European scholarly journals from small- and mid-size publishers in times of Open Access: Mapping journals and public funding mechanisms

Open Access (OA) publishing omits reader-side fees, which requires that resources to sustain journals can not originate from the reader-side. Large international publishers have had capability to monetize OA publishing from national consortia and institutions, but small- and mid-sized publishers have not succeeded to the same degree. There is currently a lack of information concerning to what degree small- and mid-sized publishers are present in European countries, to what degree their journals are already OA, and how the countries are supporting these journals financially or technically to publish their materials OA. The methods for this study include bibliometric analysis, document analysis of web information, inquiries to OA experts in European countries, and web-survey to a small sample of journals in each country. The study found that there are 16387 journals from small-and mid-sized publishers being published in European countries (incl. transcontinental states) of which 36% are already publishing OA. The vast majority of journals published in Europe are by single-publisher journals (77% of all publishers publish only one journal). Journals from smalland mid-sized publishers were found to be multilingual or non-English to a higher degree than journals from large publishers (44% and 43% vs 6% and 5%). According to our observations there is large diversity in how (and if) countries reserve and distribute funds to journals active in the countries, ranging from continuous inclusive subsidies to competitive grant funding or nothing at all. Funding information was often difficult to discover and efforts to make such information more easily available would likely facilitate policy development in this area. We call out for additions and corrections to journal funding instrument information in order to make the data as comprehensive and accurate as possible