This would be all too simple. All four lists, Web of Science, Scopus, ERIH andAERES deal onluy with refereed journals. Moreover, the last two of these ists (ERIH and AERES) were built through a series of consultations with academic colleagues. So, we are talking about reputable journals here, not simply nominally refereed journals.
jcg
-----Original Message-----
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Reckling, Falk, Dr.
Sent: Wed 8/5/2009 4:28 AM
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: WG: Number of scholarly journals in the world.
I think the problem raised by Jean-Claude has to do with the distinction between "refereed" and "non-refereed" journals:
- One resources for journal numbers is Ulrichs Web (www.ulrichsweb.com/<
http://www.ulrichsweb.com/>) which currently lists 25.992 active and refereed journals from all disciplinary fields. If you are searching for all active journal (excl. "refereed") the number is 66.493. The main question is: what is meant by "refereed"? That is not defined by Ulrichs Web.
- A lot of journals in the humanities and in the some field of the social sciences have no peer review process in the usual way (editorial board + external reviews), decisions are rather often made by one editor or by a small group of editors (without external reviews). That is also true for a lot journals listed by ERIH or AERES, in particular for journals from continental europe.
Falk Reckling
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Von: American Scientist Open Access Forum im Auftrag von Jean-Claude Guédon[SMTP:JEAN.CLAUDE.GUEDON_at_UMONTREAL.CA<mailto:SMTP%3AJEAN.CLAUDE.GUEDON_at_UMONTREAL.CA>]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 4. August 2009 22:06:48
An: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG<mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
Betreff: Number of scholarly journals in the world.
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 Tue Aug 11 2009 - 02:08:13 BST