On Proportion and Strategy: OA, Non-OA, Gold-OA, Paid-OA

As I do not have exact figures on most of the 12 proportions I highlight below, I am expressing them only in terms of "vast majority" (75% or higher) vs. "minority" (25% or lower) -- rough figures that we can be confident are approximately valid. They turn out to have at least one rather important implication about practical priorities for institutions and funders who wish to provide Open Access to their research output.

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TWELVE OA STATISTICS AND THREE CONCLUSIONS

#1:   The vast majority of current (peer-reviewed) journal articles are not OA (Open Access) (neither Green OA nor Gold OA ).

A peer-reviewed journal article is Green OA if it has been made OA by its author, by self-archiving it in an Open Access Repository (preferably the author's own institution's OAI-compliant Institutional Repository) from which anyone can access it for free on the web.

A peer-reviewed journal article is Gold OA if it has been published in a Gold OA journal from which anyone can access it for free on the web.

There are at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals, across all fields worldwide, publishing about 2.5 million articles per year.

#2:   The vast majority of journals are not Gold OA.

(Note that the c. 10,000 journals indexed in SHERPA/Romeo do not include most of the Gold OA journals, although these would all be classed as Green too, as all Gold OA journals also endorse Green OA self-archiving. Romeo does, however, index just about all of the top journals in just about every field.)

#3:   The vast majority of journals are Green OA.

Of the 10,000+ journals whose OA policies are indexed in SHERPA/Romeo, over 90% endorse immediate deposit and immediate OA by the author: 63% for the author's peer-reviewed final draft (the postprint) and a further 32% for the pre-refereeing preprint.

#4:   The vast majority of citations are to the top minority of articles (the Pareto/Seglen 90/10 rule).

#5:   The vast majority of journals (or journal articles) are not among the top minority of journals (or journal articles).

#6:   The vast majority of the top journals are not Gold OA.

#7:   The vast majority of the top journals are Green OA.

The relation between point #1 (the vast majority of articles are neither Green OA nor Gold OA) and point #7 (the vast majority of the top journals -- and indeed also the vast majority of all journals -- are Green OA) is this: Although the vast majority of journals endorse Green OA self-archiving by the author (and are hence Green) the vast majority of authors do not yet act upon this Green light to deposit. That is why the Green OA mandates by institutions and funders are needed.

#8:   The vast majority of article authors would comply willingly with a Green OA mandate from their institutions and/or funders.

Ninety-five percent (95%) of authors surveyed (by Alma Swan of Key Perspectives, for JISC), in all fields and all countries, have stated that they would comply with a mandate to self-archive from their universities and/or their funders (over 80% of them say they would do it willingly). However, the vast majority do not self-archive spontaneously, without a mandate.

#9:   The vast majority of institutions and funders do not yet mandate Green OA.

There are somewhere around 10,000 universities and research institutions worldwide. So far, 51 of them -- plus 36 research funders -- have mandated (i.e. required) their peer-reviewed research output to be made Green OA by depositing it in an OA repository.

#10:   The vast majority of Gold OA journals are not paid-publication journals.

#11:   The vast majority of the top Gold OA journals are paid-publication journals.

#12:   The vast majority of institutions do not have the funds to subscribe to all the journals their users need.

Because of the serials crisis, institutional library acquisitions budgets are overstretched. The same is true of research funders' budgets.

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I think two strong conclusions follow from this:

C1: The fact that the vast majority of Gold OA journals are not paid-publication journals is not relevant if we are concerned about providing OA to the articles in the top journals.

C2: Green OA, mandated by institutions and funders, is the vastly underutilized means of providing OA.

The implication is:

It is vastly more productive (of OA) for universities and funders to mandate Green OA than to fund Gold OA.

(Whether institutions and funders elect to fund Gold OA after they have mandated Green OA is of course an entirely different question, and not a matter of urgency one way or the other. These statistics and conclusions about practical priority are intended only to illustrate the short-sightedness of funding Gold OA pre-emptively, without mandating Green OA, if the goal of institutions and funders is to provide Open Access to their research output.)

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum