Wednesday, December 31, 2008

2008 December 31 Dramatic Growth of Open Access - Happy New Year, Open Access!

The open data editions of the 2008 final Dramatic Growth of Open are now available:

Full analysis and growth charts will be published early in the New Year. In the interim, here are a few tidbits of information and observation:

Since Dec. 11, 2008 - a time when many of us have been working less, dreaming of sugar plums, and so forth - the Dramatic Growth of Open Access continues! There are two more institutional mandates, more journals in DOAJ, all the major international open access harvesting services have added more repositories and more items, there are more journals participating in PMC, more providing immediate free access in PMC, and more providing full open access to all articles!

A few quick figures to start off the New Year (some rounded):
As of December 31, 2008:
  • DOAJ - 3,812 journals (up 800 titles in the past year; adding 2 titles per day)
  • OAIster - 19.4 million items - up 5 million in the past year
  • Scientific Commons - 24.4 million publications - up 5 million in the past year

For some great recent news on dramatic growth of repositories in developing countries - up 51% in 3 months - from Barbara Kirsop, see Peter Suber on Open Access News.

This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series. For my latest major analysis and predictions for 2009, see the December 11, 2008 issue.

Happy New Year, Open Access!