Peter Murray-Rust wrote :
> I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of the distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will resolve this. > To get a (much) more detailed description of the OA world, I use the works of Walt Crawford, who did incredibly thorough studies of OA journals. Yes, I know its not peer-reviewed research, but dont let me start on this (besides, I have reviewed a few papers on the subject for various journals, and Walts work certainly meets the usual scientific standards). Thus, according to his comprehensive study GOAJ2 - Gold Open Access Journals 2011-2016 (http://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html) In 2016 : 1. Among the 8.4k journals listed in DOAJ and having published articles that year, for a total of ~520k articles, 68 % of the journals, publishing 43% of the articles, had no APCs. 2. The 700 largest (> 150 articles/y) journals (8% of total) published 280k articles (54% of total). Among these, 220 journals (31%), publishing 63k articles (22%), had no APCs. 3. The 7.7k smallest (< 150 articles/y) journals (92 % of total) published 240k articles (46% of total). Among these, 5.5k journals (72%), publishing 160k articles (67%) had no APCs. In brief, one can say that the long tail of small OA journals (92% of total) published a little bit less than half of the articles, 2/3 of those without APCs (compared to less than 1/4 for the large journals). There is a wealth of information and data in Walt Crawfords study that allows the interested reader to explore issues like differences between domains, publisher types, regions, etc. And, in the spirit of open science, the underlying data are available. Marc Couture De : goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] De la part de Peter Murray-Rust Envoyé : 25 avril 2018 11:56 À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Objet : Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa I agree with Ricky and Hilda that the "most journals charge no APCs" is misleading. It's been around for years and has worried me. Assuming the normal power-law distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law) the following are by statistical definition true: * most journals have small volumes * most papers are published in a few large volume journals That's true regardless of whether they are Open Access or not. I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of the distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will resolve this. Now ... for speculation The long tail of small journals are likely to be niche journals in some way. There are exceptions such as the J Machine Learning Research which is APC-less, and CC BY run by the goodwill of the community. That used to be fairly common. (I used to be the treasurer of a scholarly society and all work was voluntary). When all the articles are from and to a smallish community of practice it makes sense. But I suspect that when a journal gets to a over a few hundred articles a year then most organizations need to pay staff to manage the process. Maybe not much. But it's a temptation to solve the admin by paying. Then the options are: * subsidise from elsewhere (University, or in my society's case revenue from events). * membership scheme - I believe arXiv is subsidized through a membership scheme. * charge authors * charge readers And so most large journals need to raise income. P. On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 3:46 PM, Richard Poynder <richard.poyn...@gmail.com> wrote: Heather, Personally, I think that any statement that says that most OA journals do not charge an APC needs to be set alongside the following blog post by Hilda Bastian: http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2018/04/02/a-reality-check-on-author- access-to-open-access-publishing/ Extract: 'Technically, the most journals dont charge authors statement could well be true. Most open access journals may not charge authors. The source thats used to support the claim is generally DOAJ the Directory of Open Access Journals. One of the pieces of meta-data for journals in DOAJ is whether or not the journal levies an APC an author processing charge for an open access (OA) publication. But I think this is a data framing thats deeply misleading. And it does harm. As long as people can argue that there are just so many options for fee-free publishing, then there will be less of a sense of urgency about eliminating, or at least drastically reducing, APCs. As Kyle Siler and colleagues show in the field of global health research, the APC is adding a new stratification of researchers globally, between those who can afford open publishing in highly regarded journals, and those who cant.' Richard On 25 April 2018 at 15:16, Heather Morrison <heather.morri...@uottawa.ca> wrote: Correction: Chris, you have the proportion of OA journals with APCs in reverse. Data and calculations follow. 73% of fully OA journals (about three quarters) do not charge APCs. To calculate go to DOAJ Advanced Search, select journals / articles select journals, and click on Article Processing Charges. As of today, April 25, 2108, the response to the DOAJ question of whether a journal has an APC is: 8,250: no (73%) 2,979 yes (26%) 65: no information (.5%) Total # of journals in DOAJ: 11,294 (Note rounding error) OA journals with no APCs have a variety of business models. Direct and indirect sponsorship appears to be common. For example in Canada our Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has an Aid to Scholarly Journals Program. Journals can apply for grants; these applications go through a journal-level peer review process. This program has been in place for many years. Originally all supported journals were subscription-based. The trend is towards open access, with many journals now fully OA and all or almost all have free access after an embargo period. I recommend this model as a means of support for open access journals that also ensure high-level academic quality control. Regions with no existing program in place would probably find it easier to start with an OA requirement than those with legacy programs like SSHRC. Local journals are important to ensure publishing venues are available for research of local significance. Canadian law, politics, culture, history, local environmental and social conditions are important matters to study, but not high priority for readers outside Canada. Articles on these topics risk rejection from international journal due to selection based on reader interest rather than the quality or importance of the work. Local publishing does not exclude global scholarly engagement. Canada has a large francophone population; our researchers in language, culture, and history often work with scholars in West Africa, France, Haiti, Belgium, etc. For Canada's arctic researchers, "local" has geographic rather than local significance. This is reflected in authorship and editorial boards. A journal hosted and with editorial leadership in Canada will often include international content and reviewers. Journals produced locally can be read anywhere, especially if they are open access. best, Heather Morrison Associate Professor, University of Ottawa School of Information Studies Sustaining the Knowledge Commons - a SSHRC Insight Project Sustainingknowledgecommons.org -------- Original message -------- From: Chris Zielinski <ch...@chriszielinski.com> Date: 2018-04-25 6:38 AM (GMT-05:00) To: richard.poyn...@cantab.net Cc: goal@eprints.org Subject: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa Richard, In this context, you may be interested in a post I recently submitted to the Healthcare Information for All (HIFA) list in the context of a HIFA discussion of this topic: ---------- Original Message ---------- To: HIFA - Healthcare Information For All <h...@dgroups.org> Date: 18 April 2018 at 19:33 Subject: Re: [hifa] Open Access Author Processing Charges (3) In the bad old days before Open Access (OA), a developing country author wrote a paper and submitted it to a journal and, if the paper was good enough, the generous people at the journal organized peer review, redid/redesigned the tables and most of the graphics, and maybe even did some language editing - at no cost to the author. Then they published the journal, charging for access to the paper version and pay-walling any online version. From the author's perspective, thus, there was no barrier to publication, although there were cost barriers to reading the paper subsequently, which was particularly onerous in poorer countries. So the situation in developing countries was good for authors - who simply had to write well - and bad for librarians and readers, who had to find the money to buy the content. Now that Open Access is making serious inroads, we are finding the situation reversed - librarians and readers bask in an avalanche of cost-free online papers, while authors are scrambling to find the resources to pay for publication.From the commentary on this list it is clear that authors in developing countries are being restrained from publishing by the "Article Processing Charge" (APC). Zoe Mullan, Editor of The Lancet Global Health makes the point that "we assume that this cost will be borne by the funding body". This seems to be rather more likely in industrialized countries than in developing ones. Basic research is much more frequently carried out in industrialized countries and supported by the sort of international funding that pays for papers. But the kind of health research that is essential in developing countries - health services and health systems research - is generally undertaken by local institutions and universities. This is a reason for serious concern, as the economic model of OA appears to be blocking the most important local research. I would add that this research needs to be published internationally, not just locally, in order to attract opinions, input and (in some cases) validation and consensus from the global health community. Many OA journals have special rates, flexibilities and waivers for writers from developing countries. It is also true that about a quarter of the OA journals do not charge an APC at all - I presume they pay for their work by sales of their print editions in industrialized countries, thus enabling those in other countries free access to the online version. Incidentally, this is not just an issue for developing country writers - I am a non-institutional writer in an industrialized country, writing papers which are not based on funded research, and it is a real hardship to find APC money to pay for my papers. Best, Chris Chris Zielinski ch...@chriszielinski.com Blogs: http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com and http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com Research publications: http://www.researchgate.net On 25 April 2018 at 08:47 Richard Poynder <richard.poyn...@cantab.net> wrote: To try and get a sense of how open access looks from different parts of the world, particularly as the strategy of engineering a global flip of subscription journals to a pay-to-publish gold OA model gains more traction, I am interested in talking to open access advocates in different parts of the world, ideally by means of matched interviews. Earlier this month, for instance, I published a Q&A with Jeff MacKie-Mason, UC Berkeleys University Librarian and Chief Digital Scholarship Officer. (https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/north-south-and-open-access-view-fro m.html). Yesterday, I published a matched Q&A covering the same themes with Mahmoud Khalifa, a librarian at the Library of Congress Cairo Office, and DOAJ Ambassador for the Middle East and Persian Gulf. This interview can be read here: https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/north-south-and-open-access-view-from _24.html I have also been asking those I interview to comment on the answers given by their matched interviewee. Mahmoud Khalifas response to the MacKie-Mason Q&A is incorporated in this post: https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/north-south-and-open-access-mahmoud.h tml I am open to suggestions for further matched interviews. Richard Poynder _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Richard Poynder www.richardpoynder.co.uk _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Peter Murray-Rust Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069 --- L'absence de virus dans ce courrier électronique a été vérifiée par le logiciel antivirus Avast. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
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