Is Gold Open Access growing? If so, how quickly? More importantly, how accurately is the Open Access movement able to measure its growth? ...
In 2009, said [Peter] Suber, [the Directory of Open Access Journals] "added 723 peer-reviewed OA journals, representing 19% growth over the previous year. [In 2008] it grew by 812 journals or 27%. ..."
[But] seeking to measure the growth of Gold OA by counting the number of journals in the DOAJ is a deeply flawed approach.
For instance, as Suber suggests — and publishing consultant Alma Swan confirms — the DOAJ registry (in Swan's words) "merely reflects the pace at which the Lund people add them." ...
When I contacted the Lund team they confirmed that they have been struggling to keep up ...
Instead of using DOAJ he has been using Ullrich's Periodicals Directory for his IT-barometer study. As he explains: "We undertook a search for peer reviewed, scholarly journals, with a particular start year, and then searched for all journals versus Open Access journals." ...
[Björk's] graph suggests that the percentage of new journals created as OA journals in 2007 was 32%. ...
The truth of the matter, concludes Swan, is that — whatever source one uses — trying to measure the growth of Gold OA by counting journals "is an unsatisfactory methodology". ...
In short, the OA movement really needs to abandon its fixation on counting journals and concentrate on papers. "The best way to measure growth would be by number of Gold articles published each year," says Swan. ...
[Björk's] figures suggest that the overall percentage of articles published as Gold OA in 2008 was 9.3% ...
Björk's figures, we should note, also include papers published as Hybrid OA (24% of his Gold OA total). ...
Nevertheless, since Björk's main focus is on taking a snapshot of the current situation, rather than measuring the growth of Gold OA, his figures don't take us much further forward if our aim is to track growth over time.
So we are left with the question we began with: Is Gold OA growing? If so, how quickly, and is that growth accelerating? "I have no evidence to show any acceleration in growth, " says Björk. "On the contrary it seems that growth has been relatively stable, after a short expansive period when BioMed Central and PLoS were founded"
In short, we simply don't know how fast Gold OA is growing, or even if it is growing. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 1/11/2010 01:34:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
