This is a fleshed-out version of a post from February 2023 and is what currently seems most useful and plausible. I could really use feedback and support (or otherwise).
This book–free as a PDF, probably around $10 as a trade paperback (it would be large) would replace the Countries portion of the Gold Open Access series, and complement GOA8. It would be self-contained, and structured something like this (possibly without part divisions)
Part 1: The Big Picture and Details
- The big picture: overall figures for no-fee OA 2022-2017, similar to the first chapter of GOA (but without fees and probably without exclusions and special cases.
- The big differences: major differences from fee-based gold OA.
- Journals by article volume
- Publisher category–and who pays? (Based on a suggestion from Jan Erik Frantsvåg, this would offer a quick study of funding sources for diamond journals published by toll publishers and OA publishers that also publish fee journals. Unclear whether this is feasible in a short time frame…
- Country of publication: Summary
Part 2: Subjects and Segments
31 brief chapters (mostly three pages?), similar to GOA subject/segment chapters but covering only no-fee journals.
Part 3: Countries and Regions
Similar to the chapters in Gold Open Access by Country 2015-2020, but for no-fee journals (see Cuba and Ecuador as examples, since these have no fee journals)–with a chapter for each country with at least ten no-fee journals active in 2022, and a summary for each region for countries with fewer. Based on 2021 activity, there would be 73 country chapters with another 5o-odd countries covered in summary chapters.
That’s about it. I’d guess around 350-400 pages. I’d guess it would be out in July 2023, but it might slop over into August or be ready in late June 2023.
So here’s the question: Would you find this useful–and would you use it? I’m asking folks to spread this around, so I can get more feedback–email to waltcrawford@gmail.com works just fine.
Just to be clear: I am not asking for money and I’m not even asking whether you’d buy the book (which will be priced at the nearest $0.50 over production cost, so…). If I don’t do this, I probably won’t do the Countries portion at all–it’s not a mandatory part of the (paid) project, and there wasn’t much use of either of the last two versions.
