Re: Dramatic Growth of Open Access

["Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

The number of open access journals is growing--true.  The number 
of proprietary journals (aka "toll-access journals") is also 
growing.  The number of OA articles in primarily proprietary 
journals is growing.  And the number of unauthorized articles 
from proprietary journals that are available on the public Web 
("leakage") is growing.  I suspect the growth rate for this last 
category (leakage) is the fastest-growing of all, but that is a 
speculation.  Growth, growth, growth, growth:  why is everybody 
saying this is a zero-sum game?

Meanwhile, I happened to read that the CEO of Reed Elsevier 
(which publishes much more than science journals, of course) was 
awarded a bonus of around $3 million dollars this year.  Sales 
are strong, profit is up.  OA hasn't much touched the big guys. 
It's the little guys who can get hurt, the not-for-profit society 
publishers, many of whom live hand to mouth, in part because of 
their less restrictive access policies, in part because of their 
less aggressive pricing.  Are there any conspiracty theorists on 
this list who wonder if OA is a plot by the commercial houses to 
put their NFP competition out of business?

Joe Esposito

On 4/16/06, Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca> wrote:
>
> My figures illustrating the dramatic growth of open access are
> not meant to be a precise indication of the quantity of OA items,
> only a rough indicator of the growth rate.  Such a precise
> calculation would require more resources than is available to me.

[SNIP]