Statistics on Directory of Open Access Books
Keita Tsuji
Faculty of Library, Information and Media Science, University of Tsukuba, Japan
Abstract: The bibliographic information of open access (OA) books available
through the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) was investigated. The
chronological changes in the number of titles and the distribution of subjects, languages,
publishers, publication/add-on years, licensing patterns, etc., were clarified. The sample
comprised 13,253 OA books, which were available through the DOAB as of December
31, 2018. The results showed that OA books were increasing at an accelerating rate,
although the speed at 2018 slightly decreased. As for the distribution of subjects,
Science (“Q”), Social Sciences (“H”), and Political Science (“J”) were the most popular.
With regard to languages, English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish were themost common. As for the publishers, Frontiers Media SA, De Gruyter, MDPI, Presses
universitaires de Rennes, and ANU Press were the most popular. As for the licensing
patterns, “CC by-nc-nd” and “CC by” were the most popular. Considering thesetendencies, libraries should begin to utilize OA books by, for instance, providing themas part of their collections.
Keywords: Open Access Books, OA books, OA monographs, Directory of Open
Access Books, DOAB

1. Introduction
Open access (henceforth OA) has already been popular in the field of journal
papers, and now it has started to gain a certain position in the field ofmonographs, or books. In the present paper, OA books are investigated, and thenumber of titles and the distribution of subjects, languages, publishers,
publication years, licensing patterns, etc., will be clarified. Their chronologicalchanges will also be shown.
Although the definition of OA books and OA monographs has not beenclearly stated,1) many articles and reports have been published on them. In thepresent paper, we define OA books as books of research output that are inelectronic form and available on the Web free of charge.
There are two representative directories or repositories of OA books. One is
the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), and the other is the Open
Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) Library. Both are provided
by the OAPEN Foundation. The DOAB is a discovery service for peerreviewed OA books, with links to the full texts of the publications at the
OAPEN Library, publisher’s website, or repositories (Adema, 2012; Karak &Mandal, 2017). The DOAB was officially launched on July 1, 2013, at theOpen Access Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conference at
the British Library in London (Ferwerda. 2014; Karak & Mandal, 2017).
However, it had been operating unofficially since 2011, and its beta version
was launched in 2012. Lamani (2018) stated, “The Directory of Open Access
Books (DOAB) is the major milestone in facilitating organized access to open
access e-books.”
In the present paper, we investigate all 13,253 titles provided by the DOAB.
We leave it for future research to investigate OA books provided by theOAPEN Library. One reason is that the number of titles provided by the
OAPEN Library is smaller than that provided by the DOAB. Furthermore, OA
books available through the DOAB have a higher degree of Open Access; i.e.,they have higher reusability than those in the OAPEN Library in the licensing
sense. Snijder (2013) stated that Amsterdam University Press had placed almost
400 books in the OAPEN Library and that less than half of them were alsoavailable through the DOAB. He said that only books with a license thatenabled readers to share the contents were allowed in the DOAB. Although it isan interesting direction to compare titles available through the DOAB and the
OAPEN Library or to investigate the disjunction of OA books available
through them, we leave it for future research.
There are three papers that have investigated the OA books available
through the DOAB (no paper was found on those available through the OAPEN
Library). Karak and Mandal (2017) investigated OA books in the field of
Library and Information Science. They found 35 books and analyzed (1) the
year-wise distribution and growth, (2) the number of authors, (3) publishers
who were actively involved in the DOAB, (4) language-wise distribution, (5)licensing patterns, and (6) the number of pages. Khanchandani and Kumar(2017) investigated 1,052 OA books available through the DOAB in the field ofScience and Technology. They analyzed the books’ publishers, licenses, andlanguage-wise distribution. Lamani et al. (2018) investigated 1,200 OA books
available through the DOAB in the field of Social Sciences. They analyzed thebooks’ subjects, the number of authors, the licenses, languages, publication
years, and pagination-wise distribution. However, few studies have been doneon all the titles available through the DOAB regardless of their field. As we
mentioned above, we will investigate all 13,253 titles available through the
DOAB. The results clarify the current status of OA books and can be used for
discussion of the preferable future of OA books.

The main objectives of the present study are:
To show the statistics on OA books available through the DOAB
such as their distribution of the subjects, languages, publishers,
publication/add-on years, licensing patterns.
 To find out the chronological changes of the above mentioned datafor discussion of the preferable future of OA books.
 To identify the active OA books publishers to promote their further
contribution.


2. Related Studies
In this section, we will outline the papers related to OA books. The preceding
papers can be classified into six types: (A) those describing the current status
and problems of OA books in one institution or in general (Snijder, 2013;
Hacker, 2014; Crossick, 2015; Collins & Milloy, 2016; Amano, 2017;
Chakrabarti & Mandal, 2017; Hacker & Corrao, 2017; Speicher, 2017; Tanabe,
2017; Mongeau, 2018); (B) those investigating the impacts of OA books onsales of printed books and on academic fields (Ferwerda et al., 2013; Snijder,2016; Speicher, 2016; Neylon et al., 2018); (C) those studying the users or
usages of OA books (Adema, 2012; Ferwerda et al., 2013; Montgomery et al.,2017); (D) those focusing on business models (Adema, 2010; Ferwerda, 2014;
London Economics, 2015); (E) those emphasizing the direction that OA books
should take in the future (Jisc Collections & OAPEN Foundation, 2016;
Christopher et al., 2017); and (F) those investigating the bibliographic

information of OA books (Karak & Mandal, 2017; Khanchandani & Kumar,
2017; Lamani et al., 2018). Since we have already outlined type (F) above, wewill introduce the rest, i.e., from (A) to (E), in the following paragraphs.
Among papers of type (A), Snijder (2013) reported on the relationshipbetween Amsterdam University Press (AUP), the OAPEN Library, the DOAB,
and IMISCOE (International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion). He
stated that the OAPEN Library and DOAB platforms were very useful tools forpromoting OA books. Hacker (2014) described the challenges in publishing OA
books at the University of Heidelberg and pointed out the importance ofcollaboration between scholars and publishers. Crossick (2015) showed that theso-called monograph crisis did not exist and examined (1) the advantages anddrawbacks of the various models for OA monographs, (2) the strengths of theprint monograph, (3) the problems of licensing, (4) third-party rights, (5) the
implications for other stakeholders (such as publishers, learned societies,
universities, and university libraries), (6) international cooperation issues, and(7) suggestions for policymakers. Collins and Milloy (2016) reported the main
findings from the OAPEN-UK research project, a five-year study into OA
monograph publishing in the Humanities and Social Sciences. They firstreferred to the perspectives of five main groups (researchers, institutions,publishers, learned societies, and funders). Then they referred to the technicaland organizational elements of producing an OA monograph and thecharacteristics that a successful business model of an OA monograph would
have. Amano (2017) described the current status and challenges of OA books inthe fields of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe, referring to theirvarious business models, dissemination, and preservation. Chakrabarti and
Mandal (2017) investigated the growth, languages, copyright licensing, andpublishers of 35 e-books in the Library and Information Science field available
through the DOAB. Hacker and Corrao (2017) reported the challenges,
accomplishments, and setbacks that Heidelberg University’s newly founded
OA publisher, heiUP, experienced. They discussed issues such as acquiring
manuscripts, designing and building workflows, and building an outlet for thefinished product. Speicher (2017) examined the current status of OA
monographs and UK university presses. Tanabe (2017) examined the programsby Springer on OA and scholarly books. Mongeau (2018) described the current
models, trends, and issues of OA monograph publishing.
Among papers of type (B), Ferwerda et al. (2013) reported the results of
OAPEN-NL, which was a project to gain experience in the OA publication ofmonographs in the Netherlands. OAPEN-NL examined (1) user needs andperceptions about the OAPEN’s publishing model for OA monographs, (2) thecosts of monograph publishing in the Netherlands, and (3) the effects of OA on
sales and scholarly impact. They stated that OAPEN-NL found no evidence ofan effect of OA on sales (since Ferwerda et al. also investigated user needs andperceptions, their paper also falls into type [C]). Snijder (2016) investigatedwhether OA had a positive influence on the number of citations and tweets amonograph received. He found a slight OA advantage and that it depended on
the language and subjects of the books. Speicher (2016) reported the effect on
print sales of OAPEN-NL and OAPEN-UK/Jisc making a book OA. She also
described the experience of the University College London Press and stated thatOA seemed to have little effect on print sales. Neylon et al. (2018) investigatedthe extent to which OA books could be seen by the communities that mightmake use of them. They focused on OA books made available by publishers
and platforms that were part of the OPERAS network, which was focused on
the development of a European research infrastructure.

Among papers of type (C), Adema (2012) reported on DOAB users’ needs,
expectations, and experiences of OA. These covered the awareness of theimportance of OA; quality control, especially, peer-reviews; licensing; businessmodels; and the DOAB itself. Montgomery et al. (2017) investigated the usage
of OA books via the JSTOR Platform. They investigated where the readerscame from, the most popular subjects of the books, readers’ behavior when
they downloaded or viewed books, and publishers’ perspectives.
Among papers of type (D), Adema (2010) investigated various initiatives’
OA business models, publishing models, and publishing processes. Initiatives
included commercial publishers and presses established by societies,
academies, libraries, and universities, etc. Ferwerda (2014) gave an overview ofsix business models of OA books: (1) hybrid models (which provided freeversions of publications and the sale of premium editions), (2) institutional
support (the receipt of direct financial support through grants or indirect
support through subsidies from the parent institute, etc.), (3) author-side
publication charges (derived from the Article Processing Chargemodel for OA
journals), (4) library-side models (which used library budgets to support OA
publications), (5) crowdfunding, and (6) green OA. London Economics (2015)
examined business models for OA monographs and assessed issues relating tocost recovery, quality control, and the incentives for authors and publishers.
They identified six types of business model, such as those by traditional
publishers and new university presses.
Among papers of type (E), Jisc Collections and the OAPEN Foundation(2016) reported on the potential centralized services that would support andencourage the publication of OA peer-reviewed monographs and presented
recommendations for their establishment. Christopher et al. (2017) conducted asurvey of academic libraries in the United States and concluded that libraryfunded OA book initiatives could successfully scale up if they employedsustainable business models, offered quality content, and provided participants
with usage data.

3. Method
In this section, we will explain the data and aspects we investigated concerning
DOAB OA books.
3.1 Data We Used
The DOAB said that it had “13253 academic peer-reviewed books and chaptersfrom 286 publishers,” as of December 31, 2018. 2) We downloaded a CSV filefrom DOAB on December 31, 2018.3) The file contained the works’ “Title,”“ISBN,” “Authors,” “Pages,” “Publisher,” “Languages,” and “Year of
publication,” etc. It also contained information about (1) dates on which thebooks or chapters were added to the DOAB, as “Added-on date,” and (2) the
Library of Congress Classification (henceforth “LCC”) codes as “Subjects.”
Books and chapters are not distinguished in the above-mentioned CSV file.
If we check each item manually, we may be able to distinguish books fromchapters, but doing so would be quite labor-intensive. Here, we would like torecall UNESCO’s definition of a book: “a non-periodical printed publication ofat least 49 pages” (UNESCO, 1964). Among the 13,253 items (i.e., books or
chapters) in the CSV file, (1) for “Pages,” 5,188 items were not available (i.e.,their data were NULL), and (2) among the rest, 8,065, only 181 (i.e., 2.2%)
were less than 49 pages in length. We regard 2.2% as sufficiently small, and theresults concerning all 13,253 items provide a good image or approximation of
OA books. We did not remove the 181 chapters from the 8,065 items because
doing so would require us to remove chapters from the other 5,188 items forconsistency. That would be very labor-intensive, and we think that the effect on
our results by such a removal would be small. Henceforth we will refer to bothbooks and chapters as “titles” and show the results for them. We regard theresults for titles to be very close to the results for books, as we previously
mentioned.
3.2 Aspects We InvestigatedFirst, we investigated the 13,253 titles’ subjects, languages, publishers,
publication years, licensing patterns, and years when the titles were added on
the DOAB (henceforth, the “added-on years”). These data were obtained fromthe columns “Subjects,” “Languages,” “Publisher,” “Year of publication,”“License,” and “Added-on date,” respectively. We also investigated any
chronological changes and the distribution of combinations of subjects,
languages, and publishers.
As for the subjects, we only used the first characters of the LCC subjects.
For instance, if a book was assigned the LCC subject “JF20-2112,” weregarded the subject of the book to be just “J” (Political Science). Whenmultiple LCC subjects were assigned to one book, we adopted the first one as
its LCC subject. For instance, if a book was assigned LCC subjects such as“HB1-3840; D1-2009,” we regarded the subject of the book to be “H” (Social
Sciences). The representations of the language of each title in the DOAB CSV
file were somewhat noisy. We regarded the character sequences in the righthand column in Table 1 to represent the language shown in the left-handcolumn.

Table 1: Languages and Their Corresponding Character Sequences
EnglishFrenchGermanItalian
SpanishPortuguese
Slovenianen, englisch, Englischfre, Frede, Deutsch
ita, italianspa
pt, porSlovene

4. Results
In this section, we will show the results for (1) the number of titles, (2)distribution of subjects, (3) distribution of languages, (4) combination ofsubjects and languages, (5) combination of publication and added-on years, (6)distribution of publishers, and (7) licensing patterns, in that order.
4.1 Number of Titles
As previously mentioned, the number of titles available through the DOAB asof December 31, 2018, was 13,253. On the basis of the added-on years, thenumbers of titles available through the DOAB as of end of the 2011, 2012,2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 were estimated to be 485, 1,173, 1,529,
2,425, 3,715, 5,691, 10,247 and 13,253, respectively. Figure 1 shows thesenumbers. It can be seen in Figure 1 that the number of titles available through
DOAB increases at an accelerating rate, although the speed at 2018 slightlydecreased.

Figure 1: Changes in the Number of Titles Available through the DOAB
4.2 Distribution of Subjects
The subject-wise numbers of titles available through the DOAB from 2011 to2018 are shown in Table 2. In Table 2, the leftmost “A” to “Z” represent the
LCC subjects.4) The subjects that the letters represent are shown in Table 3. For
instance, Tables 2 and 3 show that the ratio of the number of titles in Law (“K”)
available through the DOAB as of 2011 is 10.1%. It can be seen in Table 2 thatthe most popular subject as of December 31, 2018 is Science (“Q”), which
accounts for 9.1% (1,200 titles) of OA books available through the DOAB. The
second-most and the third-most popular subjects are Social Sciences (“H”) and
Political Science (“J”), respectively (8.3% and 7.9%).
Table 2: Subject-wise Ratios of Titles
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
J
K
L
M
N
P
Q
R
S
T
U
Z
N/A
Total

2011
0.0
6.8
1.2
9.9
0.2
0.0
3.3
21.2
18.8
10.1
1.2
0.2
1.0
9.7
8.5
1.6
1.6
3.5
0.0
0.6
0.4
485

2012
0.0
6.1
1.9
7.3
2.4
0.1
6.5
17.4
16.3
6.3
2.0
0.2
1.0
11.6
6.1
2.0
1.2
3.8
0.0
1.2
6.6
1,173

2013
0.0
5.5
1.6
7.1
1.9
0.1
5.7
16.0
13.7
6.6
2.0
0.1
1.4
11.2
6.0
2.0
0.9
3.6
0.0
1.4
13.3
1,529

2014
0.6
5.7
1.3
7.3
1.4
0.2
4.8
13.7
11.4
6.3
2.0
0.3
1.6
9.6
5.8
3.9
0.9
3.3
0.0
1.2
18.5
2,425

2015
0.5
6.2
1.0
6.9
1.1
0.2
4.2
11.7
10.8
4.7
2.9
0.4
1.6
9.2
6.8
6.0
0.8
2.9
0.0
0.8
21.3
3,715

2016
2017
2018
0.4
0.2
0.2
6.7
5.0
4.9
0.9
0.7
0.6
9.4
6.6
6.4
0.8
0.6
0.5
0.2
0.1
0.1
4.1
3.8
3.7
10.6
8.1
8.3
8.4
5.5
7.9
4.1
3.0
3.9
2.6
2.3
2.5
0.4
0.3
0.3
1.6
1.1
1.1
8.5
6.6
7.0
9.6
7.7
9.1
9.4
6.5
7.0
0.7
0.5
0.6
3.1
2.7
3.1
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.8
0.5
0.5
17.7
38.1
32.4
5,691 10,247 13,253

Table 3: LCC Codes
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
J
K
L
M
N
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
Z

General Works
Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
Auxiliary Sciences of History
World History and History of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
History of the Americas
History of the Americas
Geography. Anthropology. Recreation
Social Sciences
Political Science
Law
Education
Music
Fine Arts
Language and Literature
Science
Medicine
Agriculture
Technology
Military Science
Naval Science
Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources (General)

The ratios of the numbers of titles of subjects “H,” “J,” “K,” “P,” “Q,” and “R”
for 2011 to 2018 are shown in Figure 2. These six subjects were chosenbecause their chronological changes were large. It can be seen in this figure thatthe ratios of Social Sciences (“H”) and Political Science (“J”) were decreasing
significantly. The ratios of Law (“K”) and Language and Literature (“P”) werealso decreasing. On the other hand, the ratios of Science (“Q”) and Medicine(“R”) were increasing.
DOAB seems to have started with books on social sciences and humanities,
however, the ratios of such books are not prominent now. Although the ratiosof books on sciences and medicines are increasing, their ratios are notprominent too. From the LCC’s point of view, they are in the status of “being
well-balanced.” Needless to say, it is a superficial statement (and thus withquotation marks) because (1) the ratios might change if other classification
system was used and (2) truely well-balanced status is difficult to define ordetermine.

Figure 2: Changes in the Ratios of Titles of Subjects H, J, K, P, Q and R

4.3 Distribution of Languages
The numbers and percentages of titles of each language available through the
DOAB as of December 31, 2018 are shown in Table 4. It can be seen from
Table 4 that the most popular language was English, which accounts for 49.5%(6,634 titles) of titles available through the DOAB. French, German,
Portuguese, and Spanish follow. These five languages account for 91.4% ofbooks available through the DOAB.5)
Table 4: Numbers and Percentages of Titles in Each Language
EnglishFrenchGermanPortuguese
SpanishItalianDutch
FinnishNorwegianSwedishCatalanLithuanian
SlovenianTurkish
Latin

6,634
2,664
1,741
702
497
328
155
34
30
12
10
10
9
9
8
Total

( 49.5 ) Greek7( 19.9 ) Romansh7( 13.0 ) Russian6( 5.2 ) Afrikaans5( 3.7 ) Danish
4( 2.4 ) Czech
3( 1.2 ) Estonian3( 0.3 ) Arabic2( 0.2 ) Albanian1( 0.1 ) Ancient Greek1( 0.1 ) Chinese1( 0.1 ) Church1( 0.1 ) Tibetan
1( 0.1 ) Welsh1( 0.1 ) N/A
508
13,394

(
0.1 )
(
0.1 )
(
0.0 )
(
0.0 )
(
0.0 )
(
0.0 )
(
0.0 )
(
0.0 )
(
0.0 )
(
0.0 )
(
0.0 )
(
0.0 )
(
0.0 )
(
0.0 )
(
3.8 )
( 100.0 )The numbers of titles in English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, andItalian added to the DOAB during the period from 2011 to 2018 are shown in
Table 5. It can be seen from Table 5 that, for instance, the number of titles
written in French added in 2014 was 145. Figure 3 was generated on the basisof the numbers from Table 5. It can be seen from Figure 3 that the number ofadded titles written in English was consistently the largest except in 2017. In
2017, the number of added titles written in French increased sharply, exceeding
English, however, it sharply decreased in 2018.
Table 5: Numbers of Added Titles in Six Languages
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018

English
179
502
185
433
634
1,352
1,621
1,728

French
1
7
4
145
190
121
2,054
142

German Portuguese
92
0
60
0
150
0
90
123
90
291
243
115
245
76
771
97

Spanish
0
0
2
68
47
46
264
70

Italian
73
0
12
18
20
22
81
102

Figure 3: Changes in the Numbers of Added Titles in Six Languages
4.4 Combination of Subjects and Languages
The numbers and percentages of subjects for the titles written in English,
French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian available through the DOAB
as of December 31, 2018, are shown in Table 6. In Table 6, the leftmost “A” to“Z” represent the LCC subjects again. For instance, the number of titles in
Social Sciences (“H”) written in English is 684. It accounts for 10.3% of thetitles written in English.
It can be seen from Table 6 that the most popular subjects of books written
in English are Science (“Q”), Medicine (“R”), and Social Sciences (“H”),
which account for 16.0%, 11.1%, and 10.3%, respectively. As for German,
Political Science (“J”), Law (“K”) and World History and History of Europe,Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc. (“D”) are the most popular, which
accounts for 21.5%, 14.3% and 10.3%, respectively. Unfortunately, many of
the French books in the DOAB are not assigned LCC codes. More specifically,
95.1% of French books do not have them. If they had been so assigned, wewould have been able to analyze the tendency of OA French books’ subjects
more precisely.
Table 6: Numbers and Percentages of Subjects and Languages of the Titles

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
J
K
L
M
N
P
Q
R
S
T
U
Z
N/A
Total

English5 ( 0.1 )422 ( 6.4 )
59 ( 0.9 )
444 ( 6.7 )
20 ( 0.3 )1 ( 0.0 )338 ( 5.1 )
684 ( 10.3 )
500 ( 7.5 )
173 ( 2.6 )
159 ( 2.4 )
22 ( 0.3 )
73 ( 1.1 )
563 ( 8.5 )1,059 ( 16.0 )734 ( 11.1 )
58 ( 0.9 )
336 ( 5.1 )1 ( 0.0 )
40 ( 0.6 )
943 ( 14.2 )6,634 ( 100.0 )French1 ( 0.0 )
12 ( 0.5 )2 ( 0.1 )
30 ( 1.1 )0 ( 0.0 )0 ( 0.0 )7 ( 0.3 )
13 ( 0.5 )6 ( 0.2 )3 ( 0.1 )3 ( 0.1 )0 ( 0.0 )2 ( 0.1 )
23 ( 0.9 )
13 ( 0.5 )5 ( 0.2 )0 ( 0.0 )8 ( 0.3 )0 ( 0.0 )2 ( 0.1 )2,534 ( 95.1 )2,664 ( 100.0 )German1 ( 0.1 )
68 ( 3.9 )
12 ( 0.7 )
179 ( 10.3 )1 ( 0.1 )0 ( 0.0 )
28 ( 1.6 )
131 ( 7.5 )375 ( 21.5 )
249 ( 14.3 )
21 ( 1.2 )6 ( 0.3 )
27 ( 1.6 )
116 ( 6.7 )
37 ( 2.1 )
27 ( 1.6 )7 ( 0.4 )
23 ( 1.3 )0 ( 0.0 )9 ( 0.5 )424 ( 24.4 )
1,741 ( 100.0 )Portuguese0 ( 0.0 )
82 ( 11.7 )0 ( 0.0 )
12 ( 1.7 )3 ( 0.4 )2 ( 0.3 )5 ( 0.7 )98 ( 14.0 )
75 ( 10.7 )
12 ( 1.7 )
72 ( 10.3 )
10 ( 1.4 )
17 ( 2.4 )
85 ( 12.1 )
43 ( 6.1 )
134 ( 19.1 )3 ( 0.4 )
18 ( 2.6 )0 ( 0.0 )2 ( 0.3 )
29 ( 4.1 )
702 ( 100.0 )Spanish15 ( 3.0 )
27 ( 5.4 )2 ( 0.4 )
62 ( 12.5 )4 ( 0.8 )
9 ( 1.8 )2 ( 0.4 )
23 ( 4.6 )
13 ( 2.6 )
52 ( 10.5 )
22 ( 4.4 )0 ( 0.0 )2 ( 0.4 )
21 ( 4.2 )3 ( 0.6 )2 ( 0.4 )0 ( 0.0 )2 ( 0.4 )0 ( 0.0 )4 ( 0.8 )
232 ( 46.7 )497 ( 100.0 )Italian0 ( 0.0 )
12 ( 3.7 )5 ( 1.5 )
49 ( 14.9 )1 ( 0.3 )0 ( 0.0 )7 ( 2.1 )
27 ( 8.2 )
22 ( 6.7 )
22 ( 6.7 )
24 ( 7.3 )0 ( 0.0 )
16 ( 4.9 )
39 ( 11.9 )
12 ( 3.7 )4 ( 1.2 )2 ( 0.6 )7 ( 2.1 )0 ( 0.0 )
10 ( 3.0 )
69 ( 21.0 )328 ( 100.0 )4.5 Combination of Publication and Added-on Years
The year-wise publication and added-on numbers of titles are shown in Table 7.
For instance, the number of titles that were published during the period from2005 to 2009 and that were added to the DOAB in 2012 is 254. Because there
were 37 titles whose publication years were lacking in DOAB data, the total is13,216, which is different from 13,253 in other Tables.
It can be seen from Table 7 that some titles were added to the DOAB as OA
books before being published. For instance, five titles that were published in2014 had been added to the DOAB in 2013. It was found that 51 titles in total
were or would be published after they were added to the DOAB (23 titles
which were added to DOAB in 2018 are going to be published in 2019).

Publication Year

Table 7: Year-wise Publication and Added-on Numbers for Titles～1999
2000～2004
2005～2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
Total

2011
5
135
261
46
36

2012
23
34
254
116
142
114
4

2013
5
19
50
21
24
98
134
5

483

687

356

Added-on Year2014 2015 2016
82
74
129
74
76
57
113
228
123
29
93
20
47
25
45
111
28
36
198
57
56
237
244
142
4
462
556
1
2
802
6

896

1,289

1,972

2017
829
530
730
176
170
156
144
147
166
447
1,046
6
4,547

2018
242
95
195
98
85
74
125
146
149
234
405
1,115
23
2,986

Total
1,389
1,020
1,954
599
574
617
718
921
1,337
1,486
1,457
1,121
23
13,216

4.6 Distribution of Publishers
The publisher-wise numbers of titles added to the DOAB during the period
from 2011 to 2018 are shown in Table 8. The leftmost column shows the
publishers’ names, sorted in descending order of the total number of titles
shown in the rightmost column. It can be seen in Table 8 that the five
publishers that added the most works to the DOAB are Frontiers Media SA, De
Gruyter, MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, Presses
universitaires de Rennes and ANU Press (henceforth, the “top five publishers”).
While the total number of titles available through the DOAB increased at anaccelerating rate (see Figure 1), the number of titles added to the DOAB byeach publisher did not follow the same pattern. For instance, Presses
universitaires de Rennes added all of its 528 titles in 2017, and ANU Press
added 189 titles in 2012 and zero in 2013.
As previously mentioned, the speed of increasing of the number of OA
titles dropped in 2018. This is partly due to the French publishers that had not
added OA titles until 2017, added many titles in 2017 and did not add in 2018.
For instance, Presses universitaires de Rennes (528), Institut français d’études
andines (124), Presses universitaires de Provence (122), and Presses
universitaires François-Rabelais (91) are true of this case (the numbers inparenthesis are the number of OA titles that they added just in 2017).
The numbers of titles added to the DOAB by the above-mentioned five top
publishers during the period from 2011 to 2018 are shown in Figure 4. It can beseen in Figure 4 that the numbers of titles added by De Gruyter and MDPI Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute has increased constantly. On theother hand, the number of titles added by ANU Press has decreased. The
number of titles added by Frontiers Media SA and Presses universitaires deRennes are showing sharp increasing and decreasing.
Table 8: Numbers of Titles Added to the DOAB by Each Publisher
Frontiers Media SA
De Gruyter
MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing InstitutePresses universitaires de Rennes
ANU Press
Springer
Amsterdam University Press
Universitätsverlag Göttingen
Brilltranscript Verlag
Böhlaupunctum books
SciELO Books - Editora UNESPSciELO Books - Editora FIOCRUZ
Bloomsbury Academic
Open Book Publishers
Manchester University Press
Ledizioni - LediPublishing
Graduate Institute Publications
Palgrave Macmillan
Collège de France
Athabasca University Press
Leuven University Press
Presses de l’Ifpo
Institut français d’études andines
Other
Total

2011
0
0
0
0
1
1
136
101
24
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
90
0
0
5
0
0
0
0
0
127
485

2012
0
17
0
0
189
10
42
40
21
0
0
0
0
0
38
21
1
0
0
0
0
67
0
0
0
242
688

2013
1
11
0
0
0
17
26
39
1
0
86
0
0
0
20
7
0
30
0
1
0
10
0
0
0
107
356

2014
0
33
2
0
145
26
9
25
4
1
49
63
2
87
25
11
2
11
0
0
79
16
0
62
0
244
896

2015
176
40
50
0
42
24
13
1
0
3
34
42
95
1
45
14
0
20
0
15
23
0
0
61
0
591
1,290

2016
542
176
92
0
55
64
33
57
136
7
18
22
63
38
10
8
12
23
0
17
25
24
1
2
0
551
1,976

2017
208
105
134
528
43
202
41
29
51
64
30
62
11
2
8
51
34
27
147
44
15
7
129
2
124
2,458
4,556

2018 Total
241 1,168
575
957
346
624
0
528
37
512
92
436
21
321
21
313
14
251
169
244
21
238
15
204
13
184
53
181
31
177
63
175
35
174
41
152
0
147
61
143
0
142
10
134
0
130
0
127
0
124
1,147 5,467
3,006 13,253

Figure 4: Numbers of Titles Added to the DOAB by the Top Five Publishers
The numbers and percentages of subjects for the titles added by the top 10
publishers are shown in Table 9. It can be seen from Table 9 that nearly 90% of
the subjects for the titles added by Frontiers Media SA were Medicine (“R”)
and Science (“Q”), which account for 41.2% and 47.2%, respectively. The top
three subjects for the titles added by MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital
Publishing Institute were Science (“Q”), Technology (“T”) and Medicine (“R”),
which account for 30.8%, 18.3%, and 13.1%, respectively. The top threesubjects for the titles added by ANU Press were Political Science (“J”), Social
Sciences (“H”) and Geography - Anthropology - Recreation (“G”), which
account for 25.4%, 22.5%, and 12.1%, respectively. As for De Gruyter, they
were Political Science (“J”), World History and History of Europe, Asia,
Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc. (“D”) and Language and Literature (“P”),
which account for 28.6%, 18.2%, and 13.3%, respectively. From this result, it
can be said that Frontiers Media SA and MDPI were mainly adding STM. On
the other hand, ANU Press and De Gruyter were main adding Social Sciencesand Humanities titles. As for Springer, the top three subjects for its titles were
Science (“Q”), Social Sciences (“H”) and Technology (“T”), which account for
20.2%, 20.0%, and 17.2%, respectively. Springer is adding both STM andSocial Sciences titles.
Table 9: Numbers and Percentages of Subjects for the Titles Added by the Top
10 Publishers

Frontiers De
Media SA Gruyter
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
J
K
L
M
N
P
Q
R
S
T
U
Z
N/A
Total

0.0
8.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.9
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
47.2
41.2
0.0
2.7
0.0
0.0
0.0
1,168

0.0
12.1
0.9
18.2
0.1
0.0
0.8
2.2
28.6
8.5
0.6
0.1
1.7
13.3
4.1
1.6
0.3
1.7
0.0
2.7
2.5
957

MDPI Presses
Multidiscipli
universita ANU
nary Digital
Press
Publishing ires deRennesInstitute

0.0
2.2
0.2
0.0
0.0
0.0
9.3
5.8
0.0
0.3
0.5
0.2
0.2
0.0
30.8
13.1
1.6
18.3
0.0
0.0
17.6
624

0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
100.0
528

0.0
3.7
3.5
10.2
0.0
0.0
12.1
22.5
25.4
6.4
1.0
0.2
1.2
2.3
4.3
2.0
2.5
1.4
0.0
1.2
0.2
512

Amsterdam Universitä

transcript
VerlagSpringer University tsverlag Gö Brill
Press

0.2
1.4
0.2
0.5
0.0
0.0
8.3
20.0
3.2
2.8
11.5
0.2
0.5
1.8
20.2
9.4
2.3
17.2
0.0
0.0
0.5
436

ttingen

0.0
4.4
1.6
9.0
0.0
0.0
0.6
28.3
19.3
3.4
1.9
0.0
1.9
18.1
9.0
0.6
0.6
0.6
0.0
0.0
0.6
321

0.0
5.1
0.6
5.8
0.0
0.0
6.1
14.4
1.3
30.0
2.2
1.3
3.2
6.4
10.9
5.4
1.9
3.8
0.0
0.3
1.3
313

0.0
3.6
0.4
50.2
0.0
0.0
0.4
13.5
4.8
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.4
2.4
0.8
0.8
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.4
22.3
251

0.0
1.2
0.0
6.6
0.8
0.0
2.0
30.7
43.4
0.0
0.8
0.4
2.5
7.8
0.0
0.8
0.0
0.8
0.0
0.0
2.0
244

4.7 Licensing Patterns
Chronological changes in the percentages of the licensing patterns are shown in
Table 10.6) It can be seen from Table 10 that the most popular pattern is “CC
by-nc-nd” as of December 31, 2018, which accounts for 34.1% of total 13,253
titles. The second-most popular pattern is “CC by,” which almost constantly
increased from 2011 to 2018 (i.e., from 0.4% to 17.4%). Note that “CC by” isthe most accommodating licensing pattern, which requires only attribution
display and even allows commercial re-use.
The distribution of the licensing patterns of the top 25 publishers is shownin Table 11. It can be seen from Table 11 that the licensing pattern preferred byeach publisher differs significantly. For instance, Frontiers Media SA prefers“CC by” (100% of their 1,168 titles belong to this pattern). De Gruyter prefers“CC by-nc-nd” (93.9% of their 957 titles belong to this pattern). Quite a few
publishers adopt more than one licensing pattern. For instance, Springer isadopting “CC by-nc” (51.8%) and “CC by” (45.4%), while Amsterdam
University Press is adopting “CC by-nc” (52.3%) and “CC by-nc-nd” (45.2%).
It would be interesting to pursue the criteria that are leading the publishers to
adopt different patterns.
Table 10: Changes in the Percentages of Licensing Patterns
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018

CC byCC by- CC by- CC by- CC byCC by
nc-nd
nc-sa
nc
sa
nd
55.5
0.4
0.0
27.8
0.0
16.1
55.8
0.7
0.0
14.7
0.7
9.6
58.7
1.6
1.9
12.9
1.0
9.3
47.9
2.1
9.8
11.1
1.8
6.2
37.5
9.5
16.1
9.8
1.4
4.2
33.5
18.3
11.8
10.9
2.3
2.9
28.5
15.6
9.5
8.1
1.9
1.7
34.1
17.4
8.1
7.5
1.9
1.4

N/A

Total

0.2
485
18.6 1,173
14.5 1,529
21.1 2,425
21.6 3,715
20.2 5,691
34.8 10,247
29.4 13,253

Table 11: Percentages of Licensing Patterns of the Top 25 Publishers

Frontiers Media SA
De Gruyter
MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing InstitutePresses universitaires de Rennes
ANU Press
Springer
Amsterdam University Press
Universitätsverlag Göttingen
Brilltranscript Verlag
Böhlaupunctum books
SciELO Books - Editora UNESPSciELO Books - Editora FIOCRUZ
Bloomsbury Academic
Open Book Publishers
Manchester University Press
Ledizioni - LediPublishing
Graduate Institute Publications
Palgrave Macmillan
Collège de France
Athabasca University Press
Leuven University Press
Presses de l’Ifpo
Institut français d’études andines
Other
Total

CC byCC by- CC by- CC by- CC byCC by
nc-nd
nc-sa
nc
sa
nd
0.0 100.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
93.9
1.4
0.2
0.0
0.1
0.5
84.5
14.3
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.2
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.7
45.4
0.2
51.8
0.0
0.0
45.2
0.3
0.0
52.3
0.0
0.3
10.5
0.6
0.0
0.0
39.6
48.6
18.7
0.0
0.0
71.3
0.0
0.0
91.4
4.9
0.0
0.4
2.0
1.2
65.1
18.5
0.0
16.4
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0 100.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
4.9
54.3
2.7
0.0
0.0
0.0
27.6
49.2
2.2
0.0
0.0
91.5
0.0
0.0
7.9
0.0
0.0
31.4
64.6
0.0
0.6
1.1
0.6
84.5
0.6
0.0
7.5
0.0
0.0
8.6
0.7
88.2
0.0
2.6
0.0
100.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
7.0
69.9
0.0
1.4
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
99.3
0.0
0.7
0.0
0.0
0.0
1.5
0.0
98.5
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
33.3
9.3
7.7
6.3
2.2
0.5
4,522 2,312 1,080
997
254
188

N/A

Total

0.0 1,168
3.9
957
1.3
624
100.0
528
99.8
512
1.8
436
1.9
321
0.6
313
10.0
251
0.0
244
0.0
238
0.0
204
38.0
184
21.0
181
0.6
177
1.7
175
7.5
174
0.0
152
0.0
147
21.7
143
100.0
142
0.0
134
0.0
130
100.0
127
100.0
124
40.7 5,467
3,900 13,253

5. Conclusions
In the present paper, the bibliographic information of OA books available
through the DOAB was investigated. The chronological changes in the numberof titles and the distribution of subjects, languages, publishers, publication/addon years, licensing patterns, etc., were clarified. The results showed that OA
books were increasing at an accelerating rate, although the speed at 2018slightly decreased. As for the distribution of subjects, Science (“Q”), Social
Sciences (“H”), and Political Science (“J”) were the most popular. With regard
to languages, English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish were the mostcommon. As for the publishers, Frontiers Media SA, De Gruyter, MDPI Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, Presses universitaires de Rennes
and ANU Press had registered more books in the DOAB than any otherpublishers. As for the licensing patterns, “CC by-nc-nd” and “CC by” were themost popular. Considering these tendencies, libraries should begin to utilize
OA books by, for instance, providing them as part of their collections.
As future research, we would like to investigate (1) the distribution of the levels
of OA books (e.g., identifying how many books are suitable as textbooks forundergraduate students, how many are for expert researchers, and in which
subjects) and (2) the business models adopted for each OA book (e.g.,
identifying who paid to publish it). Through these studies, better ways ofutilizing and producing OA books will be clarified.

NOTES
1) For instance, Adema (2012) stated that, prior to the user needs analysis of OA books,
online discussion of OA books took place among publishers, academics, librarians,and participants from the wider OA and publishing community. The discussion
included the definition of OA books, but Adema did not report any conclusion
regarding this definition.
2) https://www.doabooks.org/doab?func=search&uiLanguage=en3) https://www.doabooks.org/doab?func=about&uiLanguage=en4) https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/

5) Some figures in Table 4 correspond to the same titles. For instance, if a particularbook has been published in English, French, and German, these editions were counted
as three independent books written in English, French, and German. This is why the“Total” in Table 4 is 13,394, which is larger than 13,253 in Table 2.
6) “by,”“nc,”“nd,” and “sa” represent forms of Creative Commons licenses: “by” (youmust give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes
were made; you may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests
the licensor endorses you or your use); “Non Commercial” or “nc” (you may not use
the material for commercial purposes); “No Derivatives” or “nd” (if you remix,
transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material);and “Share Alike” or “sa” (if you remix, transform, or build upon the material, youmust distribute your contributions under the same license as the original),
respectively. <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/>

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