A study published in PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed online publication of open access (OA) publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS), reports on the rapid growth of OA publishing since the start of the World Wide Web. The study was conducted by a team of researchers from the Hanken School of Economics.
The results show a very rapid growth of OA publishing during the period of 1993-2009. In 2009 an estimated 191,000 articles were published in 4,769 OA journals. Since the year 2000, the average annual growth rate has been 18 percent for the number of OA journals and 30 percent for the number of OA articles. This can be contrasted to the reported 3.5 percent yearly increase in the total number of peer reviewed journals. It was estimated that in 2009, articles in OA journals reached 7.7 percent of all peer reviewed journal articles.
Since the web emerged in the mid 1990s, scientists have dreamed of having the whole body of scientific peer reviewed literature freely accessible on it, openly available without any hindrance. Slowly but steadily OA to peer reviewed journal articles has increased. This could be due to the emergence of over 6,000 OA journals; pressure from research funders such as the NIH; and a growing awareness among scholars of the advantages of publishing in OA journals. A number of specialised OA publishers such as the PLoS, BioMed Central and Hindawi have entered the market and more traditional publishers have also begun to offer OA alternatives.
The full article, "The Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from 1993 to 2009", is available online at http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0020961
Search for more Industry study reports
To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.
