IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jpubli/v7y2019i2p23-d219759.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Two-Way Street of Open Access Journal Publishing: Flip It and Reverse It

Author

Listed:
  • Lisa Matthias

    (John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany)

  • Najko Jahn

    (Göttingen State and University Library, University of Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany)

  • Mikael Laakso

    (Information Systems Science, Hanken School of Economics, 00100 Helsinki, Finland)

Abstract

As Open access (OA) is often perceived as the end goal of scholarly publishing, much research has focused on flipping subscription journals to an OA model. Focusing on what can happen after the presumed finish line, this study identifies journals that have converted from OA to a subscription model, and places these “reverse flips” within the greater context of scholarly publishing. In particular, we examine specific journal descriptors, such as access mode, publisher, subject area, society affiliation, article volume, and citation metrics, to deepen our understanding of reverse flips. Our results show that at least 152 actively publishing journals have reverse-flipped since 2005, suggesting that this phenomenon does not constitute merely a few marginal outliers, but instead a common pattern within scholarly publishing. Notably, we found that 62% of reverse flips (N = 95) had not been born-OA journals, but had been founded as subscription journals, and hence have experienced a three-stage transformation from closed to open to closed. We argue that reverse flips present a unique perspective on OA, and that further research would greatly benefit from enhanced data and tools for identifying such cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Lisa Matthias & Najko Jahn & Mikael Laakso, 2019. "The Two-Way Street of Open Access Journal Publishing: Flip It and Reverse It," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-29, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:7:y:2019:i:2:p:23-:d:219759
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/7/2/23/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/7/2/23/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark J. McCabe & Christopher M. Snyder, 2018. "Open Access as a Crude Solution to a Hold‐Up Problem in the Two‐Sided Market for Academic Journals," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(2), pages 301-349, June.
    2. Philippe Mongeon & Adèle Paul-Hus, 2016. "The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a comparative analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(1), pages 213-228, January.
    3. Thomas Eger & Marc Scheufen, 2018. "The Economics of Open Access," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 17006.
    4. Solomon, David J. & Laakso, Mikael & Björk, Bo-Christer, 2013. "A longitudinal comparison of citation rates and growth among open access journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 642-650.
    5. Michael Hewitt & Robert Dingwall & Ilke Turkmendag, 2017. "More than research intermediaries: a descriptive study of the impact and value of learned societies in the UK social sciences," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 44(6), pages 775-788.
    6. Hajar Sotudeh & Abbas Horri, 2007. "Tracking open access journals evolution: Some considerations in open access data collection validation," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(11), pages 1578-1585, September.
    7. Vincent Larivière & Stefanie Haustein & Philippe Mongeon, 2015. "The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-15, June.
    8. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan & van Leeuwen, Thed N. & Visser, Martijn S., 2013. "Some modifications to the SNIP journal impact indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 272-285.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nuria Bautista-Puig & Carmen Lopez-Illescas & Felix Moya-Anegon & Vicente Guerrero-Bote & Henk F. Moed, 2020. "Do journals flipping to gold open access show an OA citation or publication advantage?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(3), pages 2551-2575, September.
    2. Mikael Laakso & Anna-Maija, 2023. "European scholarly journals from small- and mid-size publishers: mapping journals and public funding mechanisms," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 50(3), pages 445-456.
    3. Wei Ming & Zhenyue Zhao, 2022. "Rethinking the open access citation advantage: Evidence from the “reverse‐flipping” journals," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(11), pages 1608-1620, November.
    4. Rosângela Schwarz Rodrigues & Ernest Abadal & Breno Kricheldorf Hermes de Araújo, 2020. "Open access publishers: The new players," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-13, June.
    5. Andre Bruns & Niels Taubert, 2021. "Investigating the Blind Spot of a Monitoring System for Article Processing Charges," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-9, September.
    6. Fakhri Momeni & Philipp Mayr & Nicholas Fraser & Isabella Peters, 2021. "What happens when a journal converts to open access? A bibliometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(12), pages 9811-9827, December.
    7. Michael Cary & Taylor Rockwell, 2020. "International Collaboration in Open Access Publications: How Income Shapes International Collaboration," Publications, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-24, February.
    8. Jonathan P. Tennant & Harry Crane & Tom Crick & Jacinto Davila & Asura Enkhbayar & Johanna Havemann & Bianca Kramer & Ryan Martin & Paola Masuzzo & Andy Nobes & Curt Rice & Bárbara Rivera-López & Tony, 2019. "Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-24, May.
    9. Carmen López-Vergara & Pilar Flores Asenjo & Alfonso Rosa-García, 2020. "Incentives to Open Access: Perspectives of Health Science Researchers," Publications, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-17, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Justus Haucap & Nima Moshgbar & W. Benedikt Schmal, 2021. "The impact of the German 'DEAL' on competition in the academic publishing market," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(8), pages 2027-2049, December.
    2. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    3. Philipp Kohlgruber & Christoph Kuzmics, 2017. "The distribution of article quality and inefficiencies in the market for scientific journals," Graz Economics Papers 2017-11, University of Graz, Department of Economics.
    4. Maja Jokić & Andrea Mervar & Stjepan Mateljan, 2018. "Scientific potential of European fully open access journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 1373-1394, March.
    5. Oliver Budzinski & Thomas Grebel & Jens Wolling & Xijie Zhang, 2020. "Drivers of article processing charges in open access," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(3), pages 2185-2206, September.
    6. Lijun Yang & Liangxiu Han & Naxin Liu, 2019. "A new approach to journal co-citation matrix construction based on the number of co-cited articles in journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 507-517, August.
    7. Stephan Puehringer & Johanna Rath & Teresa Griesebner, 2021. "The political economy of academic publishing: On the commodification of a public good," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-21, June.
    8. Wei Ming & Zhenyue Zhao, 2022. "Rethinking the open access citation advantage: Evidence from the “reverse‐flipping” journals," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(11), pages 1608-1620, November.
    9. Sánchez-Gil, Susana & Gorraiz, Juan & Melero-Fuentes, David, 2018. "Reference density trends in the major disciplines," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 42-58.
    10. Mark J. McCabe & Christopher M. Snyder, 2021. "Cite unseen: Theory and evidence on the effect of open access on cites to academic articles across the quality spectrum," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(8), pages 1960-1979, December.
    11. Andrea Caputo & Mariya Kargina, 2022. "A user-friendly method to merge Scopus and Web of Science data during bibliometric analysis," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 82-88, March.
    12. Julián David Cortés-Sánchez, 2019. "Innovation in Latin America through the lens of bibliometrics: crammed and fading away," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(2), pages 869-895, November.
    13. Tatiana Marina & Ivan Sterligov, 2021. "Prevalence of potentially predatory publishing in Scopus on the country level," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(6), pages 5019-5077, June.
    14. Toluwase Victor Asubiaro & Sodiq Onaolapo, 2023. "A comparative study of the coverage of African journals in Web of Science, Scopus, and CrossRef," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(7), pages 745-758, July.
    15. Nuria Bautista-Puig & Carmen Lopez-Illescas & Felix Moya-Anegon & Vicente Guerrero-Bote & Henk F. Moed, 2020. "Do journals flipping to gold open access show an OA citation or publication advantage?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(3), pages 2551-2575, September.
    16. Maribel Vega-Arce & Gonzalo Salas & Gastón Núñez-Ulloa & Cristián Pinto-Cortez & Ivelisse Torres Fernandez & Yuh-Shan Ho, 2019. "Research performance and trends in child sexual abuse research: a Science Citation Index Expanded-based analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(3), pages 1505-1525, December.
    17. Serhat Burmaoglu & Ozcan Saritas, 2019. "An evolutionary analysis of the innovation policy domain: Is there a paradigm shift?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 823-847, March.
    18. Marek Kwiek & Wojciech Roszka, 2022. "Academic vs. biological age in research on academic careers: a large-scale study with implications for scientifically developing systems," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3543-3575, June.
    19. Mike Thelwall, 2020. "Mid-career field switches reduce gender disparities in academic publishing," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(3), pages 1365-1383, June.
    20. de Oliveira, Thaiane Moreira & de Albuquerque, Sofia & Toth, Janderson Pereira & Bello, Debora Zava, 2018. "International cooperation networks of the BRICS bloc," SocArXiv b6x43, Center for Open Science.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:7:y:2019:i:2:p:23-:d:219759. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.