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A Crisis in “Open Access”: Should Communication Scholarly Outputs Take 77 Years to Become Open Access?:

A Crisis in “Open Access”: Should Communication Scholarly Outputs Take 77 Years to Become Open... This study diachronically investigates the trend of the “open access” in the Web of Science (WoS) category of “communication.” To evaluate the trend, data were collected from 184 categories of WoS from 1980 to 2017. A total of 87,997,893 documents were obtained, of which 95,304 (0.10%) were in the category of “communication.” In average, 4.24% of the documents in all 184 categories were open access. While in communication, it was 3.29%, which ranked communication 116 out of 184. An Open Access Index (OAI) was developed to predict the trend of open access in communication. Based on the OAI, communication needs 77 years to fully reach open access, which undeniably can be considered as “crisis in scientific publishing” in this field. Given this stunning information, it is the time for a global call for “open access” by communication scholars across the world. Future research should investigate whether the current business models of publications in communication scholarships are encouraging open access or pose unnecessary restrictions on knowledge development. Keywords communication, open access, WSIS, UNESCO, Budapest Open Access Initiative, business model of publishing, Open Access Index (OAI) 2015). OA does not mean just being free to download. Introduction According to Sahu (2005), OA means free availability on the From the beginning of this century, the traditional model of public Internet, permitting any user to read, download, copy, science communication has undergone profound changes, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these arti- especially after Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in cles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, January 2002. The BOAI, often seen as the origin of the or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, Open Access (OA) movement (Wenzler, 2017), set out the legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from principles, strategies, rules, and commitments related to OA gaining access to the Internet itself. The only acceptable con- to research literature (Miguel, de Oliveira, & Gracio, 2016). ditions that should be considered within the framework of Some scholars believe that the BOAI and other similar initia- OA is giving authors both control over the integrity of their tives, such as Berlin (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2003) and Bethesda (Earlham College, 2003), were University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran a result of “crisis in scientific publishing.” Such a crisis Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Malaysia occurs as a consequence of high prices for subscriptions, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran reduction of libraries’ budgets, and other restrictions on Tehran Medical Sciences, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran access to scientific publications for the scientific community University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Miguel et al., 2016). Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran Recently produced science and knowledge should be International Vision University, Gostivar, Macedonia accessible to all citizens equally, particularly when consider- Corresponding Author: ing “Free Access” at the core of OA movement and related Abbas Ghanbari Baghestan, Assistant Professor in Communication, initiatives. In fact, OA publications should pose no barrier to University of Tehran (UT), Tehran 1417614418, Iran. a reader other than having access to the Internet (Forrester, Email: ghanbari.abbas@ut.ac.ir Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 SAGE Open work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited matters, among them “democratization of communication,” (Miguel et al., 2016). insisting on removal of all communication obstacles. Since 2002, the OA movement, especially with the intro- Although, due to consequence of the free flow of informa- duction of gold, green, and hybrid roads (Rizor & Holley, tion, the world was divided both along an East-West and 2014), has become a new trend in scholarly outputs. Some North-South axis, UNESCO managed to take initiatives that journals in different fields of study started shifting toward continue to characterize it today. Third, with the rise of seeing OA as an advantage; nevertheless, the volume of OA Internet in the later decades of the last century, the documents available is still low. Many journals are dis- International Telecommunication Union (ITU) passed a res- pleased with this movement, to the extent that the percentage olution in 1998 proposing the idea of a World Summit on of OA documents in journals included in the Web of Science Information Society (WSIS), under the auspice of the United (WoS) and Scopus is barely 23% on the two gold and green Nations. The WSIS was held in Geneva in 2003 (first phase) roads (Björk, Laakso, Welling, & Paetau, 2014). and in Tunis in 2005 (second phase), and presented the This study is dedicated to, first, find the volume of “open Geneva Declaration of Principles (ITU, 2003a), Geneva Plan access” documents in the WoS categories in general and, sec- of Action (ITU, 2003b), the Tunis Commitment (ITU, ond, investigate the directions and trends of OA within the 2005b), and the Tunis Agenda (ITU, 2005a) for governance study field of “communication.” “Communication” was of the Internet and the flow of information and knowledge, selected as the specific category due to its rich and old his- respectively. The Geneva Declaration of Principles in 2003 tory of intensive debates on the issue of “Open and Free is one of the major outcomes of the WSIS summit merit, with Access,” which by default put “communication” scientific special attention on the provision of access to information productions as top priority that “Must and Should” be OA. and knowledge for the whole population (Weber, 2010). Considering the above background and history, it was highly expected that “communication,” as a field and because The Debate Over “Free Access” of its nature, will lead the OA movement and related initia- in Communication tives, particularly in the world of scientific productions. The recent movement for OA and other related initiatives are However, after more than eight decades of intense debates not completely new in communication scholarship. The two regarding “Free Access,” five decades indexing scientific basic issues of “free flow of information” and “free access to journals (Garfield, 1964), and 15 years of OA Movement, it information and knowledge” have been discussion topics for is of importance to evaluate the volume of OA in “communi- many decades in “communication,” and repetitiously empha- cation” itself to find whether there is a “crisis” in access to sized in several universal constitutions, including the the scientific publications (Miguel et al., 2016) in this field. Universal Declaration of Human Right and United Nations In other words, in the context of realizing greater OA to com- Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s munication scholarly literatures, how much progress has (UNESCO) related documents (Ghanbari Baghestan & been achieved in the field of communication scholarship? Is Hassan, 2009). In this regard, three major phases can be it acceptable or not? highlighted, wherein all the issues of “free access to informa- tion and knowledge” are at the core. Method First, the “free flow of information” was the subject of intense debates at both national and international forums To evaluate the trends and directions of free accessibility to beginning in the early 1940s. In 1948, the United Nation the scientific productions in communication, a bibliometric General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of study was conducted. Bibliometric is defined as “a set of Human Right, of which Article 19 explicitly recognized free methods to quantitatively analyse academic literature and expression as a fundamental human right. This right, among scholarly communications” (Das, 2015). There are multiple others, includes the freedom to hold opinion without interfer- papers that have used bibliometrics in the fields of social sci- ence and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas ence (Farahmand, Mariani, Ghanbari Baghestan, Ebrahim, & through any media regardless of frontiers (Cate, 1989). As it Matinnia, 2018; Ingwersen, 2000; Kalantari et al., 2017; is also highlighted in First Amendment to the U.S. Riazi et al., 2019) and communication (Gonzalez & Guarinos, Constitution, this Article not only recognizes the free flow of 2017) to measure scientific progress. Bibliometrics is an information, but goes further to guarantee reception of the essential aspect of measuring academic and organization information. The meaning of this extension is very signifi- performance based on various indices, including the number cant to communication as a field (Cate, 1989). Second, in the of publications, number of citations, and average citations early 1960s, UNESCO becomes the forum for debate on this per year (Davidson et al., 2014; Farahmand et al., 2018; issue. The MacBride Commission is one of the groups Etemadifard, Khaniki, Ghanbari Baghestan, & Mehrnoosh, assigned the awesome task of studying the totality of this 2018). Web-based citation databases like Scopus and the issue in modern societies (Raube-Wilson, 1986). It is worth WoS are frequently used for deriving bibliometric data (Das, highlighting that the McBride report addresses multiple 2015). The WoS is the most appropriate powerful, large, and Ghanbari Baghestan et al. 3 Total Number Open access Non-Open access Figure 1. Trends of publications in the Web of Science category: Communication 1980-2017. trustworthy database for literature retrieval and analysis Results and Discussion (Aghaei Chadegani et al., 2013; Gal, Glanzel, & Sipido, Of the 87,997,893 documents which were obtained from all 2017; Meho & Rogers, 2008). 184 categories of the WoS Core collection, 84,274,416 Data were collected from the WoS Core Collection based (95.76%) were non-OA and 3,723,504 (4.24%) were OA. on a category search of “communication” on December 1, Out of the total number of documents analyzed, 95,304 2017. The WoS was selected for two main reasons. First, it (0.10%) documents were in the communication category, has more precise coverage in the category of communica- and surprisingly, only 3,142 (3.29%) of them were indexed tion, and second, it covers the top prestigious journals highly as OA documents, which is 0.95% less than the average expected to be OA. The WoS Core Collection consists of six among others. These figures ranked communication at 142 databases—Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI- and 116 of 184 in scientific productions and in OA, Expanded), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Art & respectively. Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI), Conference Proceeding Citation Index Science (CPCI-S), Conference Proceeding Citation Index Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH), OA Trend in Communication and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). The WoS According to the results, before 2006, there were no OA doc- included conference proceedings from 2004 and ESCI from uments in the category of communication, based on WoS 2015 in their databases. The time span was 1980 to the data database (Figure 1). Although the first OA publication collection date. appeared in the year 2006, there was no significant growth in To evaluate the rank of communication category docu- free accessibility to scientific publications from 2006 to ments within all existed categories in the WoS Core 2014. A slightly positive growth is seen in the last 2 years, Collection, the number of total published documents and the 2015 and 2016. portion of OA documents were extracted for all 184 catego- ries of the WoS Core Collection. The data search was repeated for each year from 1980 to 2017. The total publica- Comparison Between OA and Non-OA Based tions and OA availability were checked and recorded in a on Type of Documents Microsoft Excel sheet for each year separately. To assess the differences between OA and non-OA, publications were To evaluate the differences between OA and non-OA publi- sorted in terms of type of documents, country, and languages cations in terms of type of document from 2007 till 2017, a of all collected data, and were integrated in a dataset. The chi-square test was performed to compare the pattern country, document type, and language of the all documents between OA and non-OA. Figure 2 shows the results of the were collected yearly from 2007 (the year in which first statistical analysis of OA and non-OA based on the type of series of OA documents were available in the category of document. The results show that there was a significant dif- communication) till 2017. Frequency analysis and chi-square ference between these OA and non-OA regarding the pattern tests were used to find any correlation between the country, of document, as seen in Table 1. Relatively, OA is more prev- document type, language, and OA trends. Finally, an equa- alent in “Book Reviews,” “Editorial Materials,” and tion was developed to predict the trend of OA in communica- “Reviews,” whereas non-OA is more prevalent in “Articles” tion (called OAI). and “Proceeding Papers.” 4 SAGE Open OTHER NOA OA REVIEW PROCEEDINGS PAPER EDITORIAL MATERIAL BOOK REVIEW ARTICLE 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% Percentage Figure 2. OA and non-OA based on type of documents. Note. OA = open access. Table 1. Comparison Between OA and Non-OA Documents Based on Type of Documents. Type of publication Type of documents OA Non-OA χ p value Article 1,558 (48.8%) 32,187 (64.5%) 923.442 <.001 Book review 1,151 (36.0%) 9,176 (18.4%) Editorial material 279 (8.7%) 2,894 (5.8%) Other 20 (0.6%) 593 (1.2%) Proceedings paper 85 (2.7%) 4,552 (9.1%) Review 100 (3.1%) 476 (1.0%) Total Count 3,193 (100%) 49,878 (100%) Note. OA = open access. frequency languages in both OA and non-OA publications. Top 20 Countries for OA Publication From Chi-square test was used to compare the pattern of languages 2007 to 2017 between OA and non-OA. Figure 3 shows results of the anal- The total number of OA from 2007 to 2017 was investi- ysis. The results indicate that there was a significant differ- gated by country. The results for top 20 countries, as sum- ence between OA and non-OA regarding the languages. As marized in Table 2, show that these 20 countries contributed can be seen in Table 3, the frequency of Spanish publications 92% to OA within 2007 to 2017. The United States had the was higher in OA publication than in non-OA while a major- highest number of OA documents (n = 2,067), which was ity of the publications were in English in the non-OA, sug- 45.16% of the total OA publication in this period, followed gesting that the English language dominates the non-OA by Spain with 19.29% (n = 883), Brazil with 4% (n = 183), publications while the Spanish language dominates the OA Argentina with 2.77% (n = 127), and England with 2.38 % publication from 2007 to 2017. (n = 109). Among the top 10 countries, the majority were South American countries. Only one country from Asia, Open Access Index (OAI) South Korea, emerged among the top 10, with 1.46 % (n = 67). To evaluate the situation of OA “communication” publica- tions in different years, a new index was created, called the OAI. It is a ratio of OA publications to total publications. Comparison Between OA and Non-OA Based This index was applied to evaluate the trend of OA growth. on Languages Language was categorized into three groups: English, Total numberof open access documents OAI () Open Access Index = . Spanish, and other languages, according to the high Tot tal numberof published documents TYPE OF DOCUMENT Ghanbari Baghestan et al. 5 Table 2. Top 20 Countries for OA Publications from 2007 to 2017. Minimum Maximum Sum % OA United States 2 1,577 2,067 45.16 Spain 0 428 883 19.29 Brazil 1 70 183 4.00 Argentina 1 48 127 2.77 England 2 46 109 2.38 Mexico 1 40 107 2.34 Colombia 1 28 83 1.81 Canada 1 51 79 1.73 Chile 2 25 77 1.68 South Korea 1 27 67 1.46 Ecuador 1 32 60 1.31 Australia 1 21 51 1.11 Germany 1 20 51 1.11 Malaysia — — 50 1.09 Portugal 1 11 47 1.03 Italy 1 13 40 0.87 Sweden 1 22 40 0.87 France 1 15 36 0.79 Finland 1 10 29 0.63 Denmark 1 13 28 0.61 Note. OA = open access. Malaysia only had 1 year (2017). English Spanish OTHER 96.3 51.3 40.4 8.3 2.7 OA NON‐OA Figure 3. OA and non-OA based on languages. Note. OA = open access. Table 3. Comparison Between OA and Non-OA Documents Based on Languages. Type of publication Language OA Non-OA χ p value English 1,291 (40.4%) 47,446 (96.3%) 1,989.59 <.001 Spanish 16,385 (51.3%) 503 (1.0%) Other 265 (8.3%) 1,317 (2.7%) Total count 3,194 (100%) 49,266 (100%) Note. OA = open access. 6 SAGE Open Figure 4. Comparing the OAI at three phases from 1980 to 2017. Note. OAI = Open Access Index. Figure 5. Trend of OAI during 1980 to 2017. Note. OAI = Open Access Index. According to the results, three phases of OA development right of “free accessibility” to information and knowledge in in communication can be detected. The first phase, inactive this field, as well as BOAI recent movements for “accessibil- phase, is before 2006. In this phase, there were not any avail- ity” of scholarly outputs, no reason can be found to justify able OA documents in the WoS category of communication. such result and rank. When it comes to prediction of the The second phase started in 2007 and continued to 2014, and future trend, surprisingly, the proposed equation for OAI the OAI was almost at 2% of total documents. The third shows that with the current trend in communication, it will phase, considered the developing stage, started in 2015, with take 77 years until “communication,” as a field of study, can an average of 14.5% OAI (Figure 4). reach the goal of being fully OA. Again, undeniably, it can be A simple regression method was used to evaluate the considered as “crisis in scientific publishing” as mentioned growth rate of OA based on the available data (Figure 5). The by Miguel et al. (2016). results showed a positive slope between OAI and years with Given this stunning information, it is the time for a a moderate R value (.46) for the regression line. Using this global call for “open access” by communication scholars equation, OA communication publications are expected to across the world. Even prior to this, there should be further reach 100% OA by 2094, if following the current trend. investigation on the epistemological and ontological aspect of such trends to find a solution to accelerate the “open access” movement in communication. Further research also Conclusion might focus on the current “business models” of publishing Much is left to be desired in OA communication develop- in this area. It is important to evaluate whether the current ment. Although the “communication” scholarly outputs con- business models of publishing are really encouraging sist of a very small portion of the total outputs in all 184 “Open Access” or pose unnecessary restrictions (due to categories in WoS, its degree of “accessibility” is much less publication fees/subscription fees) on knowledge develop- than average, ranked at 116 of 184. This rank, doubtless, is ment and participation of some segments of the world’s not acceptable for communication as field. Considering the class scholars, like those in developing and less developed huge history of debates and efforts being made to protect the countries. Ghanbari Baghestan et al. 7 Declaration of Conflicting Interests Gonzalez, F. J. C., & Guarinos, V. (2017). Male presence in gen- der research networks in the communication field in Spain. The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect Masculinities and Social Change, 6, 62-90. to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Ingwersen, P. (2000). The international visibility and citation impact of Scandinavian research articles in selected Social Funding Science fields: The decay of a myth. Scientometrics, 49, 39-61. International Telecommunication Union. (2003a). Declaration of The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author- principles—Building the Information Society: A global chal- ship, and/or publication of this article. lenge in the new millennium. Retrieved from http://www.itu. int/net/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html ORCID iD International Telecommunication Union. (2003b). Plan of action. Retrieved from http://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs/geneva/offi Abbas Ghanbari Baghestan https://orcid.org/0000-0001- cial/poa.html 9530-1727 International Telecommunication Union. (2005a). Tunis agenda for the Information Society. Retrieved from http://www.itu.int/net/ References wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html Aghaei Chadegani, A., Salehi, H., Yunus, M. M., Farhadi, H., International Telecommunication Union. (2005b). Tunis commit- Fooladi, M., Farhadi, M., & Ebrahim, N. A. (2013). A compari- ment. Retrieved from http://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs2/tunis/ son between two main academic literature collections: Web of off/7.html Science and Scopus databases. Asian Social Science, 9, 18-26. Kalantari, A., Kamsin, A., Kamaruddin, H. S., Ebrahim, N. A., Björk, B.-C., Laakso, M., Welling, P., & Paetau, P. (2014). Gani, A., Ebrahimi, A., & Shamshirband, S. (2017). A biblio- Anatomy of green open access. Journal of the Association for metric approach to tracking big data research trends. Journal of Information Science and Technology, 65, 237-250. Big Data, 4, 1-18. Cate, F. H. (1989). The first amendment and the international free Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. (2003). Berlin flow of information. Virginia Journal of International Law, 30, Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences 371-420. and Humanities. Retrieved from http://www.fu-berlin.de/ Das, A.-K. (2015). Introduction to research evaluation metrics and sites/open_access/weiteres/Veranstaltungen/oa_berlin/poster/ related indicators. In B. K. Sen & S. Mishra (Eds.), Open access Berlin-Declaration_Simone-Rieger_MPIWG.pdf for researchers, module 4: Research evaluation metrics (pp. 1- Meho, L. I., & Rogers, Y. (2008). Citation counting, citation rank- 18). Paris, France: United Nations Educational, Scientific and ing, and h-index of human-computer interaction researchers: Cultural Organization. A comparison of Scopus and Web of Science. Journal of the Davidson, P. M., Newton, P. J., Ferguson, C., Daly, J., Elliott, D., American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59, Homer, C., . . . Jackson, D. (2014). Rating and ranking the role of 1711-1726. bibliometrics and webometrics in nursing and midwifery. Scientific Miguel, S., de Oliveira, E. F. T., & Cabrini Grácio, M. C. (2016). World Journal, 2014, 135812. doi:10.1155/2014/135812 Scientific production on open access: A worldwide bibliometric Earlham College. (2003). Bethesda Statement on Open Access analysis in the academic and scientific context. Publications, Publishing. Retrieved from http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/ 4, 1. fos/bethesda.htm Raube-Wilson, S. (1986). The new world information and com- Etemadifard, S. M., Khaniki, H., Ghanbari Baghestan, A., & munication order and international human rights law. Boston Mehrnoosh, A.-Z. (2018). Iran’s Social Sciences Issues in Web College International and Comparative Law Review, 9, 107. of Science (WoS): Who said what? Pertanika Journal of Social Riazi, S. A., Ghanbari Baghestan, A., Ideris, A., Khaniki, H., Sciences and Humanities, 26, 1159-1174. Mehrnoosh, A.-Z., & Farahmand, E. (2019). Science and Farahmand, E., Mariani, M., Ghanbari Baghestan, A., Ebrahim, N. A., technology diplomacy and the power of students: The case & Matinnia, N. (2018). Five decades of scientific development of Iranian student in Malaysia. Pertanika Journal of Social on “Attachment Theory”: Trends and future landscape. Pertanika Sciences & Humanities, 27, 649-662. Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 26, 2145-2160. Rizor, S. L., & Holley, R. P. (2014). Open access goals revisited: Forrester, A. (2015). Barriers to open access publishing: Views How green and gold open access are meeting (or not) their from the library literature. Publications, 3, 190-210. original goals. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 45, 321-335. Gal, D., Glanzel, W., & Sipido, K. R. (2017). Mapping cross- Sahu, D. (2005). Open access: Why India should brace it? In Open border collaboration and communication in cardiovascular Access: Unrestricted access to published research (pp. 1-49). research from 1992 to 2012. European Heart Journal, 38, Indian Science Congress Association. 1249-1258. Weber, R. H. (2010). From free flow of information to civil society’s Garfield, E. (1964). Citation indexing: A natural science literature participation in the information world. Annales Universitatis retrieval system for the social sciences. American Behavioral Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eotvos Nominatae, Scientist, 7, 58-61. 51, 81. Ghanbari Baghestan, A., & Hassan, M. A. (2009). Iran’s Wenzler, J. (2017). Scholarly communication and the dilemma media landscape: Law, policy and media freedom. Human of collective action: Why academic journals cost too much. Communication, 12, 239-254. College & Research Libraries, 78, 183-200. 8 SAGE Open Author Biographies Universiti Putra Malaysia and also has two years expreince as Post-Doc. Abbas Ghanbari Baghestan is an assistant professor at University of Tehran (UT) in Iran and also an adjunct professor at Universiti Elaheh Farahmand is PhD candidate at University of Malaya Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia. He holds PhD in Mass (UM), Malaysia. communication. Ezhar Tamam is professor at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Malaysia. He holds PhD in Communication. Hadi Khaniki is professor at Allameh Tabataba’i University, Iran. He holds PhD in Communication. Nader Ale Ebrahim is reserch consultant at Alzahra University, Iran. He holds PhD in Technology Management. Abdolhosein Kalantari is an associate professor at University of Tehran (UT), Iran. He holds PhD in Sociology. Havva Sabani is PhD candidate at International Vision University, Gostivar, Macedonia. Mehrnoosh Akhtari-Zavare is an assistant professor of Community Health at Tehran Medical Sciences, Islamic Azad Mahmoud Danaee is senior visiting research fellow at University University, Tehran, Iran. She holds PhD in Community Health from of Malaya (UM), Malaysia. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png SAGE Open SAGE

A Crisis in “Open Access”: Should Communication Scholarly Outputs Take 77 Years to Become Open Access?:

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Abstract

This study diachronically investigates the trend of the “open access” in the Web of Science (WoS) category of “communication.” To evaluate the trend, data were collected from 184 categories of WoS from 1980 to 2017. A total of 87,997,893 documents were obtained, of which 95,304 (0.10%) were in the category of “communication.” In average, 4.24% of the documents in all 184 categories were open access. While in communication, it was 3.29%, which ranked communication 116 out of 184. An Open Access Index (OAI) was developed to predict the trend of open access in communication. Based on the OAI, communication needs 77 years to fully reach open access, which undeniably can be considered as “crisis in scientific publishing” in this field. Given this stunning information, it is the time for a global call for “open access” by communication scholars across the world. Future research should investigate whether the current business models of publications in communication scholarships are encouraging open access or pose unnecessary restrictions on knowledge development. Keywords communication, open access, WSIS, UNESCO, Budapest Open Access Initiative, business model of publishing, Open Access Index (OAI) 2015). OA does not mean just being free to download. Introduction According to Sahu (2005), OA means free availability on the From the beginning of this century, the traditional model of public Internet, permitting any user to read, download, copy, science communication has undergone profound changes, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these arti- especially after Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in cles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, January 2002. The BOAI, often seen as the origin of the or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, Open Access (OA) movement (Wenzler, 2017), set out the legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from principles, strategies, rules, and commitments related to OA gaining access to the Internet itself. The only acceptable con- to research literature (Miguel, de Oliveira, & Gracio, 2016). ditions that should be considered within the framework of Some scholars believe that the BOAI and other similar initia- OA is giving authors both control over the integrity of their tives, such as Berlin (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2003) and Bethesda (Earlham College, 2003), were University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran a result of “crisis in scientific publishing.” Such a crisis Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Malaysia occurs as a consequence of high prices for subscriptions, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran reduction of libraries’ budgets, and other restrictions on Tehran Medical Sciences, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran access to scientific publications for the scientific community University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Miguel et al., 2016). Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran Recently produced science and knowledge should be International Vision University, Gostivar, Macedonia accessible to all citizens equally, particularly when consider- Corresponding Author: ing “Free Access” at the core of OA movement and related Abbas Ghanbari Baghestan, Assistant Professor in Communication, initiatives. In fact, OA publications should pose no barrier to University of Tehran (UT), Tehran 1417614418, Iran. a reader other than having access to the Internet (Forrester, Email: ghanbari.abbas@ut.ac.ir Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 SAGE Open work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited matters, among them “democratization of communication,” (Miguel et al., 2016). insisting on removal of all communication obstacles. Since 2002, the OA movement, especially with the intro- Although, due to consequence of the free flow of informa- duction of gold, green, and hybrid roads (Rizor & Holley, tion, the world was divided both along an East-West and 2014), has become a new trend in scholarly outputs. Some North-South axis, UNESCO managed to take initiatives that journals in different fields of study started shifting toward continue to characterize it today. Third, with the rise of seeing OA as an advantage; nevertheless, the volume of OA Internet in the later decades of the last century, the documents available is still low. Many journals are dis- International Telecommunication Union (ITU) passed a res- pleased with this movement, to the extent that the percentage olution in 1998 proposing the idea of a World Summit on of OA documents in journals included in the Web of Science Information Society (WSIS), under the auspice of the United (WoS) and Scopus is barely 23% on the two gold and green Nations. The WSIS was held in Geneva in 2003 (first phase) roads (Björk, Laakso, Welling, & Paetau, 2014). and in Tunis in 2005 (second phase), and presented the This study is dedicated to, first, find the volume of “open Geneva Declaration of Principles (ITU, 2003a), Geneva Plan access” documents in the WoS categories in general and, sec- of Action (ITU, 2003b), the Tunis Commitment (ITU, ond, investigate the directions and trends of OA within the 2005b), and the Tunis Agenda (ITU, 2005a) for governance study field of “communication.” “Communication” was of the Internet and the flow of information and knowledge, selected as the specific category due to its rich and old his- respectively. The Geneva Declaration of Principles in 2003 tory of intensive debates on the issue of “Open and Free is one of the major outcomes of the WSIS summit merit, with Access,” which by default put “communication” scientific special attention on the provision of access to information productions as top priority that “Must and Should” be OA. and knowledge for the whole population (Weber, 2010). Considering the above background and history, it was highly expected that “communication,” as a field and because The Debate Over “Free Access” of its nature, will lead the OA movement and related initia- in Communication tives, particularly in the world of scientific productions. The recent movement for OA and other related initiatives are However, after more than eight decades of intense debates not completely new in communication scholarship. The two regarding “Free Access,” five decades indexing scientific basic issues of “free flow of information” and “free access to journals (Garfield, 1964), and 15 years of OA Movement, it information and knowledge” have been discussion topics for is of importance to evaluate the volume of OA in “communi- many decades in “communication,” and repetitiously empha- cation” itself to find whether there is a “crisis” in access to sized in several universal constitutions, including the the scientific publications (Miguel et al., 2016) in this field. Universal Declaration of Human Right and United Nations In other words, in the context of realizing greater OA to com- Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s munication scholarly literatures, how much progress has (UNESCO) related documents (Ghanbari Baghestan & been achieved in the field of communication scholarship? Is Hassan, 2009). In this regard, three major phases can be it acceptable or not? highlighted, wherein all the issues of “free access to informa- tion and knowledge” are at the core. Method First, the “free flow of information” was the subject of intense debates at both national and international forums To evaluate the trends and directions of free accessibility to beginning in the early 1940s. In 1948, the United Nation the scientific productions in communication, a bibliometric General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of study was conducted. Bibliometric is defined as “a set of Human Right, of which Article 19 explicitly recognized free methods to quantitatively analyse academic literature and expression as a fundamental human right. This right, among scholarly communications” (Das, 2015). There are multiple others, includes the freedom to hold opinion without interfer- papers that have used bibliometrics in the fields of social sci- ence and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas ence (Farahmand, Mariani, Ghanbari Baghestan, Ebrahim, & through any media regardless of frontiers (Cate, 1989). As it Matinnia, 2018; Ingwersen, 2000; Kalantari et al., 2017; is also highlighted in First Amendment to the U.S. Riazi et al., 2019) and communication (Gonzalez & Guarinos, Constitution, this Article not only recognizes the free flow of 2017) to measure scientific progress. Bibliometrics is an information, but goes further to guarantee reception of the essential aspect of measuring academic and organization information. The meaning of this extension is very signifi- performance based on various indices, including the number cant to communication as a field (Cate, 1989). Second, in the of publications, number of citations, and average citations early 1960s, UNESCO becomes the forum for debate on this per year (Davidson et al., 2014; Farahmand et al., 2018; issue. The MacBride Commission is one of the groups Etemadifard, Khaniki, Ghanbari Baghestan, & Mehrnoosh, assigned the awesome task of studying the totality of this 2018). Web-based citation databases like Scopus and the issue in modern societies (Raube-Wilson, 1986). It is worth WoS are frequently used for deriving bibliometric data (Das, highlighting that the McBride report addresses multiple 2015). The WoS is the most appropriate powerful, large, and Ghanbari Baghestan et al. 3 Total Number Open access Non-Open access Figure 1. Trends of publications in the Web of Science category: Communication 1980-2017. trustworthy database for literature retrieval and analysis Results and Discussion (Aghaei Chadegani et al., 2013; Gal, Glanzel, & Sipido, Of the 87,997,893 documents which were obtained from all 2017; Meho & Rogers, 2008). 184 categories of the WoS Core collection, 84,274,416 Data were collected from the WoS Core Collection based (95.76%) were non-OA and 3,723,504 (4.24%) were OA. on a category search of “communication” on December 1, Out of the total number of documents analyzed, 95,304 2017. The WoS was selected for two main reasons. First, it (0.10%) documents were in the communication category, has more precise coverage in the category of communica- and surprisingly, only 3,142 (3.29%) of them were indexed tion, and second, it covers the top prestigious journals highly as OA documents, which is 0.95% less than the average expected to be OA. The WoS Core Collection consists of six among others. These figures ranked communication at 142 databases—Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI- and 116 of 184 in scientific productions and in OA, Expanded), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Art & respectively. Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI), Conference Proceeding Citation Index Science (CPCI-S), Conference Proceeding Citation Index Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH), OA Trend in Communication and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). The WoS According to the results, before 2006, there were no OA doc- included conference proceedings from 2004 and ESCI from uments in the category of communication, based on WoS 2015 in their databases. The time span was 1980 to the data database (Figure 1). Although the first OA publication collection date. appeared in the year 2006, there was no significant growth in To evaluate the rank of communication category docu- free accessibility to scientific publications from 2006 to ments within all existed categories in the WoS Core 2014. A slightly positive growth is seen in the last 2 years, Collection, the number of total published documents and the 2015 and 2016. portion of OA documents were extracted for all 184 catego- ries of the WoS Core Collection. The data search was repeated for each year from 1980 to 2017. The total publica- Comparison Between OA and Non-OA Based tions and OA availability were checked and recorded in a on Type of Documents Microsoft Excel sheet for each year separately. To assess the differences between OA and non-OA, publications were To evaluate the differences between OA and non-OA publi- sorted in terms of type of documents, country, and languages cations in terms of type of document from 2007 till 2017, a of all collected data, and were integrated in a dataset. The chi-square test was performed to compare the pattern country, document type, and language of the all documents between OA and non-OA. Figure 2 shows the results of the were collected yearly from 2007 (the year in which first statistical analysis of OA and non-OA based on the type of series of OA documents were available in the category of document. The results show that there was a significant dif- communication) till 2017. Frequency analysis and chi-square ference between these OA and non-OA regarding the pattern tests were used to find any correlation between the country, of document, as seen in Table 1. Relatively, OA is more prev- document type, language, and OA trends. Finally, an equa- alent in “Book Reviews,” “Editorial Materials,” and tion was developed to predict the trend of OA in communica- “Reviews,” whereas non-OA is more prevalent in “Articles” tion (called OAI). and “Proceeding Papers.” 4 SAGE Open OTHER NOA OA REVIEW PROCEEDINGS PAPER EDITORIAL MATERIAL BOOK REVIEW ARTICLE 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% Percentage Figure 2. OA and non-OA based on type of documents. Note. OA = open access. Table 1. Comparison Between OA and Non-OA Documents Based on Type of Documents. Type of publication Type of documents OA Non-OA χ p value Article 1,558 (48.8%) 32,187 (64.5%) 923.442 <.001 Book review 1,151 (36.0%) 9,176 (18.4%) Editorial material 279 (8.7%) 2,894 (5.8%) Other 20 (0.6%) 593 (1.2%) Proceedings paper 85 (2.7%) 4,552 (9.1%) Review 100 (3.1%) 476 (1.0%) Total Count 3,193 (100%) 49,878 (100%) Note. OA = open access. frequency languages in both OA and non-OA publications. Top 20 Countries for OA Publication From Chi-square test was used to compare the pattern of languages 2007 to 2017 between OA and non-OA. Figure 3 shows results of the anal- The total number of OA from 2007 to 2017 was investi- ysis. The results indicate that there was a significant differ- gated by country. The results for top 20 countries, as sum- ence between OA and non-OA regarding the languages. As marized in Table 2, show that these 20 countries contributed can be seen in Table 3, the frequency of Spanish publications 92% to OA within 2007 to 2017. The United States had the was higher in OA publication than in non-OA while a major- highest number of OA documents (n = 2,067), which was ity of the publications were in English in the non-OA, sug- 45.16% of the total OA publication in this period, followed gesting that the English language dominates the non-OA by Spain with 19.29% (n = 883), Brazil with 4% (n = 183), publications while the Spanish language dominates the OA Argentina with 2.77% (n = 127), and England with 2.38 % publication from 2007 to 2017. (n = 109). Among the top 10 countries, the majority were South American countries. Only one country from Asia, Open Access Index (OAI) South Korea, emerged among the top 10, with 1.46 % (n = 67). To evaluate the situation of OA “communication” publica- tions in different years, a new index was created, called the OAI. It is a ratio of OA publications to total publications. Comparison Between OA and Non-OA Based This index was applied to evaluate the trend of OA growth. on Languages Language was categorized into three groups: English, Total numberof open access documents OAI () Open Access Index = . Spanish, and other languages, according to the high Tot tal numberof published documents TYPE OF DOCUMENT Ghanbari Baghestan et al. 5 Table 2. Top 20 Countries for OA Publications from 2007 to 2017. Minimum Maximum Sum % OA United States 2 1,577 2,067 45.16 Spain 0 428 883 19.29 Brazil 1 70 183 4.00 Argentina 1 48 127 2.77 England 2 46 109 2.38 Mexico 1 40 107 2.34 Colombia 1 28 83 1.81 Canada 1 51 79 1.73 Chile 2 25 77 1.68 South Korea 1 27 67 1.46 Ecuador 1 32 60 1.31 Australia 1 21 51 1.11 Germany 1 20 51 1.11 Malaysia — — 50 1.09 Portugal 1 11 47 1.03 Italy 1 13 40 0.87 Sweden 1 22 40 0.87 France 1 15 36 0.79 Finland 1 10 29 0.63 Denmark 1 13 28 0.61 Note. OA = open access. Malaysia only had 1 year (2017). English Spanish OTHER 96.3 51.3 40.4 8.3 2.7 OA NON‐OA Figure 3. OA and non-OA based on languages. Note. OA = open access. Table 3. Comparison Between OA and Non-OA Documents Based on Languages. Type of publication Language OA Non-OA χ p value English 1,291 (40.4%) 47,446 (96.3%) 1,989.59 <.001 Spanish 16,385 (51.3%) 503 (1.0%) Other 265 (8.3%) 1,317 (2.7%) Total count 3,194 (100%) 49,266 (100%) Note. OA = open access. 6 SAGE Open Figure 4. Comparing the OAI at three phases from 1980 to 2017. Note. OAI = Open Access Index. Figure 5. Trend of OAI during 1980 to 2017. Note. OAI = Open Access Index. According to the results, three phases of OA development right of “free accessibility” to information and knowledge in in communication can be detected. The first phase, inactive this field, as well as BOAI recent movements for “accessibil- phase, is before 2006. In this phase, there were not any avail- ity” of scholarly outputs, no reason can be found to justify able OA documents in the WoS category of communication. such result and rank. When it comes to prediction of the The second phase started in 2007 and continued to 2014, and future trend, surprisingly, the proposed equation for OAI the OAI was almost at 2% of total documents. The third shows that with the current trend in communication, it will phase, considered the developing stage, started in 2015, with take 77 years until “communication,” as a field of study, can an average of 14.5% OAI (Figure 4). reach the goal of being fully OA. Again, undeniably, it can be A simple regression method was used to evaluate the considered as “crisis in scientific publishing” as mentioned growth rate of OA based on the available data (Figure 5). The by Miguel et al. (2016). results showed a positive slope between OAI and years with Given this stunning information, it is the time for a a moderate R value (.46) for the regression line. Using this global call for “open access” by communication scholars equation, OA communication publications are expected to across the world. Even prior to this, there should be further reach 100% OA by 2094, if following the current trend. investigation on the epistemological and ontological aspect of such trends to find a solution to accelerate the “open access” movement in communication. Further research also Conclusion might focus on the current “business models” of publishing Much is left to be desired in OA communication develop- in this area. It is important to evaluate whether the current ment. Although the “communication” scholarly outputs con- business models of publishing are really encouraging sist of a very small portion of the total outputs in all 184 “Open Access” or pose unnecessary restrictions (due to categories in WoS, its degree of “accessibility” is much less publication fees/subscription fees) on knowledge develop- than average, ranked at 116 of 184. This rank, doubtless, is ment and participation of some segments of the world’s not acceptable for communication as field. Considering the class scholars, like those in developing and less developed huge history of debates and efforts being made to protect the countries. Ghanbari Baghestan et al. 7 Declaration of Conflicting Interests Gonzalez, F. J. C., & Guarinos, V. (2017). Male presence in gen- der research networks in the communication field in Spain. The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect Masculinities and Social Change, 6, 62-90. to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Ingwersen, P. (2000). The international visibility and citation impact of Scandinavian research articles in selected Social Funding Science fields: The decay of a myth. Scientometrics, 49, 39-61. International Telecommunication Union. (2003a). Declaration of The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author- principles—Building the Information Society: A global chal- ship, and/or publication of this article. lenge in the new millennium. Retrieved from http://www.itu. int/net/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html ORCID iD International Telecommunication Union. (2003b). Plan of action. Retrieved from http://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs/geneva/offi Abbas Ghanbari Baghestan https://orcid.org/0000-0001- cial/poa.html 9530-1727 International Telecommunication Union. (2005a). 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In Open border collaboration and communication in cardiovascular Access: Unrestricted access to published research (pp. 1-49). research from 1992 to 2012. European Heart Journal, 38, Indian Science Congress Association. 1249-1258. Weber, R. H. (2010). From free flow of information to civil society’s Garfield, E. (1964). Citation indexing: A natural science literature participation in the information world. Annales Universitatis retrieval system for the social sciences. American Behavioral Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eotvos Nominatae, Scientist, 7, 58-61. 51, 81. Ghanbari Baghestan, A., & Hassan, M. A. (2009). Iran’s Wenzler, J. (2017). Scholarly communication and the dilemma media landscape: Law, policy and media freedom. Human of collective action: Why academic journals cost too much. Communication, 12, 239-254. College & Research Libraries, 78, 183-200. 8 SAGE Open Author Biographies Universiti Putra Malaysia and also has two years expreince as Post-Doc. Abbas Ghanbari Baghestan is an assistant professor at University of Tehran (UT) in Iran and also an adjunct professor at Universiti Elaheh Farahmand is PhD candidate at University of Malaya Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia. He holds PhD in Mass (UM), Malaysia. communication. Ezhar Tamam is professor at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Malaysia. He holds PhD in Communication. Hadi Khaniki is professor at Allameh Tabataba’i University, Iran. He holds PhD in Communication. Nader Ale Ebrahim is reserch consultant at Alzahra University, Iran. He holds PhD in Technology Management. Abdolhosein Kalantari is an associate professor at University of Tehran (UT), Iran. He holds PhD in Sociology. Havva Sabani is PhD candidate at International Vision University, Gostivar, Macedonia. Mehrnoosh Akhtari-Zavare is an assistant professor of Community Health at Tehran Medical Sciences, Islamic Azad Mahmoud Danaee is senior visiting research fellow at University University, Tehran, Iran. She holds PhD in Community Health from of Malaya (UM), Malaysia.

Journal

SAGE OpenSAGE

Published: Aug 22, 2019

Keywords: communication; open access; WSIS; UNESCO; Budapest Open Access Initiative; business model of publishing; Open Access Index (OAI)

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