The shifting sands of open access publishing, a publisher's view

Serials Review

Volumn 30, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 275-280

  Regazzi, John ^a  

^a ELSEVIER MASSON   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 10944271199     PISSN: 00987913     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.serrev.2004.09.010     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. While there is no universally used number for the total number of learned journals, I used 16,000 journals to reflect the convergence of two widely used estimates: Carol Tenopir and Donald King, “Trends in Scientific Scholarly Journal Publishing in the U.S.,” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 28, no. 3 (April 1997) and Michael Mabe, “The Growth and Number of Journals,” Serials 16, no. 2 (July 2003). Globally, 1.2 million STM articles are published annually. Source: Elsevier, “Responses to Questions Posed by the Science and Technology Committee” (February 2004), posted at: http://www.elsevier.com/authored_news/corporate/images/UK_STC_FINAL_SUBMISSION.pdf , p.14.
2. Springer: Open Choice, http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,10735,1-40359-0-0-0,00.html .
3. Based on OA journals listed in Directory of Open Access Journals , http://www.doaj.org (accessed April 2004). When the data were sampled in April 2004, there were 821 titles listed in DOAJ. On Aug 26, 2004, there were 1218. While DOAJ.org now notes more “OA journals” than it did in April, most of these are free or entirely sponsored Web sites that already existed prior to 2003 and that DOAJ has since “discovered.” Obviously, no published analysis can be up-to-date in this field. Further, the criteria for DOAJ do not include all journals that some might consider Open Access. These factors should be kept in mind with respect to all DOAJ data in this article.
4. Based on OA journals listed in Directory of Open Access Journals , http://www.doaj.org (accessed April 2004). The 2002 and 2003 numbers are extrapolated on a 32% sampling basis; the 2004 number is based on the number of articles per issue in 2003 multiplied by the projected total issue numbers of 2004 (based on the actual issues published from January to May by the sampled journals). The decline in 2004 is accounted for by the fact that 28% of journals sampled have not published any articles by May in 2004. It is not certain whether the increase in total number of OA journals as given in note 3 affects this extrapolation.
5. Based on DOAJ , the total number of OA research articles published was approximately 25,000 in 2003; based on sampling all the OA journals, less than 20% of them are author-pays.
6. Based on original analysis of Thomson/ISI proprietary data of approximately 8,000 STM journals (original data are available for a fee from Thomson/ISI Research Division (see www.ISINet.com ) and on publicly available data hosted by the Directory of Open Access Journals, at http://www.doaj.org (accessed April 2004).
7. Ibid.
8. Based on research articles published in 2003 in 32% of the OA journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals , www.doaj.org , as of April 2004 and all research articles published in all OA journals at www.biomedcentral.com in 2003.
9. According to ISI, approximately 826,000 articles were published in 2003 in close to 8000 journals, which leads to 103 articles per journal per year (based on original analysis of Thomson/ISI proprietary data of approximately 8,000 STM journals). Original data are available for a fee from Thomson/ISI Research Division (see www.ISINet.com ).
10. Elsevier internal research analysis based on 32% of OA journals listed in Directory of Open Access Journals , http://www.doaj.org , as of April 2004 and all research articles published in all OA journals at http://www.biomedcentral.com in 2003.
11. ISI, “The Impact of Open Access Journals,” http://www.isinet.com/oaj (accessed April 2004) (p. 3).
12. Ian Rowlands, Dave Nicholas, and Paul Huntingdon, “Scholarly Communication in the Digital Environment: What Do Authors Want?” (Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research, Department of Information Science, City University, March 18, 2004), http://ciber.soi.city.ac.uk/ciber-pa-report.pdf, p.28 .
13. A recent study by ISI shows that, on average, Open Access journals rate in the bottom 40% of all journals when measured by impact factor. The four BioMed Central journals that have impact factors rank, on average, in the bottom 10th of all journals in their fields, according to ISI. See: The Thomson Corporation, “The Impact of Open Access Journals—A Citation Study from ISI,” published at http://www.isinet.com/media/presentrep/acropdf/impact-oa-journals.pdf (accessed 2004).
14. The Wellcome Trust, “Costs and Business Models in Scientific Research Publishing,” http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/publications (accessed April 2004). Table 1, p. 3. The data used are for author-pays journals, cost in U.S. dollar. All data here use their estimates for want of more exact knowledge.
15. The specific meaning in the Wellcome Trust report of the categories “good-to-high quality journals” and “medium quality journals” is not clear. Their use in the Report implies that the distinction in the present context is in the acceptance rate of submitted articles (they do not seem to discuss journals “below medium” quality).
16. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, “Scientific Publications: Free for All?” (10th Report of Session 2003-04, vol. 1: Report, HC 399-1, London: The Stationary Office, July 20, 2004).
17. The Open Society Institute's (OSI) Guide to Business Planning for Launching an Open Access Journal uses guidelines of US$3750 per article when identifying minimum revenues required per article. A second data point is from publishing industry consultants John Cox Associates who estimate mean costs per article currently to be between US$3500 and US$4000. By comparison, Science magazine estimates that it would have to charge US$10,000 per article in a pay-per-article model, a function of its high quality and concomitant high rejections rates. (See Alan Leshner, Science executive editor and AAAS head, quoted in Science , 302, no. 5645, (October 24, 2003): 552. See: Elsevier, “Responses to Questions Posed by the Science and Technology Committee” (February 2004), posted at http://www.elsevier.com/authored_news/corporate/images/UK_STC_FINAL_SUBMISSION.pdf , p.14.
18. The Wellcome Trust proposes that good-to-high quality author-pays journals should charge US$550 per published article and US$175 per article submitted. By assuming eight articles are reviewed per article published, submission fees would contribute US$1400 and publication fees would contribute US$550 of the total estimated US$1950 cost per article (op. cit., note 12). The Wellcome Trust proposes that medium quality author-pays journals should charge US$675 per published article and US$175 per article submitted. By assuming two articles are reviewed per article published, submission fees would contribute US$350 and publication fees would contribute US$675 of the total estimated US$1025 cost per article.
19. Declan Butler, “Britain decides ‘open access’ is still an open issue,” Nature 430, no. 390 (July 22, 2004).
20. Stevan Harnad, “Elsevier Gives Authors Green Light for Open Access Self-Archiving,” Liblicense [list-serv] (May 27, 2004), http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3770.html .
21. Adrienne Chute, Elaine Kroe, Patricia O'Shea, Maria Polcari, and Cynthia Jo Ramsey, “Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 2001,” National Center for Education Statistics Report (2003).