Abstract
I stumbled across the question of publisher size while preparing for an earlier article. From the viewpoint of an economist, the size distribution of Open Access publishers looked inefficient. In this article I first explore reasons to be sceptical to a situation with a large number of small publishers. Then I go through the numbers from the Directory of Open Access Journals, also discussing problems inherent in the material. The results are then compared to similar data about Toll Access publishing. A conclusion is that, even though numbers may lack in exactitude, there seems to be a need for institutions to look at how they organize their publishing activities.
Highlights
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ, considered to be the best source of information about OA journals) has no data on the annual output in terms of articles published of the journals they list
Comparing the file from Ulrich’s, we find that of the 2,639 OA journals listed there, 131 journals are not in DOAJ if we do a lookup in the DOAJ file based on the ISSN in Ulrich’s file [3]
Ordering the publishers by their size in terms of the number of journals they publish and counting the number of publishers that have a given size, we arrive at Table 2 after grouping the larger publishers in size groups
Summary
An editor in a small journal often has to invest a lot of time in learning the technicalities of the publishing system, the hows and whys of getting the journal listed and embedded in various Internet services, etc These costs are seen to be “used” over the time the editor works for the journal. Economic theory (based on observation of reality) holds that as production increases, the effort of producing another unit (in this discussion: another article) could become lower. People will increasingly specialize and concentrate on the elements of the production process that they are good at, instead of having to do everything This means that the average variable cost (the costs that are not fixed) of producing an article will decrease as the volume of articles in a journal, or in a publishing venture, increases. The result is less efficient dissemination of their content
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
