Does the AAP/PSP really represent its members?

Via Peter Suber, Dorothea Salo and Heather Morrison, I see that the AAP/PSP has responded to the new NIH mandate in typical, PRISM-esque fashion. For anything I might have said in response, and much more, read the linked entries -- especially Peter Suber's. I have something else in mind.

The PSP lists its members here ; it didn't take long to compare that list with the list of publishers indexed by SHERPA/RoMEO. Of the 355 publishers in the RoMEO database, 46 are members of PSP; of these, 16 are listed as "grey" (won't allow archiving), 23 are "green" (allow refereed postprint archiving -- NIH mandate compliant) and 7 "pale green" (allow preprint archiving; many "pale green" publishers actually allow postprint archiving and are NIH compliant, but are not listed as green because of various restrictions).

It's not possible to do what I wanted here -- which was to answer the title question. The problem is that the PSP lists 102 about 100 members that aren't indexed by RoMEO. I found that somewhat surprising, particularly since the list includes names I'd have expected to find in RoMEO: FASEB, Stanford U Press, Yale U Press, Cold Spring Harbor Lab Press, NEJM, Highwire Press and others.

Nonetheless, we can say that if the RoMEO-indexed sample (46 of 148, 31%) is representative, then at least 50% of PSP members are already complying with the NIH mandate, and a further 15% at least allow preprint archiving and may even be NIH-compliant.

It's even more unbalanced if we compare the numbers of journals published by each company. Those 46 publishers account for 5901 journals; the grey publishers put out 222 (4%), the green publishers 4243 (72%) and the pale green publishers 1436 (24%).

If the PSP were honest and interested in fairly representing its members, I'd think they would find out (and make public) whether the remaining, non-RoMEO indexed members follow the same pattern. I won't hold my breath.

____
Full disclosure: the numbers above are not 100% accurate, since the comparison between the two lists was not always straightforward. For instance, RoMEO indexes "Yale Law School" and the PSP lists "Yale University Press" as a member. I tried to err on the side of the PSP -- for instance, Yale Law is grey, so I included them. There were a few such problematic instances; I very much doubt that they made any difference to the data expressed as percentages, I'd welcome correction and a better dataset, and if anybody wants the Excel files I used I'll be happy to provide them.
Update: see strikethroughs above; some of the overlap issues can be resolved by searching more carefully -- for instance, NEJM is published by Massachusetts Medical Society, which is in RoMEO, and I have no idea how I missed FASEB the first time around. But again, little or no change to the percentages.


Comments
Post a comment

















RSS Feed

CC0
To the extent possible under law, I have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this weblog. This work is published from the United States. Further information.


Links:
(formerly Malice Aforethought)
me
spousal unit
Bloglines account
Simpy account
Connotea account
OpenWetWare userpage
monthly irregular column on 3QuarksDaily


Please sign the petition in support of the European Commission's proposed Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate

googlebombs for good
Roe; Wade; Roe v Wade
abortion
Jew
Seldovia Herald


blogroll:

Archives:
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
October 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003









Design thrown together haphazardly by frykitty.
Powered by the inimitable MovableType.