A Local and Multi-Institutional Study of Open Access Engineering Publishing
David E. Hubbard · 2015
The emergence of open access (OA), content that is online and free of charge, is challenging traditional subscription publishing models.It is estimated that worldwide OA journal publishing is currently 12%.This study examines OA journal publishing within engineering to quantify and characterize sources.Using Web of Science, journal articles within the 14 Web of Science engineering categories were identified.The articles were categorized based on OA, subject, author affiliation, and source title.Approximately 4.2% of the engineering journal articles within those 14 categories are OA, but limiting to include at least one U.S. author or coauthor decreased the number of OA articles to 1.2%.Comparisons were made between overall OA journal article publishing at the top 25 U.S engineering universities and the percentage of OA engineering journal articles by researchers at those universities.Despite overall OA publishing at the 25 U.S. engineering universities approaching the overall worldwide OA journal publishing level, OA engineering journal publishing is considerably less.A list of the most frequent OA engineering journal venues for the 25 engineering universities is presented.The paper concludes with a local study involving OA journal publishing within three engineering departments (Chemical, Civil, and Electrical & Computer Engineering) at a large research university.The local study reveals publishing patterns that are not initially intuitive.This study increases our understanding of current OA publishing within engineering and supports scholarly communication initiatives and outreach efforts. Literature ReviewSuber 1 defines open access (OA) as "…digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions."There are two main types of OA: Gold which typically refers to free, immediate access to the publisher's final version; and Green OA which refers to archiving a preprint or postprint.Most Gold OA journals charge the author a fee ("author pays" model).In addition there is delayed OA, which are often traditional subscription journals that provide free access to articles after an initial delay; and hybrid journals, which are traditional subscription journals that allow authors to pay a fee to make their individual articles OA.