Walt at Random

No-fee gold open access has been growing every year. But fee-based gold OA, at least in number of published articles, has been growing considerably faster–thanks to a variety of factors, some of which I could speculate about but will choose not to. The unfortunate result (from my perspective as a library person who wants to see strong academic libraries with strong collections and staffing, that aren’t being hollowed out by subscription costs and now OA fees) is that the “transformation” seems to benefit mostly the big established publishers. But that’s a different argument, and I’ve basically retired from that battleground.

Peter Suber, who really has been one of the best and most rational voices in the OA arena, asked whether there was an easy way to look at the trends in fee/no-fee percentages during the years I’ve been doing the Gold OA studies. Actually, there is: Chapter 4 of GOA6 has a set of tables and graphs, and along with the Key Facts on page 3 of that book, contains all the data provided below–but these five tables take the same numbers and show them in a slightly different and perhaps more accessible way. Note that these tables only cover 2016-2020, actually the most recent year of each snapshot study, because DOAJ toughened its listing requirements and dropped many journals in 2015, resulting in a drop from 2014 to 2015.

No-fee gold OA has been growing

No-fee	Journals	Change	Articles	Change
2016	6,155		224,757
2017	7,171	16.51%	246,310	9.59%
2018	8,674	20.96%	297,844	20.92%
2019	9,848	13.53%	332,000	11.47%
2020	10,543	7.06%	370,338	11.55%

Clear enough: reasonable growth every year.

Fee-based gold OA articles grow faster

Fee	Journals	Change	Articles	Change
2016	2,837		298,448
2017	3,122	10.05%	316,836	6.16%
2018	3,506	12.30%	413,826	30.61%
2019	4,090	16.66%	522,018	26.14%
2020	4,585	12.10%	690,918	32.36%

Not from 2016 to 2017, but every year since.

So while the no-fee journal % is stable

	Journals	Fee	%	No-fee	%
2016	8,992	2,837	31.55%	6,155	68.45%
2017	10,293	3,122	30.33%	7,171	69.67%
2018	12,180	3,506	28.78%	8,674	71.22%
2019	13,938	4,090	29.34%	9,848	70.66%
2020	15,128	4,585	30.31%	10,543	69.69%

Remarkably stable, actually: 70% plus or minus 1,5%

The fee article % keeps rising

	Articles	Fee	%	No-fee	%
2016	523,205	298,448	57.04%	224,757	42.96%
2017	563,146	316,836	56.26%	246,310	43.74%
2018	711,670	413,826	58.15%	297,844	41.85%
2019	854,018	522,018	61.12%	332,000	38.88%
2020	1,061,256	690,918	65.10%	370,338	34.90%

Again, except for 2016-2017.

And the cost per article keeps rising

Cost	All	Change	Fee	Change
2016	$803		$1,407
2017	$876	9.14%	$1,557	10.65%
2018	$913	4.18%	$1,569	0.80%
2019	$1,023	12.06%	$1,673	6.60%
2020	$1,203	17.69%	$1,848	10.50%

Cost is determined by taking total fees (without waivers or discounts) divided by total articles.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 13th, 2021 at 12:19 pm and is filed under open access. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.