So far, I’ve checked 1,775 (after dealing with ones that don’t require rechecking–specifically journals that were defective both last year and this, the “xm2” and “xx2” problems). There are 685 left to do, so, barring disasters, I’ll finish the second pass this week and start massaging the data.
The good news: quite a few dsn, certificate, and similar problems have been fixed. The bad news: I don’t believe ANY cases of malware have been fixed–and the “grayed” problems (44 rechecked, and 12 more to go) haven’t been either. [Revised 5/5: In fact, a few cases of malware have been fixed. Not nearly enough, but some publishers/universities have cleaned up their acts.]
I’m pretty sure I know what’s causing the grayed problem: sites being too clever about insisting on cookie approval/disapproval or the like, and doing things in the wrong order, such that the entire frame is protected from any input (and usually unreadable). Net effect: the journal’s unworkable. Never happened until this year, and I suspect some journals found a “neat solution” and passed the code along… Oh, and yes, I have tried all three of the browsers I have access to (Firefox, Chrome, and Edge), and cleared the cookies from Chrome and Edge. No help. This is just plain bad coding.
Is “The Big Eleven” Worthwhile?
For the past three years, part of Chapter 6 has been discussions of The Big Eleven–eleven publishers and publishing groups that absolutely dominate OA fees–and The Long Tail (everybody else). That runs to eleven pages (purely coincidental) in the most recent edition.
I’m thinking of dropping that discussion. There’s significant labor in finding out who belongs in the “big” group (especially given changes in ownership), and I’m not convinced that the results justify the effort. Any reader could, of course, download the spreadsheet and prepare their own analysis.
Unless there’s convincing evidence that this work is worthwhile (it’s obviously not driving book sales and I don’t recall any feedback), I’ll drop it and save the eleven pages and the day or so of labor. Any feedback on this needs to reach me within the next week (say by May 11): waltcrawford@gmail.com
