Many thanks to Kimmo Kuusela for the prompt provision of data on Finland's
research output, by discipline!
On the question of whether the proportion of national research output published
in subsidised national journals is closer to 5% or 50%, the answer for Finland
overall is closer to 5%; but looked at by discipline, for arts, humanities
and social sciences it is closer to 50%. (The overall average is presumably
16% because of the lower relative proportion of articles in the arts, humanities
and social sciences.)
On the basis of these data, if I were a Finnish researcher, institution or
funder, I would hope that (1) all Finnish researchers would be required
by their funders and institutions to self-archive their own journal articles
and that (2) all subsidised Finnish journals would be required by their
subsiders to make their online editions open access.
I don't think trying to combine (1) and (2) into a single mandate would
make much sense, since not only would the *requirees* -- researchers
in (1), publishers in (2) -- not be the same in the two cases, but
it is not even clear that the *requirers* -- research institutions and
funders in (1), journal subsidisers in (2) -- would be the same either.
Hence it would be best if the two were pursued separately, in parallel. It is
also worth noting that (1) would already moot (2), since 100% OA self-archiving
would include the OA self-archiving of the subsidised 16% too! But I agree with
Jean-Claude Guedon that this is no reason not to pursue the subsidised option
(2) in parallel: just don't wrap (2) into (1) (at least not until (1) is
adopted!).
It would be splendid if we could see data from other countries (along
with their discipline data) along the lines Kimmo Kuusela has provided
for Finland. (Arthur Sale has already made a stab for Australia, though
I'll bet there are a few subsidised journals still lurking in the Aussie
outback somewhere, possibly in the arts?)
Stevan Harnad
On Sun, 5 Nov 2006, Kimmo Kuusela wrote:
> <harnad_at_ECS.SOTON.AC.UK> wrote:
>
> >No need to compare Finnish journals to Dutch journals. Just
> >Finnish research output in subsidised journals to total Finnish
> >research output. (If there is a way to estimate relative
> >quality, that would be helpful too, as would separate tallies
> >by discipline.)
>
> I have compared Finnish research output in *Finnish* subsidised journals
> (that is, practically all Finnish journals) to total Finnish research output
> in 2005.
>
> The results:
>
> 16 % (2100) of the total number of articles (12839) in refereed journals
> were published in Finnish journals.
>
> By field of education:
>
> Theology 56 %
> The Humanities 49 %
> Art and Design 64 %
> Music 44 %
> Theatre and Dance 43 %
> Education 45 %
> Sport Sciences 0 %
> Social Sciences 47 %
> Psychology 16 %
> Health Sciences 31 %
> Law 77 %
> Economics 21 %
> Natural sciences 6 %
> Agriculture and Forestry 14 %
> Engineering 8 %
> Medicine 11 %
> Dentistry 18 %
> Veterinary Medicine 2 %
> Pharmacy 13 %
> Fine Arts 100 %
> Field of education unspecified 15 %
>
> Here's a handy tool for even more calculations:
>
> http://kotaplus.csc.fi:7777/online/Etusivu.do?lng=en
>
> -- Kimmo Kuusela
>
Received on Sun Nov 05 2006 - 16:15:27 GMT