The exchange, below, about the apparent discrepancy in the estimates of the current number of open access journals is resolved as follows:
Bowker's Ulrichsweb http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/ indexes about 250,000 serials. Of those 250,000 serials about 10% (24,000) are peer-reviewed journals. Of those 24,000 about 2.5% (600) are indexed by The Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org/ which indexes only peer-reviewed journals. Other indices and harvesters such as http://www.j-gate.informindia.co.in/ and http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?lang=en may index more free online full-text journals than http://www.doaj.org/ but the open-access movement is focussed on *peer-reviewed* journals only, as defined in http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml and only peer-reviewed journals are indexed by http://www.doaj.org/ And let us also not forget that apart from the 2.5% of yearly articles from the 24,000 peer-reviewed journals that are openly accessible because they are published in the 600 open-access ("gold") journals to date, at least three times as many yearly articles (7.5%) from the 24,000 peer-reviewed journals are openly accessible because they are self-archived by their authors: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif This current total of 10% open access can immediately be increased to at least 55% by self-archiving all the articles in the 55% of peer-reviewed journals that are already "green" (or "blue" or "gold"): http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm > Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 08:50:29 +0000 (GMT) > From: Subbiah Arunachalam <subbia...@yahoo.com> > To: sathya <sat...@informindia.co.in> > > From: sathya <sat...@informindia.co.in> > > J-Gate [ http://www.j-gate.informindia.co.in/] indexes open access > literature extensively. We index articles from 1,600 journals > available free online, and we are the only site doing this in the > world. (There are many sites who just put an html page of these > journals, but no one does indexing). In the coming years, we plan > to harvest e-print sites and index them too on our site. > > From: Subbiah Arunachalam <subbia...@yahoo.com> > > [ The Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org/ ] > lists [only] 600. > > From: sathya <sat...@informindia.co.in> > > It is possible that [http://www.doaj.org/ is] peer-reviewed journals > available free online. This could be 600. I can't separately count > peer-reviewed journals in my database. [The following is from the AmSci Forum's Archive/] "Re: Need for systematic scientometric analyses of open-access data" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2522.html "It seems that (apart from a few well known titles) [of] the 14% free access biological periodicals listed by the Electronic Journal Library http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?lang=en ...some are newsletters, some look like catalogues..." "Request for journal/article/field statistics from Ulrichs and ISI" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2972.html "The total number of refereed (peer-reviewed) journals Ulrich's indexes currently (24,116 active was latest figure)" [This is about 10% of the total of about 250,000 serials indexed by Ulrichs] http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/ Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy: BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0026.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0021.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0028.gif