This quarter, the growth of open access has been dramatic in open access journals, open access archives, and, perhaps most noteworthy, open access policies. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is on the verge of an important milestone - 4,000 fully open access, peer-reviewed journals, double the number of the largest commercial publisher. DOAJ is growing at the rate of 2 titles per day. OpenDOAR lists 1,373 repositories, an increase of about 70 this quarter. Scientific Commons now encompasses 26 million items, an increase of 2 million. 663 journals are now voluntarily participating in PubMedCentral, an increase of 119 (22%) this quarter. 447 journals provide immediate free access through PubMedCentral, an increase of 29 (7%) this quarter. There are 11 more open access policies, for a total of 72 policies worldwide, and 4 more proposed policies, for a total of 14 proposed policies. One decrease is noted - not in open access per se, but rather subscription journals providing free back issues: Highwire Press seems to have 212,000 fewer free articles, a decrease of 10%. This is a bit puzzling, as Highwire has added 1 more completely free site, and there is an increase of 11 sites providing free back access. Any background on what is happening here would be most appreciated.
Selected Numbers
Directory of Open Access Journals
- 3,999 titles
- 105 titles added in the last 30 days
- 1,423 journals searchable at the article level
- 266,451 articles
Open J-Gate (English-language open access journals)
- # journals: 4,830
- peer-reviewed: 2,652
# of Repositories
- OpenDOAR: 1,373
- OAIster: 1,096
- Registry of Open Access Repositories: 1,301
- Scientific Commons: 981
- Scientific Commons: 26 million
- OAIster: 20 million
- PubMed: free items: 2.6 million
- arXiv: 530,000 items
- RePEC: 727,000 items, 615,000 online
- E-LIS: 8,976 items
- journals participating: 663
- journals providing immediate free access: 447
- journals with all items open access: 306
- 17 archives
- 92,000 items
- Departmental: 6
- Funder: 35
- Institutional: 31
- Total: 72
- Proposed: 14
In related news, Creative Commons just passed 100 million photos on flickr, as reported by Larry Lessig
Recently, I posted the DOAJ Growth Rate 2005-2008. This illustrates not only a healthy and growth DOAJ title growth rate, but an even more impressive rate of growth of journals providing article-level searching, and the articles obtainable through a DOAJ search.
Dramatic Growth Full Data
Either of these Google spreadsheets can be downloaded; use the Edit key at the bottom of the screen. The dataverse version will be updated at a later date due to technical issues.
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access series.
Update April 2: DOAJ exceeded 4,000 titles on April 1, and has issued a major announcement on Long-Term Preservation of Open Access Journals. The PubMedCentral journal list has been updated with additional information - the April 2, 2009 PMC title list is available here. Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
