Characteristics of Open Access Journals in Six Subject Areas William H. Walters and Anne C. Linvill This document is the final, published version of an article in College & Research Libraries, vol. 72, no. 4 (July 2011), pp. 372–392. It is also available from the publisher’s web site at http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2010/09/14/crl-132.abstract Characteristics of Open Access Journals in Six Subject Areas William H. Walters and Anne C. Linvill We examine the characteristics of 663 Open Access (OA) journals in biology, computer science, economics, history, medicine, and psychol- ogy, then compare the OA journals with impact factors to comparable subscription journals. There is great variation in the size of OA journals; the largest publishes more than 2,700 articles per year, but half publish 25 or fewer. While just 29 percent of OA journals charge publication fees, those journals represent 50 percent of the articles in our study. OA journals in the fields of biology and medicine are larger than the others, more likely to charge fees, and more likely to have a high citation impact. Overall, the OA journal landscape is greatly influenced by a few key publishers and journals. nlike subscription journals, importance among college and university Open Access (OA) journals faculty. From 1997 to 2007, the proportion are freely available online. of scholars who reported knowing of one Approximately 5 percent of or more OA journals in their disciplines academic and professional journals have increased from 50 percent to more than 95 adopted some type of OA publishing percent. By 2007, up to 40 percent of active model,1 and the proportion is much high- scholars had published at least once in an er in certain subject areas. For example, OA journal.5 OA journals are also likely to 27 percent of the 174 journals in the Web benefit from a recent National Institutes of Science general medicine and research of Health policy that mandates free online medicine categories are Open Access, and access to all NIH-funded research after another 14 percent are hybrid journals an embargo period.6 Several European that provide free access after an embargo and international funding agencies have period or for certain types of articles.2 adopted similar requirements.7 From September 2004 to August 2010, Open Access journals have the po- the number of titles listed in the Directory tential to alter the system of scholarly of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) rose communication and documentation in a from 1,250 to more than 5,200.3 However, number of ways. For example: other evidence suggests that the number 1. The absence of subscription charges of new OA journals introduced each year may increase readership, especially has declined since its peak in 2001.4 In any among scholars in developing coun- case, OA journals appear to be growing in tries or at undergraduate colleges William H. Walters is Dean of Library Services and Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Menlo Col- lege; e-mail: [email protected]. Anne C. Linvill is Access Services Librarian at Menlo College; e-mail: [email protected]. 372 crl-132 Characteristics of Open Access Journals in Six Subject Areas 373 without comprehensive research paper, “Characteristics of Open Access libraries.8 Journals,” examines all 663 OA journals 2. The potentially lower costs of small- in the six subject areas. The second part, scale online publishing may allow “Comparing OA and Subscription Jour- the establishment of specialized nals,” evaluates the differences between journals that might not be economi- the 70 OA journals with impact factors cally viable under the conventional and a set of 70 comparable subscription subscription model. In particular, OA journals. This study updates previous publishing may increase the extent to research on OA journal characteristics, which scholarly societies, academic explores the differences between OA departments, or other noncom- and subscription journals, and provides mercial publishers can disseminate benchmark data that may be useful in scholarly work of local or regional future investigations. interest.9 Our analysis includes only active, 3. Greater accessibility, along with an refereed, English-language journals increase in the number of special- that provide free, immediate access to ized and regional journals, may all journal content. While OA archives encourage the publication of articles such as ArXiv and RePEc have gained by authors outside the major North prominence within certain subject areas,12 American and European research those archives are not peer-reviewed and universities. However, this will be are therefore not within the scope of our possible only if the publication fees study. charged by OA journals do not limit the participation of authors who do Previous Research not have access to major research Three previous studies have evaluated funding.10 the general characteristics of OA journals. While our study does not address these The most comprehensive investigation, issues directly, it does investigate a set of by the Kaufman-Wills Group, presented related questions: How many OA journals 2005 data for several types of OA journals and articles are there? Who publishes including a sample of 248 titles listed in them? Do noncommercial publishers DOAJ.13 At the time of the Kaufman-Wills have an especially significant role? Are study: publishers outside North America and 1. The typical DOAJ journal published Europe especially well represented? How just 41 articles per year. common are publication fees, and what 2. The fields of medicine, science, and is the usual range of fees? Finally, do OA technology accounted for 79 percent journal characteristics vary systematically of all DOAJ journals. by academic discipline or by publisher 3. Most DOAJ journals—55 percent— type? were published by commercial (for- This paper describes the character- profit) publishers. No other type of istics of the journals listed in the Direc- publisher accounted for more than tory of Open Access Journals within six 15 percent of the total. subject categories: biology, computer 4. A small number of publishers—in science, economics, history, medicine, particular, BioMed Central—pub- and psychology.11 We present data on lished a relatively high proportion the size distribution of OA journals of all DOAJ journals. (articles per year) as well as informa- 5. Half the DOAJ journals had pub- tion about publishers, dates of OA lished their first online issue before publication, countries and languages of 2000. publication, publication fees, and cita- 6. Forty-eight percent of DOAJ journals tion impact factors. The first part of the were published in North America 374 College & Research Libraries July 2011 and 41 percent in Europe. Just 11 Methods percent were published elsewhere. Scope of the Study 7. Forty-seven percent of DOAJ jour- Our analysis of OA journals includes only nals charged publication fees to those that meet the following criteria: authors or their institutions. Those 1. are currently active; fees accounted for 30 percent of the 2. are refereed (through conventional journals’ revenue. peer review or a similar process); 8. Relatively few DOAJ journals were 3. provide free, immediate access to widely cited. (Fewer than 8 per- the entire content of the journal; and cent provided citation data to the 4. include some content in English Kaufman-Wills Group, although (with or without content in other some journals with citation data may languages). have chosen not to respond.) The first standard excludes nominally Because the journals in the Kaufman- active journals that had not published Wills DOAJ sample are comparable to any articles with a cover date of 2008 or those we investigated, our presentation 2009 as of April 2009. The second stan- highlights the similarities and differences dard is intended to limit the analysis to between our findings and theirs. We be- scholarly publications. The third standard lieve our results are more reliable, how- excludes journals that maintain barriers ever, since our analysis is based on data to access; after all, OA journals are not for all 663 OA journals that met the criteria truly open if they rely on subscriptions for inclusion in the study. The Kaufman- (and subscriber-only access) to support Wills data represent only 22 percent of their operations. The fourth standard the DOAJ journals—those whose editors was adopted mainly for pragmatic rea- or publishers responded to a survey.14 sons, since we encountered substantial Although the Kaufman-Wills sample is difficulty gathering detailed information adequate in size, it is not a random sample for journals that were published solely in and does not fully represent the universe languages other than English. of OA publishers. We used the Directory of Open Access In 2006, Morris investigated the status Journals to identify journals for the study, and currency of the journals listed in since nearly all the journals in DOAJ DOAJ, reporting that 5 percent of the meet the second and third criteria listed journals were inaccessible, partially in- above.17 We initially attempted to identify accessible, or not true OA journals; that OA journals through other journal direc- the median date of the first OA issue was tories—EBSCONET, Open J-Gate, Open 2000; and that the number of newly estab- Science Directory, and Ulrichsweb—but lished OA journals rose consistently from found that none of them met our stan- 1990 to 2001 before declining slightly in dards for scholarly OA content. All four each of the following three years. Morris include popular magazines as well as also found substantial differences in size journals for which only some of the among the OA journals she investigated.15 content is freely and immediately avail- More recently, Collins and Walters able.18 While the information in DOAJ is evaluated the characteristics of 166 DOAJ not completely reliable,19 no other source journals using much the same methods attempts to be comprehensive in its cover- described here.16 Our analysis is signifi- age of OA journals while excluding those cantly more thorough, however, and is that do not meet true OA standards.