Bo-Christer Björk

The Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from 1993 to 2009

Open Access (OA) is a model for publishing scholarly peer reviewed journals, made possible by the Internet. The full text of OA journals and articles can be freely read, as the publishing is funded through means other than subscriptions. Empirical research concerning the quantitative development of OA publishing has so far consisted of scattered individual studies providing brief snapshots, using varying methods and data sources. This study adopts a systematic method for studying the development of OA journals from their beginnings in the early 1990s until 2009. Because no comprehensive index of OA articles exists, systematic manual data collection from journal web sites was conducted based on journal-level data extracted from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Due to the high number of journals registered in the DOAJ, almost 5000 at the time of the study, stratified random sampling was used. A separate sample of verified early pioneer OA journals was also studied. The results show a very rapid growth of OA publishing during the period 1993–2009. During the last year an estimated 191 000 articles were published in 4769 journals. Since the year 2000, the average annual growth rate has been 18% for the number of journals and 30% for the number of articles. This can be contrasted to the reported 3,5% yearly volume increase in journal publishing in general. In 2009 the share of articles in OA journals, of all peer reviewed journal articles, reached 7,7%. Overall, the results document a rapid growth in OA journal publishing over the last fifteen years. Based on the sampling results and qualitative data a division into three distinct periods is suggested: The Pioneering years (1993–1999), the Innovation years (2000–2004), and the Consolidation years (2005–2009).

Building information modelling - Experts' views on standardisation and industry deployment

The goal of the single building information model has existed for at least 30 years and various standards have been published leading up to the 10-year development of the industry foundation classes. These have been initiatives from researchers, software developers and standards committees. Now large property owners are becoming aware of the benefits of moving IT tools from specific applications towards more comprehensive solutions. This study addresses the state of building information models and the conditions necessary for them to become more widely used. It is a qualitative study based on information from a number of international experts and has asked a series of questions about the feasibility of BIMs, the conditions necessary for their success, and the role of standards with particular reference to the IFCs. Some key statements were distilled from the diverse answers received and indicate that BIM solutions appear too complex for many and may need to be applied in limited areas initially. Standards are generally supported but not applied rigorously and a range of these are relevant to BIM. Benefits will depend upon the building procurement methods used and there should be special roles within the project team to manage information. Case studies are starting to appear and these could be used for publicity. The IFCs are rather oversold and their complexities should be hidden within simple-to-use software. Inevitably major questions remain and property owners may be the key to answering some of these. A framework for presenting standards, backed up by case studies of successful projects, is the solution proposed to provide better information on where particular BIM standards and solutions should be applied in building projects.

Anatomy of open access publishing: a study of longitudinal development and internal structure

BackgroundOpen access (OA) is a revolutionary way of providing access to the scholarly journal literature made possible by the Internet. The primary aim of this study was to measure the volume of scientific articles published in full immediate OA journals from 2000 to 2011, while observing longitudinal internal shifts in the structure of OA publishing concerning revenue models, publisher types and relative distribution among scientific disciplines. The secondary aim was to measure the share of OA articles of all journal articles, including articles made OA by publishers with a delay and individual author-paid OA articles in subscription journals (hybrid OA), as these subsets of OA publishing have mostly been ignored in previous studies.MethodsStratified random sampling of journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (n = 787) was performed. The annual publication volumes spanning 2000 to 2011 were retrieved from major publication indexes and through manual data collection.ResultsAn estimated 340,000 articles were published by 6,713 full immediate OA journals during 2011. OA journals requiring article-processing charges have become increasingly common, publishing 166,700 articles in 2011 (49% of all OA articles). This growth is related to the growth of commercial publishers, who, despite only a marginal presence a decade ago, have grown to become key actors on the OA scene, responsible for 120,000 of the articles published in 2011. Publication volume has grown within all major scientific disciplines, however, biomedicine has seen a particularly rapid 16-fold growth between 2000 (7,400 articles) and 2011 (120,900 articles). Over the past decade, OA journal publishing has steadily increased its relative share of all scholarly journal articles by about 1% annually. Approximately 17% of the 1.66 million articles published during 2011 and indexed in the most comprehensive article-level index of scholarly articles (Scopus) are available OA through journal publishers, most articles immediately (12%) but some within 12 months of publication (5%).ConclusionsOA journal publishing is disrupting the dominant subscription-based model of scientific publishing, having rapidly grown in relative annual share of published journal articles during the last decade.

‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics

BackgroundA negative consequence of the rapid growth of scholarly open access publishing funded by article processing charges is the emergence of publishers and journals with highly questionable marketing and peer review practices. These so-called predatory publishers are causing unfounded negative publicity for open access publishing in general. Reports about this branch of e-business have so far mainly concentrated on exposing lacking peer review and scandals involving publishers and journals. There is a lack of comprehensive studies about several aspects of this phenomenon, including extent and regional distribution.MethodsAfter an initial scan of all predatory publishers and journals included in the so-called Beall’s list, a sample of 613 journals was constructed using a stratified sampling method from the total of over 11,000 journals identified. Information about the subject field, country of publisher, article processing charge and article volumes published between 2010 and 2014 were manually collected from the journal websites. For a subset of journals, individual articles were sampled in order to study the country affiliation of authors and the publication delays.ResultsOver the studied period, predatory journals have rapidly increased their publication volumes from 53,000 in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014, published by around 8,000 active journals. Early on, publishers with more than 100 journals dominated the market, but since 2012 publishers in the 10–99 journal size category have captured the largest market share. The regional distribution of both the publisher’s country and authorship is highly skewed, in particular Asia and Africa contributed three quarters of authors. Authors paid an average article processing charge of 178 USD per article for articles typically published within 2 to 3 months of submission.ConclusionsDespite a total number of journals and publishing volumes comparable to respectable (indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals) open access journals, the problem of predatory open access seems highly contained to just a few countries, where the academic evaluation practices strongly favor international publication, but without further quality checks.

A study of open access journals using article processing charges

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

The hybrid model for open access publication of scholarly articles: A failed experiment?

906 U.S. dollars (USD) calculated over journals and

Anatomy of green open access

904 USD calculated over articles. The price range varied between

The publishing delay in scholarly peer-reviewed journals

8 and

A longitudinal comparison of citation rates and growth among open access journals

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 journals published by societies, universities, or scholars/researchers. 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 OA in what are termed hybrid journals.

The open access scientific journal: an empirical study

Since 2004, mainstream scholarly publishers have been offering authors publishing in their subscription journals the option 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; 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.