Guest post by Dan Pollock, Delta Think
Each year, OASPA surveys its members about their publication output. This year, we are delighted to continue to work with Delta Think who have helped us by taking on the analysis, structuring and presentation of the data we collected. This guest blog post from Delta Think by Dan Pollock covers some highlights from our findings.
OASPA members were invited to share their data to update our previous post on this topic, from January 2024.
Information covers the number of open access articles across both fully OA and hybrid journals, and the licenses under which those articles were published, up to the end of 20231. Figures were supplied as number of articles published per year since implementation of the license by that publisher. See the downloadable spreadsheet for full details here.
Growth in OA articles published by OASPA Members has slowed significantly
Growth in the volume of publications as reported by OASPA members slowed significantly compared with previous years.
The OASPA dataset shows that members collectively published almost 1.2m articles in 2023. But 2023 output grew by only 4% over 2022, which is one quarter of the previous year’s growth, and one tenth of the long-term average.
Just under 6.4 million articles were published in the period 2000-2023 covered by the dataset. 2023’s output therefore represents a little under one fifth of the total across all years. The total number of articles reported by members has more quadrupled since 2017, and grown over 32x since 2011.
CC BY in fully OA journals continues to dominate output, accounting for 60% of 2023’s output. However, beneath the headlines lie some interesting nuances. The number of articles in fully OA (‘gold’) journals shrank compared with 2022, while those in hybrid journals continue to grow strongly.
Output in fully-OA journals shrinks for the first time while hybrid OA grows
In 2023, 75% of the OASPA members’ Open Access articles included in this dataset were published in fully OA journals, down from 79% last year. The chart below compares publications in fully OA journals with those in hybrid ones.
Figure 1: Open Access Articles Published by OASPA Members
Sources: OASPA publisher survey, OpenAlex, Delta Think analysis.
Reported numbers of articles in fully OA journals shrank for the first time in 2023. OA articles in hybrid journals continue to grow strongly, making up for the lost ground in fully OA and so total output grew overall. In 2023, the volume of articles in fully OA journals shrank by two thirds of a percent, compared with a growth of 14% the previous year. Hybrid OA articles grew by 22% in the same period, down slightly from 24% the previous year. Output grew by 4% overall, compared with 16% the previous year.
The data show that CC BY articles in fully-OA journals continue to be by far the dominant type of articles reported by OASPA members in this dataset. Just under 4.4 million articles were reported as published with the CC BY license in fully OA journals by members of OASPA during the period 2000-2023. Around 720,000 of those were published in 2023.
CC BY remains dominant in hybrid journals too. Hybrid journals saw just over 733,000 articles published with the CC BY license during the period 2000-2023, just under 200,000 of which were published in 2023.
CC BY continues to dominate, gaining ground particularly in hybrid OA
In 2023, CC BY licenses accounted for around 82% of articles in fully OA journals, and just over 60% of those in hybrid journals. Proportions are similar to the previous year.
Sources: OASPA publisher survey, OpenAlex, Delta Think analysis.
In fully OA journals, the proportion of CC BY (just over 80% of output) and CC BY-NC-ND (around 10%) has been steady since 2018. CC BY fell back slightly in 2023, and that of CC BY-NC-ND grew slightly – but both by just 1 percentage point, so it’s too soon to tell if this represents a change to long-term trends. The proportion of CC BY-NC-ND licenses grew slightly: from 10% in 2021 and 2022 to 12% in 2023.
Licenses with some restrictions are significantly more prevalent in hybrid journals, although this trend is showing signs of reversing. Historically, more restrictive licenses were displacing the proportion of CC BY, which had fallen from around 75% of hybrid OA in 2014 to around 51% in 2019. However, in 2020 CC BY licenses recovered ground and now account for around 67% of Hybrid licenses (up from 62% the year before). CC BY appears to be displacing the other two Creative Commons licenses in hybrid OA. In 2023, the proportion of CC BY-NC-ND was down slightly to 23%, and CC BY-NC up slightly to 10%. CC BY now accounts for over two thirds of hybrid OA output, up from half in 2019.
OA output continues to be highly consolidated
3 publishers account for 54% of the total output covered by this OASPA dataset, the top 5 for 70% and the top 10 for 90% of it. This shows a slightly higher degree of consolidation compared with last year. We see greater levels of consolidation for CC BY licenses overall, and greater still for CC BY licenses published in fully-OA journals.
The order of the top 5 publishers in terms of volume is the same as last year: MDPI remained the largest producer, Elsevier the second largest and Springer Nature the third (with the caveat that we had to estimate Springer Nature’s figures1 ). Wiley (including Hindawi) is fourth largest and Frontiers fifth.
1 Figures for Springer Nature’s 2023 output were estimated by projecting trends in its previous OASPA data onto publicly available figures from OpenAlex.
ABOUT DELTA THINK, INC.
Delta Think is a strategic consulting and advisory firm serving organizations in professional and academic communications as well as professional membership societies. Since 2005, Delta Think has engaged with more than 120 organizations across the scholarly enterprise by creating effective business and product strategies, developing and analyzing customer and market intelligence, and translating strategies into actionable and execution focused roadmaps and work plans.
To support data-driven decisions surrounding Open Access, in 2017 Delta Think launched its Data and Analytics Tool, a subscription-based product which allows users analyse data about journal output in detail and to stay abreast of the continually evolving market through carefully curated data, visualizations, and expert commentary on business models, pricing, market sizing and dynamics, and more.
Learn more at www.deltathink.com
