Purpose The ultimate goal of current open access (OA) initiatives is for library services to use OA resources. This study aimed to assess the infrastructure for OA scholarly information services by tabulating the number and proportion of OA articles in a literature database.
Methods We measured the absolute numbers and proportions of OA articles at different time points across various disciplines based on the Web of Science (WoS) database.
Results The number (proportion) of available OA articles between 2000 and 2021 in the WoS database was 12 million (32.4%). The number (proportion) of indexed OA articles in 1 year was 0.15 million (14.6%) in 2000 and 1.5 million (48.0%) in 2021. The proportion of OA by subject categories in the cumulative data was the highest in the multidisciplinary category (2000–2021, 79%; 2021, 89%), high in natural sciences (2000–2021, 21%–46%; 2021, 41%–62%) and health and medicine (2000–2021, 37%–40%; 2021, 52%–60%), and low in social sciences and others (2000–2021, 23%–32%; 2021, 36%–44%), engineering (2000–2021, 17%–33%; 2021, 31%–39%) and humanities and arts (2000–2021, 11%–22%; 2021, 28%–38%).
Conclusion Our study confirmed that increasingly many OA research papers have been published in the last 20 years, and the recent data show considerable promise for better services in the future. The proportions of OA articles differed among scholarly disciplines, and designing library services necessitates several considerations with regard to the customers’ demands, available OA resources, and strategic approaches to encourage the use of scholarly OA articles.
Purpose The variety, scope, and impact of open access (OA) diamond journals across disciplines and regions from July 22 to September 11, 2020 were charted to characterize the current OA diamond landscape.
Methods The total number of diamond journals was estimated, including those outside the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The distribution across regions, disciplines, and publisher types was described. The scope of journals in terms of authorship and readership was investigated. Information was collected on linguistic diversity, journal dynamics and life cycle, and their visibility in scholarly databases.
Results The number of OA diamond journals is estimated to be 29,000. OA diamond journals are estimated to publish 356,000 articles per year. The OA diamond sector is diverse in terms of regions (45% in Europe, 25% in Latin America, 16% in Asia, and 5% in the United States/Canada) and disciplines (60% humanities and social sciences, 22% sciences, and 17% medicine). More than 70% of OA diamond journals are published by university-owned publishers, including university presses. The majority of OA diamond journals are small, publishing fewer than 25 articles a year. English (1,210), Spanish (492), and French (342) are the most common languages of the main texts. Out of 1,619 journals, 1,025 (63.3%) are indexed in DOAJ, 492 (30.4%) in Scopus, and 321 (19.8%) in Web of Science.
Conclusion The patterns and trends reported herein provide insights into the diversity and importance of the OA diamond journal landscape and the accompanying opportunities and challenges in supporting this publishing model.
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