I think Sally is absolutely correct that less than 2.5% of published content is published in open access journals, but that doesn't count the large amount of material that is made freely available by fee-for-access publishers through their own websites or through PubMed Central. I, of course, don't count this later class as being truly open access, but it is as available as self-archived content and should be given its proper due.
I would also like to object, once again, to Stevan's continued use of this 5% open access / 95% self-archiving number. It's grossly unfair to contrast reality (<5% of articles currrently published in open access journals) on one side with potential (that 95% - or more accurately something like 50% - of articles COULD be self-archived). With BMC's diverse collection of journals, PLoS, and the many other open-access publishers in DOAJ (including high-end journals like PLoS Biology, J. Biol, JCI, BMJ) virtually any biomedical research article could be published in an open-access journal today. Thus, most authors - many, many more than the 5% you imply - who want to make their work freely available have a choice - they can publish it in a "green" fee-for-access journal and self-archive it, or they can publish in an open access "gold" journal. They may have reasons to choose the former route, and there is certainly a lot of work that needs to be done to make open access journals more appealing, but let's stop implying that the open access journal option wasn't available. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stevan Harnad" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 1:29 PM Subject: Re: Journals > Peer-Reviewed Journals > Open-Access Journals < Open Access > On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, Sally Morris wrote: > > > I would question Stevan's estimate that 2.5% of articles are published in OA > > journals. While it does indeed look as if 2 - 2.5% of peer reviewed > > journals are OA (that is, if all those listed by Lund et al are peer > > reviewed), I very much doubt that they carry as many articles as the rest. > > This is because OA journals are, almost without exception, relatively new > > and extremely long-established journals tend to be far, far, bigger in terms > > of issues and articles published per year. > > I don't disagree with Sally's suggestion that 2.5% of journals does > not necessarily mean 2.5% of articles published in journals. I was > very deliberately using a very conservative, high-end estimate (sometimes > I even use 5%) merely to illustrate how minuscule is the amount of OA that > can currently be provided via the OA journal route ("gold") and hence > how important it is to supplement it via the OA self-archiving route > ("green"), today. > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif > > Stevan Harnad > > NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open > access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at > the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03): > > http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html > Post discussion to: [email protected] > > Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy: > BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access > journal whenever one exists. > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals > BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable > toll-access journal and also self-archive it. > http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml > http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php >
