Open Access Publishing: An Initial Discussion of Income Sources, Scholarly Journals and Publishers

The Study for Open Access Publishing (SOAP) project is one of the initiatives undertaken to explore the risks and opportunities of the transition to open access publishing. Some of the early analyses of open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) show that more than half of the open access publishing initiatives were undertaken by smaller publishers, learned societies and few publishing houses that own a large number of journal titles. Regarding income sources as means for sustaining a journal's functions, "article processing charges", "membership fee" and "advertisement" are the predominant options for the publishing houses; "subscription to the print version of the journal", "sponsorship" and somewhat less the "article processing charges" have the highest incidences for all other publishers.