Open access scientific journals: an analysis of the Directory of Open Access Journals

Introduction. The research aims to analyse the publishers, countries of publication, citation indexes, article processing charges, and their inter-relations, in the journals that make up the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a global directory that offers scientific information in immediate and exclusive open access. Method. Bibliographic, quantitative, and inferential study of 9,005 journals in the DOAJ, focusing on publishers, countries of publication, article processing charges, and citation indexes. Analysis. Calculation of absolute and relative frequencies, measurement of central tendency, chi-squared test, and Mann-Whitney U test using the R statistical software (version 3.2.4) with a 95% confidence interval. Results. Brazil is the country with the largest number of titles (10.9%), followed by the United Kingdom, which has a greater number of titles with article processing charges fees averaging US$ 1,474 for those that are DOAJ No Seal and US$ 862 for those that are certified DOAJ Seal. Europe has the greatest number of open access titles (47.6%). The Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Elsevier, De Gruyter Open, BioMed Central, and Springer are the publishers with the greatest number of journals and a higher presence in citation indexes (Journal Citation Reports and SCImago Journal Rank). DOAJ Seal journals are correlated and more likely to have article processing charges fees. Conclusions. In the consolidation of open access journals, commercial publishers and countries with a tradition of scientific publishing continue to gather the majority of journals. Thus, the oligopoly of commercial scientific publishers is maintained.

What has Royal Society Open Science achieved in its first few years?

It has been a pleasure and a privilege to serve as the first Editor-in-Chief of Royal Society Open Science for the past 6 years. I step down at the end of December 2021, having completed two 3-year terms, and am taking the opportunity here to reflect on some of the successes and challenges that the journal has experienced and the innovations that we have introduced. When I was first approached back in 2015, the breadth of the journal, covering the whole of science, resonated with my own interests: my research career has ranged across the entire landscape of chemistry, while my leadership roles have embraced all of science, technology and medicine. The open access ethos, the objective refereeing policy that rejects the idea of only publishing what is in fashion, and the opportunities offered by a new venture that could transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries also all appealed to me. Among our successful innovations are Registered Reports, Replication Studies and the new ‘Science, Society and Policy' section. The challenges have included the transition to paid article processing charges (APCs), whether to resist pressure to retract a controversial paper, and bullying of young female authors by established senior males in the same field. I explore all of these below, provide some statistics on the journal's performance, also cover some of the notable papers we have published, and provide some concluding thoughts.

Open Access Beyond Article Processing Charges

A comment on “For NGOs, article-processing charges sap conservation funds” by Wood et al.

Estimación de los costes de publicación en revistas científicas indexadas en JCR en 2017 y 2018: el caso de la Psicología

En el presente trabajo se evalúan los costes de publicación (Article Processing Charges) que se exigen por parte de las editoriales científicas, derivados de la publicación de artículos en sus revistas. Se han seleccionado las revistas incluidas en los cuartiles 1 y 2 (Q1, Q2) en el Journal Citation Reports (JCR) para las once categorías en las que se subdivide Psychology, durante los años 2017 y 2018. Se ha calculado el coste mayor o Golden OA y transformado en euros para todas las cantidades requeridas por parte de las editoriales. Para el total de 632 revistas analizadas en estos dos años, el coste final es de 135.514.886,39 €, de los cuales 67.027.213,11 € pertenecen a las revistas del JCR 2017 y 68.487.673,28 € a JCR 2018. La media de coste de publicación de un trabajo fue de 2321,55 €. Son numerosas las conclusiones sobre la política científica y de publicación que los Estados deberían repensar.

What Are the Characteristics of Canadian Independent, Scholarly Journals? Results from a Website Analysis

The dominance of commercial publishers (Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon 2015) has led to a discussion in Canada focusing on alternative models for supporting independent, non-commercial, scholarly journals. Although small in number, these journals represent an important contribution to Canadian and global scholarship. They also act as a counterbalance to the increasingly for-profit nature of scholarly publishing. Despite their importance, there exists no definitive list of journals of this nature in Canada, making analysis and understanding of their characteristics difficult.In order to address this gap, the researchers undertook an analysis of the websites of 485 Canadian, independent, scholarly journals. Independent was defined as journals which are not affiliated with a commercial publisher. The researchers gathered data for each journal on their access type (e.g., closed, open access), subject area, size and composition of the editorial team, and any affiliation(s). This data was then analyzed to create a portrait of these journals with these themes. The researchers found that most of these journals were affiliated with at least one organization, with over half being associated with two or more. They also discovered that affiliations varied depending on the discipline and that the size of the editorial team was correlated to the access type. Journals were predominantly in the humanities and social sciences, and the majority were open access (OA) without article processing charges (APCs).While the focus of this study is on Canadian journals, this article provides a framework for other researchers to examine non-commercial, independent publishing in their own countries. Its results also provide preliminary data which may inspire future avenues of research, particularly into models for non-APC, open access journals as well as the editorial board structure and size for independent journals.

Assessing the effect of article processing charges on the geographic diversity of authors using Elsevier’s ‘Mirror Journal’ system

Journals publishing open access (OA) articles often require that authors pay article processing charges (APC). Researchers in the Global South often cite APCs as a major financial obstacle to OA publishing, especially in widely-recognized or prestigious outlets. Consequently, it has been hypothesized that authors from the Global South will be underrepresented in journals charging APCs. We tested this hypothesis using >37,000 articles from Elsevier’s ‘Mirror journal’ system, in which a hybrid ‘Parent’ journal and its Gold-OA ‘Mirror’ share editorial boards and standards for acceptance. Most articles were non-OA; 45% of articles had lead authors based in either the United States of America (USA) or China. After correcting for the effect of this dominance and differences in sample size, we found that OA articles published in Parent and Mirror journals had lead authors with similar Geographic Diversity. However, Author Geographic Diversity of OA articles was significantly lower than that of non-OA articles. Most OA articles were written by authors in high-income countries, and there were no articles in Mirror journals by authors in low-income countries. Our results for Elsevier’s Mirror-Parent system are consistent with the hypothesis that APCs are a barrier to OA publication for scientists from the Global South.

UPDATES ON INFORMATION REGARDING THE DIRECTORY OF OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS PLATFORM MAY INCREASE ITS RELIABILITY

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a leading whitelist of open access journals (OAJs), that is, OAJs that are presumably safe to publish in, or scholarly, because they follow best practices established by COPE/DOAJ/OASPA/WAME. Academics rely on the DOAJ to select OAJs of choice, and filter for particular needs, for example, English-only or no article processing charges. A search of DOAJ-indexed OAJs publishing work on ornamental research identified five OAJs, but 60% of them had incorrect and thus misleading information. The ‘last update’ of all five OAJs were outdated. The DOAJ must ensure that indexed OAJs have updated information. The Editors of OAJs also bear responsibility.

Author Choice of Journal Type Based on Income Level of Country

Readers can access open access articles for free, but authors or research funders pay article-processing charges to publish them. This requirement may deter authors in low-income countries from publishing in open access. This study investigates the choices that authors make among three types of open access journal and closed (subscription) journals in history, economics, science, and technology based on their countries’ income level. The sample comprises research articles published in journals in English in 2020 and indexed in Scopus. The results show that authors in low-income countries publish more in gold open access than do authors in lower-middle- and upper-middle-income countries, who tend not to publish in hybrid open access and to favour closed journals. Authors from high-income countries publish more in hybrid open access than do authors in the other groups of countries. Although major publishers waive their article-processing charges for authors in low-income countries, these authors amount to less than 1 per cent of the total. Improving the effectiveness of publishers’ waiver policies is necessary.

Investigating the Blind Spot of a Monitoring System for Article Processing Charges

The Open Access (OA) publishing model that is based on article processing charges (APC) is often associated with the potential for more transparency regarding the expenditures for publications. However, the extent to which transparency can be achieved depends not least on the completeness of data in APC monitoring systems. This article investigates two blind spots of the largest collection of APC payment information, OpenAPC. It aims to identify likely APC-liable publications for German universities that contribute to this system and for those that do not provide data to it. The calculation combines data from Web of Science, the ISSN-Gold-OA-list and OpenAPC. The results show that for the group of universities contributing to the monitoring system, more than half of the APC payments are not covered by it and the average payments for non-covered APCs is higher than for APCs covered by the system. In addition, the group of universities that do not contribute to OpenAPC accounts for two thirds of the number of APC-liable publications recorded for contributing universities. Regarding the size of these blind spots, the value of the monitoring system is limited at present.