Archive for the ‘C&I Books’ Category

Should there be a Gold Open Access 8?

Tuesday, August 16th, 2022

It’s mid-August; in another few weeks I’ll need to decide whether to propose (to SPARC) Gold Open Access 2017-2022 (GOA8). I’m inviting feedback, as it’s not an entirely easy decision. Feel free to comment (but those close after two weeks) or send me email at waltcrawford@gmail.com.

The factors or questions involved:

Is it feasible?

Probably yes. As of today, DOAJ shows 18,135 journals, with around 31o removals and 940 additions during 2022. Of course, DOAJ could add thousands more journals between now and December 31, but I’m assuming that won’t happen–that there would wind up being around 19,000, including around 1,800 not in previous editions.

That’s probably too many to complete as rapidly as this year, when there were 17,270 journals of which around 2,200 were new and 16,620 could be fully analyzed, and data gathering was completed on May 6, but should be doable by the end of June or, at worst, mid-July. Massaging the data and preparing the books should take about as long as this year. So, barring health and other unforeseen issues, GOA8 should be complete by late summer, and possibly early summer.

Is it feasible for me to do?

Not automatically the same question. I’m getting older every year*, and my own and family health and other issues can be less predictable every year.

I worked faster this year than last, partly because of better familiarity with datasets, partly because of  tools that worked well. I don’t anticipate a similar improvement next year, but not necessarily any big slowdown either. Assuming, of course, my mind and body keep functioning fairly well…

During the first half of each year, I devote as much time to the GOA project as I can without disrupting all the other aspects of life–chores, shopping, daily walks, weekly hikes, evening TV and reading. My guess is that I average about 20-25 hours a week of data gathering during that time**.

Is it worthwhile?

Ah, there’s the question. I find it interesting, but only if it’s both useful and being used. I’d earlier suggested that one sign that people found my datagathering and analysis worthwhile might be a few of them buying the nominally-priced books. On that basis, I should stop: Nobody (but me) has purchased any copies of any GOA6 or GOA7 book (there were two sales for GOA5).

As for the free PDF versions, so far there have been about 220 downloads of GOA7 and about 45 of the country book. (GOA6, to date, has about 2,000 downloads, and about 270 of the country book. Back in the good old days, GOA3 and GOA4 each had more than 4,600 PDF downloads.)

The dataset shows 19 downloads and 91 views to date; I think only the download figure means much. GOA6 has 106 downloads so far.

OK, these are early days, but those are discouraging figures.

Basically: if it’s not worthwhile to other people, then it’s not worthwhile to me. So I could use some feedback.

Will SPARC keep sponsoring it?

That’s a separate question, one that won’t arise until I decide whether to propose another edition.

Your thoughts?

Endnotes

*Don’t we all? In my case, I’ll turn 77 in mid-September. My physical health is, I believe, no worse than it was a year ago and probably better than two years ago. My mental health? Not for me to say.

**So what do I do with those 20-25 hours a week during the latter part of the year? The last two or three years, I did more book reading–five or six books a month instead of the two or three a month I average while working on GOA–and spent more time watching TV, catching up on never-seen series or extras for series/movies we own; we only watch one show a night (and one movie a weekend), and there are shows we don’t both want to see. Last year, for example, I watched all of Schitt’s Creek. Oh, and I probably spent WAY too much time on Twitter and Facebook. This year has been different: in an effort to improve/retain mental flexibility, I picked up a collection of NYT Sunday crossword puzzles and have been doing one a day–and enjoying it enormously, while getting better at it. Also reading a lot more books and spending a little more time on social media–but not, at least so far, watching more TV. Not that y’all need to know this.

Gold Open Access 6: Early Notes

Monday, December 28th, 2020

I’m almost ready to start data gathering for Gold Open Access 6 (2014-2019). Thursday afternoon after 4 pm (that is, after Midnight January 1 UMT), I’ll do a final download of DOAJ metadata and check the Adds & Deletions spreadsheet–deleting any journals deleted today (December 28) through December 31, and massaging rows of the metadata added since December 27 into new rows of the master sheet used to gather data. I’m guessing there will be no more than one or two deletions and perhaps a dozen additions since I checked this at 12:30 AM (UMT) December 28. [That guess is based on the fact that three titles were deleted and 41 added between December 15 and December 28.]

I downloaded early to do a more thorough job of checking consistency and, for the first time in years, rechecking subject assignments against the subjects and keywords in the DOAJ roles. That process included catching errors from previous years (most of them from VERY early years) and being somewhat more consistent in ambiguous cases–e.g., more journals that cover sustainability going into Ecology, nearly all journals on nutrition going into Medicine, nearly all journals with tourism as a primary focus going into Anthropology, and generally replacing Technology with more specific subjects as appropriate.

Processing the December 15 download yielded 13,528 matches against the GOA5 master spreadsheet, plus 2,103 new titles. Of unmatched GOA5 journals, 456 were explicitly removed from DOAJ and 90 are the usual “small number of mysteries”–most of them cases where a journal has changed both ISSN and normalized URL during the past year. Including the additions and deletes done yesterday, there are currently 15.668 titles in the master spreadsheet; the final number should be slightly higher. Whereas GOA5 wound up with slightly fewer than 14,000 journals being fully analyzed, it’s very likely that GOA6 will include significantly more than 15,000 fully analyzed journals. Will it reach a million articles? Probably not, but we shall see…somewhere between June and September, depending on health, other activities, and how difficult it is to do the manual checking.

Changes from GOA5

In general, metrics remain the same, except for the changes in subject assignments.

“Miscellaneous” has been eliminated as a publisher category (there were 138 such journals in GOA5); “o” now stands for “open/other.”

I’m trying to retain Start (starting date), which DOAJ no longer includes in its downloadable data, by looking for the earliest articles in journals that don’t already have such dates.

I may revise subjects in a few cases when the actual contents appear at odds with the assignment made based on DOAJ information. I’d be surprised if there were even a few dozen such changes.

And, of course, the five-year graphs comparing various editions will be six-year graphs. Since the GOA6 paperback that almost nobody buys will once again be full-color, I won’t attempt to make each of the six lines distinct by dot/dash patterns, relying on color in some cases,

Preliminary Subject Counts

The table that follows shows, for each GOA subject, the journal count in GOA5 (“G5”); the number of continuing journals (“Cont”) after subjects have been rescanned and journals have been deleted; the number of newly-added journals (“New”); and the preliminary GOA6 count (“Total”). These numbers are subject to small changes due to additions and deletions over the next four days and possible on-the-fly revisions during data checking.

SubjectG5ContNewTotal
Agriculture55251867585
Anthropology54958599684
Arts & Architecture36934665411
Biology42438459443
Chemistry18118732219
Computer Science32436153414
Earth Sciences45045264516
Ecology36739975474
Economics926854133987
Education9618831491,032
Engineering53547069539
History39543670506
Language & Literature8938701451,015
Law44143684520
Library Science16516316179
Mathematics26628454338
Media & Communications24527048318
Medicine2,9632,8554413,296
Miscellany21319848246
Other Sciences23019932231
Philosophy24324553298
Physics17118135216
Political Science38041581496
Psychology24124332275
Religion28828648334
Sociology64052966595
Technology25016722189
Zoology27627933312

Added later on 12/28: Why “June to September”?

Why am I so uncertain when I’ll be finished with data gathering (visiting 15,688+ web sites at least once, and probably 2,500+ of them twice)?

Because the time required is so unpredictable, as are factors like the time I can or will devote to it, health, crises, etc.

Let’s look at GOA5. The base dataset was 14,128 journals, including just over 2,000 newly-added journals. The first pass took 102 days–but I felt rushed all the time. The second pass involved 2,476 journals, of which 1,479 required a third visit and 636 a fourth visit–a total of 4,591 additional visits. Those passes took a total of 38 days. So, let’s see, I was able to do an average of 139 journals a day on the first pass–I’m guessing more like 160-170/day for continuing and 100/day for new–and 120/day for the rechecks.

This time, assuming a net gain of 12 journals over the next four days, there will be around 15,680, of which around 2,185 are new. But I’ll be adding starting dates to those 2,173 (and rechecking them on others). So figure anywhere from 100 to 130 journals/day average. That means 120 to 157 days. Assume that total rechecks amount to 32% of the original count, or 5,018, at 100-120/day. adding 43 to 51 days.

So it’s fair to assume at least 163 days to 208 days, if all goes well. So I could be done with data gathering by mid-June, but it could also take until the end of July–again, assuming all goes well, including my energy.

It took about a month after data gathering to process the data and prepare GOA5. I’m guessing about the same this year. So the uploaded dataset and GOA6 could be ready by mid-July, but it could take until early September. Figure less than a month to prepare the Countries book.

It’s conceivable that GOA6 could be ready in June, but it’s highly unlikely. I can’t reasonably devote more than about 30 hours/week to this project: I’m retired, I’m old, there are all the other facets of life to deal with, and–perhaps most important–I know from experience that doing more than 20 journals at a time without a break, with breaks getting longer and longer, just doesn’t work.

So: July-August most likely, late June barely possible, September also possible.

Meanwhile, the color paperback GOA5 is a really great way to read about Gold Open Access; it’s a shame only two copies have been purchased. (My profit on each copy is $0.68. if you’re wondering.)

Cites & Insights Annual Volumes now $20 each

Monday, December 28th, 2020

I’ve changed the pricing on each paperback annual volume of Cites & Insights, volumes 11 through 19, to $20 each. [It appears that Lulu discards PDFs after some point, and to reprice volumes 6-10 I’d have to redo the publishing process. Given that sales have never reached high single figures, it’s not worthwhile.]

Links to all volumes are on the C&I Annuals page at https://waltcrawford.name, or you can just search for Cites & Insights at lulu.com.

GOA4: September 2019 Update

Monday, September 30th, 2019


Readership for the new edition and GOAJ3. As always, readership figures omit most of the last day of each month, because of the tools available.

All links available from the project home page, as always.

GOA4: 2013-2018

  • The dataset: 273 views, 63 downloads.
  • GOA4: 1,281 PDF ebooks and one paperback.
  • Countries 4: 302 PDF ebooks
  • Subjects and Publishers: 241 PDF ebooks

GOAJ3: 2012-2017

  • The dataset: 1,555 views, 255 downloads
  • GOAJ3: 3,593 PDF ebooks + 436 copies of first few chapters (C&I 18.3)
  • Countries: 1,101 PDF ebooks
  • Subject supplement (C&I 18.4): 558 downloads
  • One paperback



GOA4: July 2019 update

Wednesday, July 31st, 2019

Readership for the new edition and GOAJ3. As always, readership figures omit most of the last day of each month, because of the tools available.

All links available from the project home page, as always.

GOA4: 2013-2018

  • The dataset: 207 views, 3 downloads.
  • GOA4: 833 PDF ebooks and one paperback.
  • Countries 4: 201 PDF ebooks
  • Subjects and Publishers: 113 PDF ebooks

GOAJ3: 2012-2017

  • The dataset: 1,463 views, 195 downloads
  • GOAJ3: 3,428 PDF ebooks + 405 copies of first few chapters (C&I 18.3)
  • Countries: 1,044 PDF ebooks
  • Subject supplement (C&I 18.4): 517 downloads
  • One paperback

Gold Open Access Subject/Publisher Profiles Available

Tuesday, June 4th, 2019

goa4 subjects & publisher cover

I’m pleased to announce the final piece of this year’s Gold Open Access project: Gold Open Access 2013-2018: Subject and Publisher Profiles.

This 6″ x 9″ trade paperback begins with additional tables for the subjects covered in Gold Open Access 2013-2018L Articles in Journals (GOA4). It then adds brief profiles (usually two pages, occasionally one or three) for each publisher with at least ten gold OA journals in DOAJ as of January 1, 2019.

These profiles are split into two parts:

  • Traditional, Open Access, and Society publishers
  • University and College publishers

There’s also a country index for all the publisher profiles. The cover represents those profiles (except for one in Serbia: the free heatmap tool I used doesn’t currently include Serbia–which was also probably missing from the cover of the Countries supplement).

The link above is to the $7.50 paperback at Lulu. The book is also available as a free PDF ebook at https://waltcrawford.name/goasub4.pdf. As always, you can find these and other links for all GOA versions at the project page, https://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html

This is an experiment, to see whether the publisher profiles are worthwhile. If you find them worthwhile, please let me know (waltcrawford@gmail.com). Otherwise, even if the GOA project continues, this will be a one-time experiment.

GOA4: May 2019 Update

Friday, May 31st, 2019

GOA4 came out on May 3, 2019. The Country supplement came out on May 18, 2019. (Barring unexpected delays, the experimental Subjects and Publishers supplement will appear sometime next week–that is, somewhere around June 4-8, 2019.)

So it’s time to start reporting readership for the new edition and stop reporting GOAJ2 and Gray OA figures. As always, readership figures omit most of the last day of each month, because of the tools available.

All links available from the project home page, as always.

GOA4: 2013-2018

  • The dataset: 107 views, 12 downloads.
  • GOA4: 491 PDF ebooks and one paperback.
  • Countries 4: 144 PDF ebooks

GOAJ3: 2012-2017

  • The dataset: 1,369 views, 169 downloads
  • GOAJ3: 3,261 PDF ebooks + 384 copies of first few chapters (C&I 18.3)
  • Countries: 968 PDF ebooks
  • Subject supplement (C&I 18.4): 476 downloads
  • One paperback



Gold Open Access by Country 2013-2018 now available

Saturday, May 18th, 2019

I’m pleased to announce that Gold Open Access by Country 2013-2018 is now available. It includes a profile of each country with at least ten gold OA journals active in 2018, and summary notes on each country with one to nine gold OA journals.

Just for fun, I’ve added a thought experiment: if all journals were OA, what would likely expected costs be–under several scenarios and comparing different sets of countries.

As usual, links to the free PDF and nominally-priced trade paperback ($7, of which I get $0.12) are at https://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html

To get directly to the book:

Paperback: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/gold-open-access-by-country-2013-2018/24756367

Ebook: https://waltcrawford.name/goacntry4.pdf

There will be a third book in a few weeks, beginning with profiles for each subject and adding brief profiles for a range of publishers with large groups of OA journals–specifically including some of the many university publishers. As with the first two parts, it will be available as a free (CC BY) PDF or as a nominally-priced 6×9″ cream paper trade paperback (price set at production cost rounded up to the nearest $0.50).

Gold Open Access 2013-2018 now available

Friday, May 3rd, 2019

I’m delighted to announce publication of Gold Open Access 2013-2018: Articles in Journals (GOA4).

As always, links to the modestly priced trade paperback, free PDF ebook, and dataset are at the project page, https://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html.

Should you wish to skip that step:

All three have CC-BY licenses.

SPARC sponsors this project.

Highlights and changes

This report covers 12,150 fully-analyzed journals (out of a universe of 12,415)–and not only did article count finally exceed 600,000, it exceeds 700,000 2018 articles.

As usual, most articles in biomed and STEM involve fees of some sort, while most articles in H&SS (humanities and social sciences) do not–and, as usual, most journals do not have fees.

The incorrect term APC has been replaced by fee (which includes submission fees, processing/publishing fees and required membership dues). The apparently confusing term free has been replaced by no-fee.

Dropped: the visibility metric and the APCLand/OAWorld distinction.

Added: A look at the four iterations of GOA/GOAJ, and a comparison of journals added (or changed such that matching didn’t work) to DOAJ in 2018 with those continuing from GOAJ3.

Changed: A new Key Facts table should make it possible to get a quick picture of the journals and articles, fee and no-fee article percentages, distribution by subject segment, and average article cost for each element–and, for all but the overall picture, how this group (subject, country, publisher category, etc.) compares to the whole dataset. A number of tables have been modified to emphasize article percentages and cost per article. Oh, and the series name has changed to reflect the fact that it always has been about articles in journals.

Coming Soon

Gold Open Access by Country 2013-2018 (paperback and free PDF ebook)

Gold Open Access 2013-2018: Subject and Publisher Profiles (paperback, free PDF ebook, and probably all or part of two Cites & Insights issues)

And, to be sure, the May 2019 Cites & Insights, consisting of the first few chapters of GOA4. I’m reconsidering this: it seems like a waste of time and was only read 300 or so times last year. There may or may not be a brief “backgrounder” issue related to GOA4.

“Soon”? A few weeks in each case, depending on other events.

And, for those fond of new colors/minerals/whatever: Yes, of course gold OA includes so-called “platinum” and “diamond” OA.

Added May 4, 2019: A few of you who downloaded the book very early may notice a fairly obvious error on the back cover. Since the cover’s purely decorative, it’s not a fundamental error–but I’ve corrected it now. If you really wonder what the error is: buy the trade paperback. Since the print on the rear cover is striclty a decorative element, I’m not planning to redo the paperback.

GOAJ3: March 2019 update

Sunday, March 31st, 2019


3eadership figures for GOAJ3 (unfortunately missing most of today, 3/31, and the last day of each month)–and, for now, I’ll keep reporting on GOAJ2 as well.

All links available from the project home page, as always.

GOAJ3: 2012-2017

  • The dataset: 845 views, 154 downloads [last month’s “views” figure was in error]
  • GOAJ3: 3,016 PDF ebooks + 288 copies of first few chapters (C&I 18.3)
  • Countries: 904PDF ebooks
  • Subject supplement (C&I 18.4): 359 downloads
  • No paperbacks

GOAJ2: 2011-2016

  • The dataset: 729 views, 134 downloads.
  • GOAJ2: 2,495 PDF ebooks (and two paperbacks), plus 1,412 copies of chapters 1-7 (C&I 17.4)
  • Countries: 1,075 PDF ebooks (no paperbacks)
  • Subject supplement (C&I 17.5): 2,082 copies

Gray OA