On Proportion and Strategy: OA, non-OA, Gold-OA, Paid-OA

[Stevan Harnad]

As I do not have exact figures on most of the 9 proportions I
highlight below, I am expressing them only in terms of "vast majority"
(75% or higher) vs. "minority" (25% or lower) -- rough figures that we
can be confident are approximately valid. They turn out to have at
least one rather important implication.

1. The vast majority of current (peer-reviewed) journal articles are
not Open Access (OA) (i.e., they are neither self-archived as Green OA
nor published in a Gold OA journal).

2. The vast majority of journals are Green OA.

3. The vast majority of journals are not Gold OA.

4. The vast majority of citations are to the top minority of articles
(the Pareto/Seglen 90/10 rule).
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/474-guid.html

5. The vast majority of journals (or journal articles) are not among
the top minority of journals (or journal articles).

6. The vast majority of the top journals are not Gold OA.

7. The vast majority of the top journals are Green OA.

8. The vast majority of Gold OA journals are not paid-publication journals.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/careful-confirmation-that-70-of-oa.html

9. The vast majority of the top Gold OA journals are paid-publication journals.

I think two strong conclusions follow from this:

The fact that the vast majority of Gold OA journals are not
paid-publication journals is not relevant if we are concerned about
providing OA to the articles in the top journals.

Green OA is the vastly underutilized means of providing OA.

The implication is that it is far more productive (of OA) for
universities and funders to mandate Green OA than to fund Gold OA.


Stevan Harnad