[GOAL] Elsevier as an open access publisher

[Ross Mounce]

Elsevier self-report (trustworthy?) more relevant article-level data here:
https://www.elsevier.com/connect/elsevier-publishing-a-look-at-the-numbers-and-more

"We ended 2015 as the 4th largest open access publisher, with 20,000 open
access (author or funder paid) articles in 2015."

Note, to make themselves look good, they are counting _just_ articles
published in 2015 for this statistic/ranking (not total articles all-time,
as they would be further down the rankings!) and it heavily relies upon the
inclusion of hybrid "open access" (?) content, not just articles published
in fully OA journal titles.

Heather: do you know the number of _articles_ Elsevier has published in
their fully open access journals? That would be the more informative
statistic to report.



On 13 January 2017 at 20:47, Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On 13 January 2017 at 16:57, Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca
> > wrote:
>
>> Elsevier is now one of the world’s largest open access publishers as
>> measured by the number of fully OA journals published. What are the
>> implications?
>
>
> There are precisely no implications.
>
> The number of journals is an utterly irrelevant measure, but I'm assuming
> you already knew this.
> Journals are just vessels for content. It is actual content that is
> important.
> Article volume is what counts in publishing (economically), and Elsevier
> are nowhere near the largest when it comes to immediate OA publishing.
>
> Most of Elsevier's fully OA journals are recently created and are
> low-volume. They can create and close (e.g. https://www.journals.
> elsevier.com/new-negatives-in-plant-science/ ) journals at the click of
> button.
>
> Perhaps though this is part of Elsevier's strategy - at a very very
> superficial level (e.g. counting journal titles) it looks like they are
> deeply invested in open access publishing. I hope no politicians or
> librarians are fooled by this simple ruse.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ross
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
-- 
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Ross Mounce, PhD
Software Sustainability Institute Fellow 2016
Dept. of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge
www.rossmounce.co.uk <http://rossmounce.co.uk/>
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