Dramatic Growth of Open Access First Quarter 2014

Highlights this quarter: three open access initiatives illustrating particularly strong growth this quarter are featured (Directory of Open Access Books, Highwire Press free sites, and PubMedCentral with 5 of the top 15 spots by quarterly growth rate). The number of journals in DOAJ has decreased this quarter; please note that this reflects a vigorous weeding process at DOAJ rather than a decrease in fully open access journals. For example, the number of articles searchable at the article level through DOAJ increased by over 21,000 this quarter. To download the full datasets or the most recent rationale and method, see the Dramatic Growth of Open Access dataverse at Morrison, Heather, 2014-03, "Dramatic Growth of Open Access", http://hdl.handle.net/10864/10660 Morrison, Heather [Distributor] V1 [Version]
Please note that there an issue with this URL has been resolved.

Double kudos to the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) for taking the two highest places for quarterly growth as measured in percentage. DOAB added 293 open access monographs this quarter for an 18% growth rate (annual equivalent 72%)  and a total of 1,912 books as of March 31, 2014. DOAB also added 8 new publishers for a 15% quarterly growth rate (annual equivalent 60%) and a total of 62 publishers. I hope my small contribution of faculty library start-up funds to the Knowledge Unlatched pilot helped with this!

This quarter's data has a few indicators which suggest an increased tendency for traditional society publishers to move to open access. Highwire Press' completely free sites had the third highest growth by percentage this quarter, adding 10 journals for an 11% quarterly growth rate (annual equivalent 44%) and a total of 99 titles...