Open Access Religious Journals- An Analytical Study of the DOAJ

The main purpose of the paper is to study the publishing trends of the open access religious journals available in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The data were collected online from the Directory of Open Access Journals and quantitative method was applied for data analysis. The data were collected in December 2017 and later presented in tabular forms to reveal the findings. The findings show that 119 religious journals are registered in the DOAJ, published from the 27 countries by 114 publishing agencies in 14 languages. The maximum number of journals (21, 17.65%) is published from Indonesia in the English language (79, 66.39%) during the 2nd decade (2010-2017) of the 21st century

Open Access Religious Journals- An Analytical Study of the DOAJ

The main purpose of the paper is to study the publishing trends of the open access religious journals available in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The data were collected online from the Directory of Open Access Journals and quantitative method was applied for data analysis. The data were collected in December 2017 and later presented in tabular forms to reveal the findings. The findings show that 119 religious journals are registered in the DOAJ, published from the 27 countries by 114 publishing agencies in 14 languages. The maximum number of journals (21, 17.65%) is published from Indonesia in the English language (79, 66.39%) during the 2nd decade (2010-2017) of the 21st century

Article processing charge hyperinflation and price insensitivity : an open access sequel to the serials crisis

Open access publishing has frequently been proposed as a solution to the serials crisis, which involved unsustainable budgetary pressures on libraries due to hyperinflation of subscription costs. The majority of open access articles are published in a minority of journals that levy article processing charges (APCs) paid by authors or their institutions upon acceptance. Increases in APCs are proceeding at a rate three times that which would be expected if APCs were indexed according to inflation. As increasingly ambitious funder mandates are proposed, such as Plan S, it is important to evaluate whether authors show signs of price sensitivity in journal selection by avoiding journals that introduce or increase their APCs. Examining journals that introduced an APC 4–5 years after launch or when flipping from a subscription model to immediate open access model showed no evidence that APC introduction reduced article volumes. Multilevel modelling of APC sensitivity across 319 journals published by the four largest APC-funded dedicated commercial open access publishers (BMC, Frontiers, MDPI, and Hindawi) revealed that from 2012 to 2018 higher APCs were actually associated with increased article volumes. These findings indicate that APC hyperinflation is not suppressed through market competition and author choice. Instead, demand for scholarly journal publications may be more similar to demand for necessities, or even prestige goods, which will support APC hyperinflation to the detriment of researchers, institutions, and funders

A study of Open Access Journals using article processing charges

Article Processing Charges (APC) 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 1,405 journals that published an estimated 103,000 articles in 2010. The average charge was 582 USD (calculated over journals) and 887 US Dollars (USD) (calculated over articles). The price range varied between 20 and 3,800 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. Commercial journals had substantially higher APCs than society journals with an average APC of $1,119. These price estimates are lower than 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

The Inevitability of Open Access

Open access (OA) is an alternative business model for the publication of scholarly journals. It makes articles freely available to readers on the Internet and covers the costs associated with publication through means other than subscriptions. This article argues that Gold OA, where all of the articles of a journal are available at the time of publication, is a disruptive innovation as defined by business theorist Clayton Christensen. Using methods described by Christensen, we can predict the growth of Gold OA. This analysis suggests that Gold OA could account for 50 percent of the scholarly journal articles sometime between 2017 and 2021, and 90 percent of articles as soon as 2020 and more conservatively by 2025

Open Access Movement: Reception And Acceptance By Academic Libraries In Developing Countries

ABSTRACT The open access movement in its diverse forms constitutes the most interesting and promising model for the research output of an academic library or university. Even though the growth of OA presents some challenging hurdles to academic libraries, there are a number of notable benefits that are good enough to boost this movement. OA has come for good and is rapidly gaining impetus with an increasing number of academic institutions accepting and adopting open access policies and mandates for their research, publishing and dissemination. The purpose of this study is to discuss the situation of open access in academic libraries in developing countries with focus on academic libraries in Cameroon. This article explains the concept of Open Access (OA) by providing its meaning and definition. It throws light on the emergence and development of the Open Access movement, Open Access initiatives, and various OA declarations in the world. It describes different types of OA and the steady progress and increase of journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The advantages of OA, its impact on scholarly community in Cameroon have been examined. Finally an overview of OA initiatives in Cameroon is explored

New academic journals: an international overview of indexing and access models

Introduction. An international analysis of academic journals newly created in the period from 2011 to 2020 according to type of publisher, place of publication, their relationship with open access, and their indexing in databases. Studies of the issues of concentration of journal publisher ownership, uses of metrics, and access to titles reveal a changing landscape that is nevertheless still dominated by large commercial oligopolies. One notable trend is the creation of new titles in various configurations

The diamond model of open access publishing: Why policy makers, scholars, universities, libraries, labour unions and the publishing world need to take non-commercial, non-profit open access serious

This reflection introduces a new term to the debate on open access publishing: diamond open access (DOA) publishing. The debate on open access is a debate about the future of academia. We discuss the problems of for-profit academic publishing, such as monopoly prices and access inequalities and point at the limits of contemporary perspectives on open access as they are frequently advanced by the publishing industry, policy makers and labour unions. The article introduces a public service and commons perspective that stresses the importance of fostering and publicly supporting what we term the model of diamond open access. It is a non-profit academic publishing model that makes academic knowledge a common good, reclaims the common character of the academic system and entails the possibility for fostering job security by creating public service publishing jobs. Existing concepts such as “gold open access” have serious conceptual limits that can be overcome by introducing the new term of diamond open access. The debate on open access lacks visions and requires social innovations. This article is a policy intervention and reflection on current issues related to open access (OA) publishing. It reflects on the following questions: What should the role of open access be in the future of academic publishing and academia? How should the future of academic publishing and academia look like? Which reforms of academic policy making are needed in relation to open access publishing? We want to trigger a new level of the open access debate. We invite further reflections on these questions by academics, policy makers, publishers, publishing workers, labour unions, open access publishing associations, editors and librarians

Efficiency and economies of scale. A study on publishing of open access journals

L’article analyse la distribution des éditeurs de revues en libre accès en fonction de leur taille et discute l’impact de cette distribution sur l’édition scientifique, sous l’aspect de l’efficience économique. L’analyse exploite l’information sur les revues en libre accès et leurs éditeurs du répertoire DOAJ et, à titre comparatif, l’information sur l’édition des revues scientifiques du Ulrichsweb. Le DOAJ contient 3921 éditeurs de revues en libre accès (OA). 95,8% des éditeurs publient jusqu’à trois titres tandis que seulement 54 éditeurs (1,4%) éditent 10 titres ou plus, cumulant ainsi 1643 revues (25,5%). Les éditeurs et revues OA sont moins nombreux que ceux du modèle traditionnel mais leur nombre augmente plus rapidement. La grande majorité des éditeurs OA sont de petite et de très petite taille (1-3 titres). Par rapport à l’édition traditionnelle, l’édition OA est moins concentrée, avec moins de grands éditeurs et moins de revues publiées par de grands éditeurs. La situation en France est différente dans la mesure où il manque de grands éditeurs de revues. La discussion pose la question de l’efficience de l’édition en libre accès. La situation « fragmentée » désavantage l’édition OA du point de vue économique, avec une conséquence directe sur la visibilité et l’impact des contenus. La mutualisation de la production éditoriale ou du moins d’une partie du workflow est une des pistes d’évolution. La commercialisation liée à une concentration accrue en est une autre.Efficiency and economies of scale. A study on publishing of open access journal