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In the last few years, various attempts to estimate the number of
journals in the world have been used. Figures ranging from about
14,000 (Michael Mabe) to about 23,000 (Stevan Harnad) have been
regularly brought forth. Few numbers have been used beyond these two
numbers, although they exist.
I have often felt these numbers were much too small.
A new piece of evidence supporting my feeling was recently published
in France: A 721-page list of social science and humanities journals
comprising around 20,000 titles has been compiled. This list is
limited to SSH journals and it relies only on a small number of
sources: Web of Science, Scopus, ERIH and the French list AERES.
Lists such as Redalyc for Latin America have not yet been used. There
are probably long lists of journals to add from India and China, and
other countries. In short, although impressive, this list is still
incomplete and it covers only SHS journals.
The point here is that this list demonstrates the existence of a much
larger set of scholarly and scientific journals than has been used in
our past discussions. This impacts directly on how we evaluate
various approaches to Open Access.
The list can be downloaded at
http://www.cybergeo.eu/index22492.html
I am sure the authors would love receiving further advice and
information to complete their list.
Jean-Claude Guédon
Received on Wed Aug 05 2009 - 02:30:12 BST