Re: Does Dramatic Growth of DOAJ Signal Success or Market Dysfunction?

[Ted Freeman <tedfre@gmail.com>]

One issue here is the word "dramatic," which seems to me to be a 
classic case of begging the question. It's been 10 years since 
BioMed Central pioneered (so they claim on their web site) the 
gold OA journal business. If the latest Bjork study is credible, 
less than 10% of the articles published annually are gold OA 
(this includes delayed and partial or hybrid OA articles--gold or 
DOAJ OA articles represent about 6% of the total annual article 
output). That's an average of less than 1% growth per year. Can 
this credibly be called "dramatic"?

Ted Freeman


On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 5:33 PM, Heather Morrison 
<hgmorris@sfu.ca> wrote:

> Thanks to Phil Davis for welcome discussion on the dramatic
> growth of open access. In brief, yes, the dramatic growth of DOAJ
> journals does mean success, and is no doubt inspired by a
> dysfunctional scholarly publishing market.
>
> As a bit more detail:  if there is anything more amazing that the
> dramatic growth of open access, it is that this growth has taken
> place with so little economic support. Like Phil, I think that
> the best measure of gold OA growth would the number of articles
> published. As the DOAJ search by article service grows, this may
> become feasible as a metric in the near future. One point where I
> differ from Phil is that I think the number of titles is
> important per se, regardless of the number of articles published,
> as this is a measure of infrastructure for OA - not only
> accomplished growth, but potential future growth. Behind every
> one of these journals, for example, is a publishing service -
> often a new publishing service provided by a library, and many of
> these could easily grow with a little support. This is one of the
> reasons I highly recommend that libraries consider joining the
> Compact on Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE). From my
> perspective, the economic target for open access publishing
> should be high quality, fully open access publishing that is
> economically sustainable and/or cost effective.
>
> For my detailed response to Phil's critique of my Dramatic Growth
> of Open Access Dec. 11 issue, please see The Imaginary Journal of
> Poetic Economics, at:
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2010/12/dramatic-growth-of-open-access-dec-11.html
>
> best,
>
> Heather Morrison, MLIS
> Doctor Candidate, SFU School of Communication
> The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
>
>