Introduction

Background/rationale: As venues for scholarly communication, academic journals have contributed to the development of science and technology. In the traditional model, publishers sell journals to libraries for a subscription fee after acquiring the copyright of the article from the author, in exchange for publishing it in their journal and distributing it worldwide. Unlike traditional print journals, many e-journals have adopted the open access (OA) concept, allowing anyone free access and reuse of articles on the internet. The OA movement, which aims to promote OA to research, has been developed in two major directions: one is publishing articles that are OA from the time of initial publication (gold OA) with the author’s agreement, and the other is sharing the articles before or after publication through self-archiving or institutional repositories (green OA). From the user’s point of view, some articles are inside the paywall and require subscription fees, while others are outside the paywall and freely open to anyone.

Article processing charge (APC)-based gold OA journals published by new OA publishers are springing up everywhere, and even traditional subscription publishers are participating in this change with the new release of APC-based gold OA journals or the conversion of subscription journals to hybrid journals. Institutional budgets are increasing due to the APCs added onto the subscription fees. Many publishers have an opportunity to obtain more profits by combining the APC business model with the subscription business model. In this situation, librarians who are dissatisfied with high journal subscription fees have pushed for off-set agreements deducting the share of APCs already paid by authors from the subscription fee. In recent years, attempts have even been made to implement read-and-publish agreement, which based subscription fees combining APCs to expedite OA publishing [1]. Like this, authors, users, and publishers understand the OA movement from diverse aspects and put it into practice in specific ways.

OA journals are rapidly growing to a degree that may be sufficient to change the traditional academic publishing ecosystem. The OA movement is certainly a new change that librarians have experienced since the 2000s, when many print journals were converted to e-journals. Excellent gold OA journals are appearing despite controversies regarding the formal peer review system and several examples of predatory journals. Librarians need to investigate the real influence of gold and hybrid OA journals on the research community in order to provide better library services.

Objectives: After a previous study on the general status of OA at the journal and article level [2], we had several questions such as “How strong is the influence of gold OA journals?”, “Which are the most influential gold OA journals?”, “How many subscription journals have been converted to hybrid journals?”, and “Is there any difference in the influence of OA journals according to whether they are published by subscription or OA publishers?” To address these questions, this study conducted an in-depth analysis of OA journals in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2014 to 2019 based on JCR indicators and APCs. We compared OA journals’ influence by OA type, whether they were published by large publishers, and whether they were top gold OA journals. Types of OA were defined in the same way as in the author’s previous study [2]. The results of this study will provide useful information for librarians, researchers, and publishers who are interested in the future of OA publishing.

Methods

Ethics statement: This was not a study with human subjects, so neither institutional review board approval nor informed consent was required.

Study design: This was a literature database-based observational study.

Data collection: In the author’s previous study [2], the journal list in JCR 2014 to 2019 and the OA articles searched from the Web of Science were combined, and 9,575,780 articles in 12,449 journals were finally collected (Dataset 1). That is, the total number of articles in each journal was defined as the number of citable items in JCR, but the number of hybrid OA articles was defined based on the search results in Web of Science. To further investigate the influence of OA journals on the research community, this study added JCR indicators and the APC of each journal to the collected data. The JCR indicators used for the in-depth analysis were citations, the average journal impact factor percentile (AJIFP), impact factor, Eigenfactor score, and article influence score (AIS). However, the APC was collected for the top 10 subscription [3] and OA publishers [2] from February to April 2020, so the findings of this study do not reflect the APC of all JCR journals.

Statistilal methods: This study was based on gold and hybrid OA journals and the articles therein; therefore, only descriptive statistics were presented. Data were tabulated and the proportions of the cells were calculated. The growth rate (%) was calculated in terms of the compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

Results

Characteristics of OA journals by OA type

As shown in Table 1, distinct patterns were found for the JCR indicators of journals by OA type. The annual number of articles per journal was 127 in JCR 2014 to 2018 [3], but increased to 128 in JCR 2014 to 2019. Most of the gold OA journals with APCs, which are published for commercial purposes, contained an average of 184 articles per year. However, it was interesting that large hybrid journals, which published more than 12 OA articles over the course of 6 years, published more articles than even the gold OA journals. In contrast, small hybrid journals that published fewer than 12 OA articles and subscription-only journals published fewer articles, corresponding to less than half of the annual articles per journal. All of the JCR indicators except for the AIS were higher for the gold OA journals without APCs, which are published for non-profit purposes, than for the subscription only journals; however, most of the indicators related to citations, including the number of articles per journal, were lower than those of other journal types and even lower than the overall average of JCR journals. Therefore, the gold OA journals without APCs had relatively low popularity. The average APC for the gold OA journals was lower than that of hybrid journals. Excluding the small hybrid journals, all JCR indicators in the large hybrid journals were significantly higher than those of other journal types, although the APC was expensive. With their relatively high popularity, they composed the core journals in the JCR. However, all JCR indicators were lower for the subscription-only journals than for the average of all JCR journals.

Influence of gold OA journals by publishers

Based on the number of gold OA articles [2], the top three publishers with a subscription model or an OA model were selected. Hybrid OA articles were counted together in the selection of the top three subscription publishers, but only gold OA journals were used to compare JCR indicators. Among the top three subscription publishers, Springer was the most active in OA publishing, while Elsevier remained relatively inactive (Table 2). Although Elsevier offered low APCs, it published the fewest OA articles per journal. Elsevier and Springer had a comparable average AJIFP to that of MDPI, so the largest three publishers did not yet have as favorable a reputation in gold OA journals as they had in subscription journals. Public Library of Science (PLoS) had the highest average number of OA articles and citations per journal with the fewest journals, even though it had the most expensive APC among the six publishers. PLoS also overwhelmed the other publishers regarding the remaining four JCR indicators, suggesting the success of its OA journals. MDPI and Springer had the next highest average numbers of OA articles and citations per journal. MDPI published the largest amount of OA articles with the lowest APC, and was the least competitive in the four JCR indicators excluding Eigenfactor score.

Mega-gold OA journals in OA publishing

The top 20 gold OA journals, which published more than 10,000 OA articles over the course of 6 years, were as follows, in descending order: PLoS One, Scientific Reports, RSC Advances, Nature Communications, IEEE Access, and Optics Express, and so on (Table 3). These journals, which exert a major influence on the research community, are mega-OA journals that were newly created for OA publishing, and accounted for 27.0% of all OA articles in JCR 2014 to 2019. In particular, the top 20 gold OA journals were superior in all JCR indicators, overwhelming all other gold OA journals, and even had higher values for these indicators than the large hybrid journals, which were traditional journals with high authority and a long reputation. Table 3 shows the influence of the 20 mega-gold OA journals, which lead the domain of OA publishing, based on JCR indicators. Some of the APCs were somewhat expensive, but became cheaper (2,096 US dollars on average) when the exceptionally expensive Nature Communications was excluded. Therefore, the top 20 gold OA journals demonstrated excellence in both academic influence and economics. In terms of the average AJIFP, eight journals were ranked in Q1 and nine journals in Q2.

Regarding the challenges of gold OA journals published by subscription publishers, Springer tried a very expensive APC for Nature Communications; in contrast, society publishers such as the Royal Society of Chemistry, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and Optical Society of America started carefully with lower APCs. Looking closely at the seven gold OA journals (excluding Oncotarget) ranked in Q1 in terms of their average AJIFP, six journals (excluding PLoS One) continuously remained in Q1 for 6 years (Table 4).

OA publishing of the top three subscription publishers

The top three subscription publishers, including Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley, were analyzed for 6 years (Table 5). For non-OA articles, which readers access through subscription fees, the CAGR of Elsevier and Springer was higher than that of all JCR journals, but Wiley had a lower CAGR. In contrast, for hybrid OA articles, the CAGR of Elsevier and Springer was lower than that of all JCR journals, but Wiley showed a very high CAGR, with an actively increasing number of hybrid OA articles even though it started slightly later. Among the top three subscription publishers, Wiley had the highest share of hybrid OA articles in 2019, whereas Elsevier remained passive, with the lowest share (Fig. 1).

Discussion

Key implications for gold and hybrid OA journals

OA publishing is proceeding in two main directions: gold OA journals as a new business model and hybrid journals combined with the existing subscription model. The JCR indicators were used for an in-depth analysis of the influence of these OA journals. Most old and well-known subscription journals have shifted to the hybrid model, while 23% of journals still remained subscription-only. The large hybrid journals showed excellent results for all JCR indicators, which is why authors were willing to pay a high APC to publish their articles in those journals. However, the large hybrid journals published more articles per journal than average, and it can be assumed that they were just adding the OA articles from a business perspective, rather than trying to convert subscription articles to the OA articles. Consequently, they were becoming somewhat mega-hybrid journals. Therefore, the publishers first converted highly influential journals into hybrid journals, for which authors were paying the APC as worthwhile.

Gold OA journals with a short publication history were still weaker in academic influence than hybrid journals. However, many top gold OA journals were superior in most JCR indicators and were in a higher position than even the large hybrid journals. These gold OA journals were favored by researchers and achieved a strong reputation in a short time through their enormous influence on the research community. If competitive gold OA journals continue to be launched, they may change the traditional journal ecosystem more quickly. Therefore, the journals of OA publishers showed both the potential for development beyond traditional peer-reviewed journals and concerns posed by poor-quality journals, besides their contribution to the growth of OA articles. If gold OA journals maintain the advantage of a traditional peer-review system with a long turnaround time, rather than a formal peer review system with a short turnaround time, their potential for development will be great. Gold OA journals have more advantages over traditional subscription journals in terms of the rapid circulation of research articles without any barrier to users, and the fact that they do not impose budgetary burdens on libraries.

Changing subscription agreements based on the growth of OA articles

Institutions sign subscription contracts for subscription journals, including hybrid journals. As the number of hybrid OA articles increases, it is time to reflect upon whether it makes sense for commercial publishers to raise their subscription prices every year. On the whole, the CAGR for hybrid OA articles was much higher than that of non-OA articles. The share of hybrid OA articles published by the top three publishers gradually increased over 6 years. This means that the share of non-OA articles decreased, undermining the purported rationale for the steep increase of journal subscription prices. Therefore, one may ask whether there was any other reason why the journal subscription prices of these publishers increased every year beyond the CAGR of JCR articles or the general inflation rate. Thus, the subscription agreement model needs to change, since double-dipping in the subscription prices provides support for off-set or read-and-publish agreements [1].

In OA publishing, the dominance of large journal publishers is also growing [5]; however, their influence remains limited. This trend has important implications for the negotiation of subscription prices with the top three publishers.

Conclusion: Librarians are involved in the entire process of journal use, including the rational use of the subscription budget, delivering articles to researchers, and recommending appropriate journals for submitting articles. In this study based on JCR indicators, the actual influence of OA journals on the research community was documented. Some gold OA journals were highly competitive in terms of JCR indicators, and even showed the potential to develop beyond traditional journals with high authority and a long reputation. Moreover, the top three subscription publishers published a rapidly increasing number of hybrid OA articles during the 6-year period analyzed in this study. In this situation, librarians need to expand journal services to include valuable OA journals by specifically grasping the trends and influence of OA journals.

Notes

Conflict of Interest

No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for this article.

Data Availability

Data are available from the author upon reasonable request.

Dataset 1. List of journal type with the APC and number of articles in Journal Citation Reports 2014 to 2019

kcse-227-dataset1.xlsx

Fig. 1.

Share of hybrid open access (OA) articles in the subscription journals of the top three publishers. JCR, Journal Citation Reports.

References

• 1. Marques M, Stone G. Transitioning to open access: an evaluation of the UK Springer compact agreement pilot 2016-2018. Coll Res Libr 2020;81:913-27.https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.86.913. Article
• 2. Kim SJ, Park KS. Open access status of journals and articles in Journal Citation Reports. Sci Ed 2021;8:26-31.https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.226. Article
• 3. Kim SJ, Park KS. Influence of the top 10 journal publishers listed in Journal Citation Reports based on six indicators. Sci Ed 2020;7:142-8.https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.209. Article
• 4. Kim SJ, Park KS. Market share of the largest publishers in Journal Citation Reports based on journal price and article processing charge. Sci Ed 2020;7:149-55.https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.210. Article
• 5. Aspesi C, Allen N, Crow R, et al. The changing academic publishing industry: implications for academic institutions [Internet]. Washington, DC: Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition; 2019 [cited 2020 Sep 29]. Available from: https://osf.io/preprints/lissa/58yhb/download. Article

Figure & Data

References

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