Open is not forever: a study of vanished open access journals
Published | 3 September 2020 |
Type of work | Preprint |
Journal | arXiv |
Country | Finland, Germany, Europe |
ABSTRACT
The preservation of the scholarly record has been a point of concern since the beginning of knowledge production. With print publications, the responsibility rested primarily with librarians, but the shift towards digital publishing and, in particular, the introduction of open access (OA) have caused ambiguity and complexity. Consequently, the long-term accessibility of journals is not always guaranteed, and they can even disappear from the web completely. The purpose of this exploratory study is to systematically study the phenomenon of vanished journals, something that has not been done before. For the analysis, we consulted several major bibliographic indexes, such as Scopus, Ulrichsweb, and the Directory of Open Access Journals, and traced the journals through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. We found 192 OA journals that vanished from the web between 2000 and 2019, spanning all major research disciplines and geographic regions of the world. Our results raise vital concern for the integrity of the scholarly record and highlight the urgency to take collaborative action to ensure continued access and prevent the loss of more scholarly knowledge. We encourage those interested in the phenomenon of vanished journals to use the public dataset for their own research.Keywords | open access · open access journal |
Language | English |
Refereed | No |
Rights | CC BY |
URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.11933v3 |
Export options | BibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar |
AVAILABLE FILES
Viewed by 128 distinct readers
CLOUD COMMUNITY REVIEWS
The evaluations below represent the judgements of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cloud editors.










Click a star to be the first to rate this document
▶ POST A COMMENT
SIMILAR RECORDS
Digital distribution of academic journals and its impact on scholarly communication: Looking back after 20 years
Solomon, David J.; Kasper, Wendi Arant; vanDuinkerken, Wyoma
It has been approximately 20 years since distributing scholarly journals digitally became feasible. This article discusses the broad implications of the transition to digital distributed scholarship from a historical ...
Match: journals; open access
The State of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles
Piwowar, Heather; Priem, Jason; Larivière, Vincent; Alperin, Juan Pablo; et al.
Despite growing interest in Open Access (OA) to scholarly literature, there is an unmet need for large-scale, up-to-date, and reproducible studies assessing the prevalence and characteristics of OA. We address this need ...
Match: matthias, lisa; open access
Publishing in discipline-specific open access journals: Opportunities and outreach for librarians
Tomaszewski, Robert; Poulin, Sonia; MacDonald, Karen I.; Kaspar, Wendi Arant; vanDuinkerken, Wyoma
Open access (OA) journals promote the opportunity for peer-reviewed journal articles to be freely accessible. In recent years, the number of OA journals has exploded in all disciplines. Previous studies have identified ...
Match: journals; open access
Academics want you to read their work for free
Hu, Jane C.
OA Diamond Journals Study
Bosman, Jeroen; Frantsvåg, Jan Erik; Kramer, Bianca; Langlais, Pierre-Carl; Proudman, Vanessa
Context
From June 2020 to February 2021, a consortium of 10 organisations undertook a large-scale study on open access journals across the world that are free for readers and authors, usually referred to as "OA diamond ...
Match: journals; open access; europe
Insights into the economy of Open Scholarship: A look into HRCAK with Jadranka Stojanovski
Franck, Gwen
HRČAK is the central portal of Croatian scientific, professional and popular open access (OA) journals. HRČAK offers open access to almost 500 journals, 300 of which are scientific peer reviewed publications, mostly ...
Match: europe
Offenheit: Poster zur Nacht des Wissens Hamburg 2015
Hapke, Thomas; Rajski, Beate; Bieler, Detlev
Die Posterserie zum Thema Offenheit wurde von der Universitätsbibliothek der Technischen Universität Hamburg für die Nacht des Wissens am 7. November 2015 erstellt. Sie enthält die Poster
Offenheit vonWissen
Open ...
Match: open access; germany; europe
Open Education: Auf dem Weg zu einer offenen Hochschulbildung
Deimann, Markus
»Open Education«, also das bildungspolitische Ziel, Bildung frei verfügbar zu machen, ist Gegenstand eines lebendigen Diskurses. Markus Deimann gibt einen systematischen Überblick zum Thema »Offene Bildung/Open ...
Match: germany; europe
A barrier framework for open e-learning in public administrations
Stoffregen, Julia; Pawlowski, Jan M.; Pirkkalainen, Henri
A comprehensive literature review on E-Learning and OER in public administrations.•A contextualized Barrier Framework about core barriers in the public sector.•Lessons learned to improve implementation and adoption ...
Match: finland; germany; europe
Towards good practices of copyright in Open Access journals: A study among authors of articles in Open Access journals
Hoorn, Esther; van der Graaf, Maurits
Maximising access to scholarly information is a key element in the Zwolle Principles. 'Open Access' is a recent development which could bring this goal closer. Under this work package a study was commissioned to examine ...
Match: journals; europe