Research Articles about Open Access Indexed by Scopus: A Content Analysis

The consolidation of the scientific publishing industry has been the topic of much debate within and outside the scientific community, especially in relation to major publishers’ high profit margins. However, the share of scientific output published in the journals of these major publishers, as well as its evolution over time and across various disciplines, has not yet been analyzed. This paper provides such analysis, based on 45 million documents indexed in the Web of Science over the period 1973-2013. It shows that in both natural and medical sciences (NMS) and social sciences and humanities (SSH), Reed-Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis increased their share of the published output, especially since the advent of the digital era (mid-1990s). Combined, the top five most prolific publishers account for more than 50% of all papers published in 2013. Disciplines of the social sciences have the highest level of concentration (70% of papers from the top five publishers), while the humanities have remained relatively independent (20% from top five publishers). NMS disciplines are in between, mainly because of the strength of their scientific societies, such as the ACS in chemistry or APS in physics. The paper also examines the migration of journals between small and big publishing houses and explores the effect of publisher change on citation impact. It concludes with a discussion on the economics of scholarly publishing.

The aim of the present study is to report the results of a meta-synthesis of the empirical literature on scholars' attitudes towards Open Access (OA) journals. A total of 15 articles published in scholarly journals since 2002 (when the Budapest Open Access Initiative was released) were included in the study and five major themes emerged from their examination and analysis. The literature indicates that attitudes and perceptions of OA are varied across countries and across disciplines. Free access, which is perceived to facilitate wider dissemination of research outputs, is a strong incentive for publishing in OA. However, quality and reputation are the most important factors in selecting a journal and take priority over the availability of free access. Although OA is perceived to have many advantages over the traditional publication model, it raises some concerns too, especially in regard to the author-pays model, the quality of peer-review and the impact of the journals.