I fully agree with what Mike and Sally say. 'Numbers of journals' is a bad
metric, as their sizes differ so dramatically. But what Mike brings up is
very important. It's not the number of journals that count but the range of
options to publish with open access. Why would the current universe of
25,000 toll access journals have to be replaced by 25,000 open access
journals? Why not just 250? Or why not 50,000? It is the proportion of the
literature that is available with open access that counts. Small now, but
growing fast, and likely to reach a 'tipping point' in the foreseeable
future.
Jan Velterop
BioMed Central
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Eisen [mailto:mbeisen_at_LBL.GOV]
> Sent: 11 December 2003 23:05
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Re: Journals > Peer-Reviewed Journals > Open-Access
> Journals <
> Open Access
>
>
> I think Sally is absolutely correct that less than 2.5% of
> published content
> is published in open access journals, but that doesn't count the large
> amount of material that is made freely available by fee-for-access
> publishers through their own websites or through PubMed Central. I, of
> course, don't count this later class as being truly open
> access, but it is
> as available as self-archived content and should be given its
> proper due.
>
> I would also like to object, once again, to Stevan's
> continued use of this
> 5% open access / 95% self-archiving number. It's grossly
> unfair to contrast
> reality (<5% of articles currrently published in open access
> journals) on
> one side with potential (that 95% - or more accurately
> something like 50% -
> of articles COULD be self-archived). With BMC's diverse collection of
> journals, PLoS, and the many other open-access publishers in
> DOAJ (including
> high-end journals like PLoS Biology, J. Biol, JCI, BMJ) virtually any
> biomedical research article could be published in an
> open-access journal
> today.
>
> Thus, most authors - many, many more than the 5% you imply -
> who want to
> make their work freely available have a choice - they can
> publish it in a
> "green" fee-for-access journal and self-archive it, or they
> can publish in
> an open access "gold" journal. They may have reasons to
> choose the former
> route, and there is certainly a lot of work that needs to be
> done to make
> open access journals more appealing, but let's stop implying
> that the open
> access journal option wasn't available.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
> Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 1:29 PM
> Subject: Re: Journals > Peer-Reviewed Journals > Open-Access
> Journals < Open
> Access
>
>
> > On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, Sally Morris wrote:
> >
> > > I would question Stevan's estimate that 2.5% of articles
> are published
> in OA
> > > journals. While it does indeed look as if 2 - 2.5% of
> peer reviewed
> > > journals are OA (that is, if all those listed by Lund et
> al are peer
> > > reviewed), I very much doubt that they carry as many
> articles as the
> rest.
> > > This is because OA journals are, almost without
> exception, relatively
> new
> > > and extremely long-established journals tend to be far,
> far, bigger in
> terms
> > > of issues and articles published per year.
> >
> > I don't disagree with Sally's suggestion that 2.5% of journals does
> > not necessarily mean 2.5% of articles published in journals. I was
> > very deliberately using a very conservative, high-end
> estimate (sometimes
> > I even use 5%) merely to illustrate how minuscule is the
> amount of OA that
> > can currently be provided via the OA journal route ("gold")
> and hence
> > how important it is to supplement it via the OA self-archiving route
> > ("green"), today.
> >
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/S
lide0024.gif
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
> access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
> the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
> http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
> Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
>
> Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
> BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
> journal whenever one exists.
> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals
> BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
> toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
> http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
> http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
> http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
>
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Received on Fri Dec 12 2003 - 09:47:27 GMT