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Open Access in 2019: Which countries are the biggest publishers of OA journals?

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by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

Fifty percent of the open access (OA) journals listed in DOAJ in 2019 are published in Europe, and the United Kingdom is the biggest publisher of OA journals in DOAJ. It is important to note that we do not know the extent to which OA journals are fully represented in DOAJ; we understand that there is a parallel service called Chinese Open Access Journals. There are a few surprises in the 10 largest countries in DOAJ. Latin America and the U.S. are well represented as usual, while Indonesia is now the second largest country in DOAJ, and Poland, Iran, and Turkey, are among the top 10. This may reflect the work of the DOAJ ambassadors program.

The analysis of geographical data on Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) shows that the European countries are leading the way in publication of Open Access journals by publishing 6133 journals in 2019, while Oceania and Africa published the least amount of OA journals in the same period.

The United Kingdom is the biggest publisher of open access journals by publishing 1471 journals in 2019. Indonesia and Iran are among the top 10 publishers of OA journals in 2019 that implies a growing interest in open access in these two countries.

Our team of researches collected the publication fee data for the open access journals in 2019 to see how the pricing to publish OA journals differs in different parts of the world. The results shows that while 71% of OA journals published in North American countries do not charge article processing charge (APC), but the average APC for the rest of the journals in North America is 1473 USD which is more expensive than any other part of the world. Asia with the average APC of 190 USD is the least expensive continent to publish OA journals.

Crawford (2019) published the results of his research on world open access journals in 2018 but he categorized the regions in a different way.

The following table shows the share of world OA journals in 2019 by each continent. It should be noted that the true number of OA journals in the world are higher, but here we are only analyzing the journals which geographical data on DOAJ was available.

The following table shows the percentage of journals which charge APC comparing those which do not charge APC in each continent. Because the information regarding APC was not available for some journals, the sum of APC and NO APC columns in the table for some rows is not equal to 100 percent.

Of the journals that charge APC, the average APC amount for each region is shown in the following table. The high standard deviation implies high variability in the range of prices.

According to the DOAJ data, there are 24 countries that have published more than 100 OA journals in 2019.

The summary of top 24 countries in publishing open access journals is shown below.

The method and documentation of the current research by Morrison et al. (2019) and the complete dataset is listed in the references section.

Cite as: Pashaei, H. & Morrison, H. (2019c). Open Access in 2019: Which countries are the biggest publishers of OA journals? Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/open-access-in-2019-which-countries-are-the-biggest-publishers-of-oa-journals/

References
Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Morrison, Heather, et al. 2019, “OA APC longitudinal study dataset 2019”,https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/0DIPGE, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V1

Crawford, W. (2019). Gold Open Access 2013-2018: Articles in Journals (GOA4), Livermore, CA:2019. Retrieved Oct. 31, 2019 from https://waltcrawford.name/goa4.pdf

 

 

DOAJ 2019: Language analysis

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by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

The analysis of Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) shows that open access journals were published in 85 different languages in 2019. English is the language used by more than 9,500 journals, while Spanish language comes second with more than 2,400 journals, followed by Portuguese (1,731), Indonesia (1,135) and French (897). We analyzed the tendency to charge and average APC by first language listed. The only language with a majority of journals charging APCs was Chinese (54%), followed by Persian (33%) and English (31%). Average APC ranged from 43 USD (Indonesian) to 1,096 USD (English). The second highest APC was Catalan at 331 USD, illustrating a correlation between language and APC, with English language journals at the high end of the range.

The most popular languages to publish open access articles in 2019 are listed in the following table.

We analyzed the article processing charge (APC) for the ‘first language’ that OA journals publish articles in, and the results for the top languages are shown below.

Cite as: Pashaei, H. & Morrison, H. (2019b). DOAJ 2019: Language analysis. Sustaining the knowledge commons.  https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/doaj-2019-language-analysis/

References
Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Morrison, Heather, et al. 2019, “OA APC longitudinal study dataset 2019”,https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/0DIPGE, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V1

Directory of Open Access Journals 2010 – Metadata. Retrieved at various dates from https://doaj.org/faq#metadata

 

Open Access in 2019: Original currencies for article processing charge

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by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

The original currency to charge article processing charge (APC) for more than 50 percent of world open access (OA) journals in 2019 recorded in our study is USD (for documentation of our procedures see Morrison et al (2019), while GBP and EUR are in the second and third place. 5 currencies (USD, GBP, EUR, CHF – Swiss Franc, INR – Indian Rupee) account for over 90% of the journals.

The following table and chart depict the original currency for OA journals in 2019.

When looking at the average APC in each original currency, it could be seen that the journals that their original currency is GBP charge the highest amount of APC. The top 10 most expensive APCs in original currency are listed below (all amount are converted to the USD).

Cite as: Pashaei, H. & Morrison, H. (2019a). Open Access in 2019: Original currencies for article processing charge. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/open-access-in-2019-original-currencies-for-article-processing-charge/

References
Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Morrison, Heather, et al. 2019, “OA APC longitudinal study dataset 2019”,https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/0DIPGE, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V1

Directory of Open Access Journals 2010 – Metadata. Retrieved at various dates from https://doaj.org/faq#metadata

De Gruyter and Sciendo Open Access journals expanding in 2019

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by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

Abstract
De Gruyter is a well-known traditional academic publisher with 270 years of experience. We first noted the dramatic expansion of De Gruyter into open access publishing in 2016 (French: Dumais-DesRosiers, M. & Brutus, W. (2016); English: Morrison (2016). In 2014, there were no De Gruyter titles listed in DOAJ; by the end of 2015, De Gruyter was the third largest publisher in DOAJ. In 2019, De Gruyter’s expansion into open access is even more remarkable, primarily through De Gruyter’s new imprint Sciendo, which has added more than 300 OA journals in 2019. The majority of De Gruyter / Sciendo journals (57%) do not charge APCs. In many cases we were not able to ascertain whether or not there is a fee.

Details
Both De Gruyter and Sciendo publish journals through either Open Access or Paid access model.

The analysis of Open Access journals for these two publishers reveal that especially Sciendo is expanding its number of open access journals significantly, as almost 300 new journals were added to their database in 2019 alone.

Out of the new journals, 33 titles were published for the first time in 2019.

A deeper glance into the list of Sciendo journals shows that most of them are published through collaboration with different universities and academic societies and institutions in Europe.

There is not a clear pattern for pricing model of open access journals for authors by Sciendo. About 57 percent of the open access journals published by Sciendo are free of charge to publish in for authors, while almost 14 percent charge processing fees to publish articles. We were unable to find information regarding the rest of the journals.

For the open access journals with article processing charge (APC) model, the range of processing fees was approximately 50 Euros to 1000 Euros, depending on the journals in which the authors want to publish their articles (To write this blog post, we converted the cost from local currencies to Euros).

On the other, there were less changes in De Gruyter open access journals, though we found 21 new journals in the list of their journals comparing to the previous year. The data regarding their publishing model could be seen in the following chart.

For the journals with article processing charge model, the range was almost between 500 to 2000 Euros, with the average cost about 1000 Euros.

On a side note, there were some journals that were transferred between De Gruyter and Sciendo as the publisher, so it could be beneficial to authors and people who are interested in finding journals if De Gruyter was more clear in pointing out this on their website.

References
Dumais-DesRosiers, M. & Brutus, W. (2016). De Gruyter maintenant 3rd éditeur en importance sur le Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Sustaining the Knowledge Commons https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/04/27/de-gruyter-maintenant-3e-editeur-en-importance-sur-le-directory-of-open-access-journals-doaj/

Morrison, H. (2016). De Gruyter open (English). Translation of Dumais-DesRosiers, M. & Brutus, W. (2016) De Gruyter maintenant 3rd éditeur en importance sur le Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Sustaining the Knowledge Commons https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/04/27/de-gruyter-maintenant-3e-editeur-en-importance-sur-le-directory-of-open-access-journals-doaj/ Sustaining the Knowledge Commons
https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/04/27/de-gruyter-open-english/

Cite as:

Pashaei, H., & Morrison, H. (2019). De Gruyter and Sciendo Open Access journals expanding in 2019. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/10/16/de-gruyter-and-sciendo-open-access-journals-expanding-in-2019/

 

Frontiers in 2019: 3% increase in average APC

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by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

The data for 2019 shows that while most 2019 journals by Frontiers incurred no changes in article processing charge comparing to 2018, but the increase in APC of 23 journals (40% of Frontier journals) is significant, with APC increases of 18% – 31%.

Frontiers currently publishes 62 journals that shows 10% growth in the number of journals comparing to 56 journals in 2018. Of these, 23 journals (40%) have an increase of $774 in article processing charges but the other journals have no change in comparison to 2018 data. Therefore, the overall increase in Article processing journals for all Frontiers open access journals is 3 percent.

The raw data for Frontiers journals in 2019:

frontiers_oa_main_2019Download

See also:

Frontiers: 40% journals have APC increases of 18 – 31% from 2017 to 2018

Cite as:

Pashaei, H., & Morrison, H. (2019). Frontiers in 2019: 3% increase in average APC. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/04/30/frontiers-in-2019-3-increase-in-average-apc/

Sage in 2019: growing in OA journals, still expensive, complex pricing trends

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by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

Review of Sage Open access database in 2019 shows that the number of their open access journals is growing, they are still following article processing charge model and their payment model is still pricey.

Sage currently publishes 1,200 journals. Of these, 200 journals (about 17%) are fully open access. Compared to the last year’s data, there is a net increase of 41 open access journals (26% increase) published by Sage. Out of all open access journals, 185 journals (92 percent) have publication fees, 14 journals have no publication charges and 1 journal lacks the information whether it has processing fee or not.

Some journals from the previous years ceased publication and Sage has removed them from their database, but only a few of them are accessible through clockss.org archive.

The information regarding the number of open access journals by Sage are summarized into the following table:

Out of the journals with processing charge, 172 journals charge ‘article processing fee’, 2 journals charge ‘per page processing fee’ and 11 articles lack the exact amount and way of processing fee.

Pricing

The average actual price for article processing fee in 2019 is $1475 that indicates a slight decrease comparing to the average price of $1513 in 2018.

Compared to last year’s data, most journals have no change in article processing charge while 23 journals have an increase and 20 journals have a decrease in the amount of article processing charge. The average increase in price is about $587 and the average decrease in price is $449.

The following pie chart and table summarize the difference between processing fees in 2018 and 2019.

You could download the raw data for Sage 2019 open access journals here:

sage_2019_raw_dataDownload

For more information about the previous years data for Sage publications, see the following links:

Ceased and transferred publications and archiving: best practices and room for improvement

SAGE Publications 2016 & 2017 Data Analysis (including Libertas Academica)

Cite as:

Pashaei, H., & Morrison, H. (2019). Sage in 2019: Growing in OA journals, still expensive, complex pricing trends. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/03/30/sage-in-2019-growing-in-oa-journals-still-expensive-complex-pricing-trends/

 

Medknow in 2018: growing fast!

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by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

Medknow is a commercial scholarly journal publisher based in India, which was acquired by Wolters Kluwer in 2011. The analysis of Medknow’s journals in 2018 shows that there has been a significant increase in number of their journals, with 23% increase comparing to 2017. It appears that most of Medknow’s journals are published in collaboration with different universities and societies in the field of medical research.

Due to variety of affiliated communities who collaborate with Medknow, finding information and collecting data from Medknow’s website is complex. Some data about the processing charge of journals were not available, and the currency was provided in different units (INR, USD, CNY, …) that could also be confusing for potential authors. From the journals for which data was available, 71% charged no processing fee. While the cost for the majority of paid journals were fixed comparing to 2017 data, there were also an increase in cost for some journals. The processing charge for publishing journals is based on APC (Article Processing Charge), with only a few exceptions that were based on APPC (Article Page Processing Charges).

 

 

Cite as: Pashaei, H., & Morrison, H. (2018). Medknow in 2018: Growing fast! Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/12/13/medknow-in-2018-growing-fast/