Re: Dramatic growth of open access

[<matt@biomedcentral.com>]

"I don't think the data show that open access continues to grow 
dramatically, not in medicine at least"

There are a several reasons that a year by year analysis of the 
DOAJ, is not really suitable as a metric for the growth of OA.

Firstly, as has been discussed recently on this list, the DOAJ 
does not list the year that a journal went open access. Rather 
(as I understand it) it lists the first year for which OA content 
is available from the journal concerned. As such, any journals 
which have converted to open access, rather than starting as open 
access journals, are assigned to the wrong year in the analysis 
below, underestimating the number of journals going OA in recent 
years, and overestimating the number of OA journals launched in 
the past.

(2) The number of open access journals is in any case an poor 
proxy for the overall growth of open access publishing. BioMed 
Central launched 50+ titles in the year 2000 (contributing to an 
apparent peak in new open access journals in that year). That is 
the most journals BioMed Central ever launched in a single year. 
So did we "peak" in 2000? Hardly. BioMed Central published 5586 
peer reviewed open access articles in 2005, compared to 224 in 
2000 - a 25-fold increase, and we continue to see very strong 
year on year growth.

(3) Looking a the number of journals in the DOAJ fails to account 
for the growing take up of optional open access (e.g. as 
practiced by PNAS et al.) and also fails to distinguish between 
huge open access journals (like NAR) and tiny ones.

A better approach would be to analyse the number of immediate 
open access articles published year on year. This is challenging 
to do, not least because several years on it is very difficult to 
be sure what *was* open access at the moment of publication. But 
that is really the metric that counts.

Matthew Cockerill, Ph.D.
Publisher
BioMed Central ( http://www.biomedcentral.com/ )
34-42, Cleveland Street
London
W1T 4LB
UK

Email: matt@biomedcentral.com

On 11 Apr 2006, at 0:04, Sally Morris ((ALPSP)) wrote:

> 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