Re: Mandates: Practical Questions

From: Heather Morrison <hgmorris_at_SFU.CA>
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 09:43:56 -0700

On 2-Sep-10, at 5:15 AM, Sally Morris wrote:

When I looked at OA journals a few years ago I found that (a) they
tended to publish very little and (b) they seemed much more likely to
disappear or wither on the vine

Sally

When is a journal not a journal? A closer look at the DOAJ. Sally
Morris,
Learned Publishing Vol 19: 1, pp73-6, Jan 2006. DOI
10.1087/095315106775122565 (Open Access)

Comments:

Interesting interpretation in this "Personal View" article. For
example, the author states that of the 1,213 journals sampled (of the
1,443 journals then listed in the DOAJ,) "1,150 journals turned out to
be, on average, longer-established than is generally supposed". This
is 95% of the sample that exceed the expected longevity. I would
argue that this evidence does not support Morris' statement above.

This rigorous critique of the journals in the DOAJ has been most
helpful both to DOAJ and to the OA community at large. Journals must
maintain high standards to remain in DOAJ.

Other evidence that open access is thriving, not withering:

The number of journals in DOAJ has more than tripled, and nearly
quadrupled, since Morris' article was published. As of today, there
are 5,333 journals listed in DOAJ.
http://www.doaj.org

By 2009, the open access journal PLoS One had already become among the
world's largest journals, and it may become THE largest sometime this
year. See: Binfield, Peter. "PLoS One: background, future
development, and article-level metrics". ELPUB 2009, Milan. Search
from here: http://elpub.scix.net

The growth rates for open access publishing are only a small part of
the larger story of the growth of open access, which I address on a
quarterly basis in my series, The Dramatic Growth of Open Access,
available here:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2006/08/dramatic-growth-of-open-access-series.html

While this early indication of momentum of the open access movement is
very encouraging, it is important to remember that this is just the
beginning, and that a lot of work - to develop and implement strong
open access archiving mandate policies, among other things - still
needs to happen.

best,

Heather Morrison, MLIS
PhD Student, SFU School of Communication
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
Received on Fri Sep 03 2010 - 05:56:55 BST

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