How many science journals?
- Estimation: <> 25-40,000 journals
- 96% are published online
- 8-10% are published under Open Access models
- 20% of science articles are available free of charge
- How many articles have been published ever (means since 1665)? est. 50 millions
- Growth: 1.4 million of articles per year
- There are 2,000 publishers but Top 3 (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley) account for 42% of articles published
- Elsevier itself publishes 250,000 articles a year in 2,000 journals
- The biggest platform of ejournals, ScienceDirect, provides 240 million of downloads per year to 10 million of users
- The cost of publishing a single online scientific journal article is estimated at $10,000
- To purchase an article for an individual: $30-40
- Average cost of a subscription for a library: $3,792 (average cost for a chemistry journal) up to $10,000
- The most expensive: Biochimica & Biophysica Acta, $20,930 a year!
Sources:
– Article 50 million: an estimate of the number of scholarly articles in existence. Jinha, Arif E. Learned Publishing, Volume 23, Number 3, July 2010 , pp. 258-263
– SOAP Project result: http://www.slideshare.net/ProjectSoap/soapfall2010
– Leggott, Mark. UPEI, Web of Science and Knowledge for all. Posted on: 14th of August 2010.
– Björk B-C, Welling P, Laakso M, Majlender P, Hedlund T, et al. (2010) Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature: Situation 2009. PLoS ONE 5(6): e11273. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011273
– Fanelli D (2010) Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists’ Bias? An Empirical Support from US States Data. PLoS ONE 5(4): e10271. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0010271
– Ware, Mark and Mabe, Michael. The stm report : An overview of scientific and scholarly journals publishing. September 2009. Online: http://www.stm-assoc.org/news.php?id=255&PHPSESSID=3c5575d0663c0e04a4600d7f04afe91f
Had no idea the Open Access percentage was so low.
Now that I am no longer working at a university library…I really understand non-university affliated folk’s frustration with not being able to access articles for free or at least reasonable rates.
Thank you for doing this research.
Janice Flahiff
January 18, 2012 at 12:13 pm