Readership for the new edition and GOAJ3.

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

GOA4: 2013-2018

• The dataset: 528 views, 179 downloads.
• GOA4: 2,197 PDF ebooks
• Countries 4: 432 PDF ebooks
• Subjects and Publishers: 331 PDF ebooks [Note: based on an almost total lack of interest–two responses to repeated feedback requests, and only one of the two positive–there won’t be another subjects/publishers book.]

GOAJ3: 2012-2017

• The dataset: 1,865 views, 346 downloads
• GOAJ3: 3,791 PDF ebooks
• Countries: 1,182 PDF ebooks

Not directly related, but I’m also checking total Cites & Insights visits–since I’ve promised to keep the site, now static, up at least through December 2021 but possibly no longer.

February 2020: 1,219 visits (as reported by AWStats and excluding visits with no actual reads or downloads).

March 2020: 2,493 visits.