The fifth edition of the GOA series is now available–as a free PDF ebook, a full-color trade paperback (color for the graphs is new, and raises the price to $11 or the near equivalent in other Lulu-accepted currencies), and a Figshare dataset.
All forms are, as always, linked from the project page at https://www.waltcrawford.name/goaj,html
[The www, should be optional.]
This edition includes 13,938 fully-analyzed journals with 854,018 articles in 2019, up from 774,427 in 2018; 697,390 in 2017; 631,977 in 2016; 571,627 in 2015; and 512,930 in 2014. Of the 13,938 journals, 12,901 published articles in 2019.
Once again, although most gold OA journals (70% of those active in 2019) do not charge fees, most articles (61% in 2019) do involve fees. The average cost per article was no more than $1,023 in 2019 and probably less, but that’s up considerably from 2018. Potential revenue for the year was a little over $863 million.
In addition to broader inclusion, changes this year include:
- Because the pandemic made it less likely that files could be corrected, I did include journals with malware as long as a full set of figures was available.
- The Growth and Shrinkage tables have been simplified (and will probably disappear altogether if there’s a GOA6, since they don’t seem useful).
- Subject profiles are complete in this book, adding about 56 pages; there will not be a separate Subjects and Publishers book.
- The trade paperback includes color graphs, printed in color, for the first time. That means a modest increase in the price, still rounded up from actual production costs, this time $11.00.
