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 the previous post on this topic which was published on the OASPA blog at the end of 2022.
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 2022. 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
The volume of publications from OASPA continues to grow, albeit at a slower rate than in previous years.
Members published just over 1.1m articles in 2022, passing the 1m articles annual output milestone for the first time. However, 2022 output grew by 16% over 2021, which is around one third of the long-term average.
Just under 5.2 million articles were published by members in the period 2000-2022. 2022’s output therefore represents around one fifth of the total across all years. The total number of articles reported by members has more than doubled since 2019, and grown over 25x since 2011.
CC BY in fully OA journals continues to dominate output, accounting for just under two thirds of 2022’s output. However, beneath the headlines lie some interesting nuances. We see differences between fully OA and hybrid journals.
Rate of growth for CC BY articles in fully-OA journals continues for OASPA members
Around 84% of OASPA members’ Open Access articles are published in fully OA journals, up from 81% in the previous year. The chart below compares publications in fully OA journals with those in hybrid ones.
Figure 1: Open Access Articles Published by OASPA Members
Numbers of articles continue to grow across the board, but at a slower rate compared with long term averages. In 2022, the volume of articles in fully OA journals grew by 14%, compared with a growth of just over 24% in hybrid output, and 16% overall.
The data show that CC BY articles in fully-OA journals are by far the dominant type of articles published by OASPA members. Just over 3.6 million articles were published with the CC BY license in fully OA (open access-only) journals by members of OASPA during the period 2000-2022. Around 743,000 of those were published in 2022.
CC BY remains dominant in hybrid journals too. Hybrid journals saw 533,000 articles published with the CC BY license during the period 2000-2022, just under 150,000 of which were published in 2022.
CC BY share appears to be stable
In 2022, 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.
In fully OA journals, the proportion of CC BY (just over 80% of output) and CC BY-NC-ND (around 10%) has been pretty steady since 2018. The proportion of CC BY-NC licenses has falling slightly in that time (from 8.1% to 6.8%). Other forms of license have negligible share.
Licenses with some restrictions are significantly more prevalent in hybrid journals, although this trend is showing signs of reversing. More restrictive licenses were displacing the proportion of CC BY, which had fallen from around ¾ of hybrid OA in 2014 to around 51% in 2019. However, in 2020 CC BY licenses recovered ground and now account for around 62% of Hybrid licenses. The proportion of CC BY-NC-ND is now 25%, having squeezed out CC BY-NC. CC BY now has roughly 3.5x more share than the commercially restrictive licenses, compared with a roughly 50:50 split in 2019.
Output is highly consolidated
The top 3 publishers account for 53% of OASPA members’ output, the top 5 for 73% and the top 10 for 88% 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.
MDPI remained the largest producer; Elsevier is now the second-largest producer, just overtaking slightly ahead of Springer Nature (although with a one-third % difference, these two might be consider joint second-largest). Wiley (including Hindawi) is fourth largest; excluding Hindawi’s output, Wiley would be fifth and Frontiers fourth.
You can see more detailed visualizations using Delta Think’s analysis tools, as noted below.
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 the Open Access Data and Analytics Tool (OA DAT), a subscription-based product which allows users analyse open access data in detail and to stay abreast of the continually evolving market through carefully curated data, visualizations, and expert commentary on APCs, funding, market sizing and dynamics, and more.
Learn more at www.deltathink.com and https://oainfo.deltathink.com/
