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Re: Dramatic growth of open access

I would agree with Peter - the figures I've analysed also suggest a levelling off (2001 may be just an outlier), given that new journals may not appear on the listings immediately

Sally

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
Email: sally.morris@alpsp.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Banks" <pbanks@diabetes.org>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 11:55 PM
Subject: Re: Dramatic growth of open access

This is just quick-and-dirty counting, but I don't think the data show that open access continues to grow dramatically, not in medicine at least. The growth may even have leveled off.

These are the number of general medical titles in the DOAJ, listed by start year.

2005 9
2004 30
2003 27
2002 25
2001 25
2000 21
1999 17
1998 9
1997 15
1996 11
1995 9
1994 2
1993 2
1992 2
1991 1
1990 1

In the 5 minutes I had, it was too hard to search by start of
publication year in PubMed, but I wonder if the number of new
titles pretty much parallels those in the DOAJ.

The numbers may overstate the real impact of the new OA journals.
Several of the 2005 journals are highly specialized and some
publish very little content; in fact, some seem largely titles in
search of papers. For example, the Spanish-language journal
Archivos de Medicina seems to have published just one paper in
2005. The Biomedical Imaging and Intervention Journal published
13 papers, but only one was of original research. Other journals
are more robust, like BMC's Head and Face Medicine, even if of
specialized interest.

The point is that even if the overall numbers showed the growth
of OA--and I am not convinced they do--you have also to look at
the number, type, and usefulness of articles. I don't know if the
OA tide is coming in or going out; it certainly isn't a tsunami.


Peter Banks
Publisher
American Diabetes Association
Email: pbanks@diabetes.org