Open Access Books – Part II - Delta Think

"If a publisher decides to implement an OA books program, what does it do with older titles? Does it make its backlist retrospectively OA? Or reserve OA for frontlist titles only? (Or both?).... The chart above analyzes the lead times in indexing books. It shows how many years after publication books were added to the index (the DOAB) and deemed to be made OA. If titles are made OA in their year of publication (deemed to be frontlist titles), the lead time will be zero. Just over 25% of DOAB titles are frontlist. If titles were made OA after their year of publication (deemed to be backlist titles), then the lead time will be a positive number. Around 16% of titles were made OA the year after publication. The remaining 69% or so of titles are deep backlist. Although not shown above, the oldest titles in the DOAB date back decades. Earlier years (before 2000) typically have a handful of titles per publication year, with annual numbers increasing significantly in more recent years. The oldest title in the index was published in 1787.... Patterns in license usage are different if analyzed by publication year (left) compared with the year they were made OA or added to the index (right). We can clearly see license use by publication year shows distinct patterns, but license use by indexed year appears more random....   We see that the proportion of CC BY licenses (colors at the bottom of each bar) is significantly lower in books (32%) than in journals (51%). Likewise, CC BY-NC (2nd from bottom) – books (4%) vs. journal articles (15%). But CC BY-NC-ND licenses show the opposite: books have a greater proportion (29%) than journals (18%)...."