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:
| Indonesia | 443 |
| Brazil | 215 |
| Iran | 72 |
| Poland | 55 |
| Spain | 51 |
| Ukraine | 46 |
| Romania | 45 |
| Colombia | 33 |
| Turkey | 33 |
| Argentina | 27 |
| United States | 18 |
| Malaysia | 17 |
| Russia | 15 |
| Cuba | 12 |
| India | 12 |
| Pakistan | 12 |
| Chile | 11 |
| Portugal | 11 |
| United Kingdom | 11 |
| Venezuela | 11 |
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.
