Re: Dramatic Growth of Open Access - March 31, 2009

[Greg Tananbaum <gtananbaum@gmail.com>]

Lots of figures to chew on here, Heather.  You write that DOAJ is 
increasing at the rate of two titles per day.  Can you elucidate? 
Are two new open access journals actually launching every day? 
Or, rather, is this a function of DOAJ catching up on its 
housekeeping, as it were?  A quick check of their site indicates 
the latter (103 titles added in the past 30 days, but only six of 
these show a launch date of 2009).  I ask not to throw cold water 
on the data, but rather to better understand them.

A related question is how many of these journals are new 
undertakings vs. how many are existing publications that have 
merely switched business models.  This harkens back to the 
content proliferation thread that unspooled on Liblicense last 
week.  It took DOAJ just 16 months to grow from 3,000 to 4,000 
titles.  How many of these 1,00 titles were new journals launched 
in that time period?  I trust someone on the list can provide 
those data.  1,000 new DOAJ-listed titles in a few years, two new 
DOAJ-listed titles per day.  It would be fascinating to better 
understand whether these are filling an information gap or 
contributing to a glut.  I ask this as an OA agnostic.

Best, Greg

-- 
Greg Tananbaum
Consulting Services at the Intersection of Technology, Content, & Academia
(510) 295-7504
greg@scholarnext.com
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