By dsolomonmsuedu@gmail.com on May 22, 2013
Bo-Christer Björk
Hanken School of Economics
P.O. Box 479, 00101 Helsinki, Finland
Bo-Christer.Bjork@hanken.fi
Abstract
Subject repositories are open web collections of working papers or manuscript copies of published scholarly articles, specific to particular scientific disciplines. The first repositories emerged already in the early 1990’s and in some fields of science they have become an important channel for the dissemination of research results. Using quite strict inclusion criteria 56 subject repositories were identified from a much larger number indexed in two repository indexes. A closer study of these demonstrated a huge variety in sizes, organizational models, functions and topics. When they first started to emerge subject repositories catered to a strong market demand, but the later development of Internet search engines, the rapid growth of institutional repositories and the tightening up of journal publisher OA policies seems to be slowing down their growth.
Accepted Version This is the accepted version of an article that will be published in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
Posted in Green |
By dsolomonmsuedu@gmail.com on May 6, 2013
David J Solomon, PhD
Professor, Department of Medicine and OMERAD
A-202 E Fee Hall
Michigan State University
E Lansing, MI USA 48824
dsolomon@msu.edu
Abstract: This study assessed characteristics of publishers who published 2010 open access (OA) journals indexed in Scopus. Publishers were categorized into six types; professional, society, university, scholar/researcher, government, and other organizations. Type of publisher was broken down by number of journals/articles published in 2010, funding model, location, discipline and whether the journal was born or converted to OA. Universities and societies accounted for 50% of the journals and 43% of the articles published. Professional publisher accounted for a third of the journals and 42% of the articles. With the exception of professional and scholar/researcher publishers, most journals were originally subscription journals that made at least their digital version freely available. Arts, humanities and social science journals are largely published by societies and universities outside the major publishing countries. Professional OA publishing is most common in biomedicine, mathematics, the sciences and engineering. Approximately a
quarter of the journals are hosted on national/international platforms, in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia largely published by universities and societies without the need for publishing fees. This type of collaboration between governments, universities and/or societies may be an effective means of expanding open access publications.
The article can be accessed here:
The data upon which the article is based can be accessed here: Please feel free to contact me @ dsolomon@msu.edu if you have questions or concerns about the data.
Posted in Gold |
By dsolomonmsuedu@gmail.com on April 27, 2013
David J Solomon, PhD
Professor, Department of Medicine and OMERAD
A-202 E Fee Hall
Michigan State University
E Lansing, MI USA 48824
dsolomon@msu.edu
Mikael Laakso
Doctoral Student, Information Systems Science
Hanken School of Economics
P.O. Box 479
00101, Helsinki, Finland
mikael.laakso@hanken.fi
Bo-Christer Björk, Dr. Tech
Professor, Information Systems Science
Hanken School of Economics
P. B. 479
00101 Helsinki, Finland
bo-christer.bjork@hanken.fi
Abstract
The study documents the growth in the number of journals and articles along with the increase in normalized citation rates of open access (OA) journals listed in the Scopus bibliographic database between 1999 and 2010. Longitudinal statistics on growth in journals/articles and citation rates are broken down by funding model, discipline, and whether the journal was launched or had converted to OA. The data were retrieved from the web sites of SCIMago Journal and Country Rank (journal /article counts), JournalM3trics (SNIP2 values), Scopus (journal discipline) and Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (OA and funding status). OA journals/articles have grown much faster than subscription journals but still make up less that 12% of the journals in Scopus. Two-year citation averages for journals funded by article processing charges (APCs) have reached the same level as subscription journals. Citation averages of OA journals funded by other means continue to lag well behind OA journals funded by APCs and subscription journals. We hypothesize this is less an issue of quality than due to the fact that such journals are commonly published in languages other than English and tend to be located outside the four major publishing countries.
Accepted Version This is the accepted version of an article that has ben published in the Journal of Informetrics.
The published version for those of you fortunate enough to be able to access it. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Posted in Gold |
By dsolomonmsuedu@gmail.com on April 27, 2013
Bo-Christer Björk
Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki Campus, P. B. 479, 00101 Helsinki, Finland.
E-mail: bo-christer.bjork@hanken.fi
Mikael Laakso
Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki Campus, P. B. 479, 00101 Helsinki, Finland.
E-mail: mikael.laakso@hanken.fi
Patrik Welling
Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki Campus, P. B. 479, 00101 Helsinki, Finland.
E-mail: patrik.welling@hanken.fi
Patrik Paetau
Hanken School of Economics, Vaasa Campus, P.O. Box 287, 65101 Vaasa, Finland
E-mail: patrik.paetau@hanken.fi
Abstract
Open Access (OA) is the free unrestricted access to electronic versions of scholarly publications. For peer reviewed journal articles there are two main routes to OA, publishing in OA journals (gold OA) or archiving of article copies or manuscripts at other web locations (green OA). This study focuses on summarizing and extending upon current knowledge about green OA. A synthesis of previous studies indicates that the green OA coverage of all published journal articles is approximately 12 %, with substantial disciplinary variation. Typically, green OA copies become available with considerable time delays, partly caused by publisher imposed embargo periods, and partly by author tendencies to archive manuscripts only periodically. Although green OA copies should ideally be archived in proper repositories, a large share is stored on home pages and similar locations, with no assurance of long-term preservation. Often such locations contain exact copies of published articles, which may infringe on the publisher’s exclusive rights. The technical foundation for green OA uploading is becoming increasingly solid, which is largely due to the rapid increase in the number of institutional repositories. The number of articles within the scope of OA mandates, which strongly influence the selfarchival rate of articles, is nevertheless still low.
Accepted Version This is the accepted version of an article that will be published in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
Posted in Green |
By dsolomonmsuedu@gmail.com on April 27, 2013
David J Solomon, PhD
College of Human Medicine
Michigan State University
Abstract
It has been approximately 20 years since distributing scholarly journals digitally became feasible. This article discusses the broad implications of the transition to digital distributed scholarship from a historical perspective and focuses on the development of open access (OA) and the various models for funding OA in the context of the roles scholarly journals play in scientific communities.
Solomon DJ, Digital distribution of academic journals and its impact on scholarly communication: Looking back after 20 years. J Acad Librarianship 39 (2013), pp. 23-28 DOI: 10.1016/j.acalib.2012.10.001. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
Accepted Version
This article is currently freely available on the publisher’s website
Posted in Gold |
By dsolomonmsuedu@gmail.com on April 27, 2013
Bo-Christer Björk
Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Arkadiankatu 22, PO Box 479, 00101 Helsinki, Finland Tel (358) 9431331
Bo-Christer.Bjork@Hanken.fi
Abstract
Mainstream scholarly publishers have since 2004 started to offer authors in subscription journals the possibility to free their individual articles from access barriers against a payment (hybrid OA). This has been marketed as a possible gradual transition path between subscription and open access to the scholarly journal literature, and the publishers have pledged to decrease their subscription prices in proportion to the uptake of the hybrid option. The number of hybrid journals has doubled in the past couple of years and is now over 4,300, and the number of such articles was around 12,000 in 2011. On average only 1-2 % of eligible authors utilize the OA option, due mainly to the generally high price level of typically 3,000 USD. There are, however, a few publishers and individual journals with a much higher uptake. This article takes a closer look at the development of hybrid OA and discusses, from an author-centric viewpoint, the possible reasons for the lack of success of this business model.
Accepted VersionThis is the manuscript as accepted for publication by the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology after the review and revision process but prior to final layout and copyediting.
(Note:This is a preprint of an article published in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology copyright © 2012 (American Society for Information Science and Technology) For those fortunate enough to have access to the article via their library
Posted in Gold |
By dsolomonmsuedu@gmail.com on April 27, 2013
Bo-Christer Björk
Management and Organization, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland
Email bo‐christer.bjork@hanken.fi
David J Solomon
College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, E. Lansing, MI USA
Email dsolomon@msu.edu
Abstract
The article processing charge (APC) is currently the primary method of funding professionally published Open Access peer reviewed journals. The pricing principles of 77 OA publishers publishing over 1000 journals using APCs were studied and classified. The most commonly used pricing method is a single fixed fee, which can either be the same for all of a publisher’s journals or individually determined for each journal. Fees are usually only levied for publication of accepted papers, but there are some journals that also charge submission fees. Instead of fixed prices many publishers charge by the page or have multi-tiered fees depending on the length of articles. The country of origin of the author can also influence the pricing, in order to facilitate publishing for authors from developing countries.
Accepted Version This is the manuscript as accepted for publication after the review and revision process but prior to final layout and copyediting of the article. Readers are kindly asked to use the official publication in references.
Björk, Bo-Christer, Solomon, David, 2012, Pricing Principles used by Scholarly Open Access Publishers, Learned Publishing, 25(3): 132-137,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20120207
Posted in Gold |
By dsolomonmsuedu@gmail.com on April 27, 2013
David J Solomon
College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, E. Lansing, MI USA
Email dsolomon@msu.edu
Bo-Christer Björk
Management and Organization, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland
Email bo‐christer.bjork@hanken.fi
Abstract
Article Processing Charges (APCs) are a central mechanism for funding Open Access (OA) scholarly publishing. We studied the APCs charged and article volumes of journals that were listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals as charging APCs. These included 1,370 journals that published 100,697 articles in 2010. The average APC was 906 US Dollars (USD) calculated over journals and 904 US Dollars USD calculated over articles. The price range varied between 8 and 3,900 USD, with the lowest prices charged by journals published in developing countries and the highest by journals with high impact factors from major international publishers. Journals in Biomedicine represent 59% of the sample and 58% of the total article volume. They also had the highest APCs of any discipline. Professionally published journals, both for profit and nonprofit had substantially higher APCs than society, university or scholar/researcher published journals. These price estimates are lower than some previous studies of OA publishing and much lower than is generally charged by subscription publishers making individual articles open access in what are termed hybrid journals.
Accepted Version This is the accepted version of an article published in The Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology copyright © 2012 (American Society for Information Science and Technology)
For those of you fortunate enough to have access, here is the published version. DOI: 10.1002/asi.22673.
Posted in Gold |
By dsolomonmsuedu@gmail.com on April 27, 2013
David J Solomon
College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, E. Lansing, MI USA
Email dsolomon@msu.edu
Bo‐Christer Björk
Management and Organization, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland
Email bo‐christer.bjork@hanken.fi
Abstract - Open access (OA) journals make their full text content available for free on the Web and use other means than subscriptions or access charges for funding the publication process. Publication fees or article processing charges (APC)s have become the predominant means for funding professional OA publishing. We surveyed 1,038 authors from seven discipline categories who recently published articles in 74 OA journals that charge APCs. Authors were asked about the source of funding for the APC, factors influencing their choice of a journal and past history publishing in OA and subscription journals. Additional information about the journal and the authors’ country were obtained from the journal websites. A total of 429 (41%) authors completed the survey. There were large differences in the source of funding among disciplines. Journals with impact factors charged higher APCs as did journals from disciplines where grant funding is plentiful. Topical fit, quality, and speed of publication where the most important factors in the authors’ choice of a journal. Open accessibility was less important but a significant factor for many authors in their choice of a journal to publish. These findings are consistent with other research on OA publishing and suggest, that if OA journals meet normal quality standards, authors and their employers and funders are willing to pay reasonable APCs, the acceptable levels of which are dependent on the field of science and the quality of the journal in question.
Accepted Version 08-18-11 Version as accepted for publication by the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
(Note: This is the accepted version of an article published in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology copyright © 2011 (American Society for Information Science and Technology) For those fortunate enough to have access to the article via their library
Note: There is an error in the accepted version above and the published version of Table 5. The percentage of authors with the fee waived for countries with per capita income of under $25,000 USD should be 14% not 3%. We apologize for this error and thank Jørgen Burchardt for pointing it out.
Submitted Version 6-30-2011 as submitted to the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
Supporting Tables
Posted in Gold |
