re: the Dramatic NET growth of open access: articles

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

The growth in DOAJ titles, dramatic as it is (over 822 title 
increase over the past year, more than 2 titles added every day), 
is but a small part of the picture of open access growth.

As liblicense-l participants have pointed out recently, it is 
articles, both numbers and as a percentage of the peer-reviewed 
journal articles published, that is the number that would really 
tell us the extent of open access.

While there is no direct measure of this number, there are some 
indirect indications.  For example, Scientific Commons added 3 
million publications in the past quarter (nearly a million a 
month). It would be an interesting research project to go through 
these additions and figure out how many are peer-reviewed 
articles, or other types of works.  Given the sheer volume, this 
could take a little time!

Bjork et al.  calculated that of the estimated 1,350,000 journals 
articles published in 2006, 19.4% are freely accessible (4.6% OA 
immediately on publication, 3.5% freely accessible after an 
embargo, usually at least on year; and 11.3% through 
self-archiving). (ELPUB 2008).

Of course, open access has grown dramatically since 2006.  In 
September 2006, there were 2,400 journals listed in DOAJ; today, 
there are more than 3,700.  Many publishers have introduced open 
choice options since 2006, and Oxford Open has begun decreasing 
subscription prices to reflect revenue from this source!  The 
number of open access mandate policies has increased to more than 
50 today.

For more on The Dramatic Growth of Open Access, please see: 
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2006/08/dramatic-growth-of-open- 
access-series.html

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, 
and does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic 
Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com