The exchange, below, about the apparent discrepancy in the estimates
of the current number of open access journals is resolved as follows:

Bowker's Ulrichsweb http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/ indexes
about 250,000 serials. Of those 250,000 serials about 10% (24,000) are
peer-reviewed journals. Of those 24,000 about 2.5% (600) are indexed by
The Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org/ which indexes
only peer-reviewed journals.

Other indices and harvesters such as
http://www.j-gate.informindia.co.in/
and
http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?lang=en
may index more free online full-text journals than
http://www.doaj.org/
but the open-access movement is focussed on *peer-reviewed* journals only,
as defined in
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
and only peer-reviewed journals are indexed by
http://www.doaj.org/

And let us also not forget that apart from the 2.5% of yearly
articles from the 24,000 peer-reviewed journals that are openly
accessible because they are published in the 600 open-access ("gold")
journals to date, at least three times as many yearly articles
(7.5%) from the 24,000 peer-reviewed journals are openly
accessible because they are self-archived by their authors:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif
This current total of 10% open access can immediately be increased
to at least 55% by self-archiving all the articles in the 55%
of peer-reviewed journals that are already "green" (or "blue" or "gold"):
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm

> Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 08:50:29 +0000 (GMT)
> From: Subbiah Arunachalam <subbiah_a@yahoo.com>
> To: sathya <sathya@informindia.co.in>
>
> From: sathya <sathya@informindia.co.in>
>
>     J-Gate [ http://www.j-gate.informindia.co.in/] indexes open access
>     literature extensively. We index articles from 1,600 journals
>     available free online, and we are the only site doing this in the
>     world. (There are many sites who just put an html page of these
>     journals, but no one does indexing). In the coming years, we plan
>     to harvest e-print sites and index them too on our site.
>
> From: Subbiah Arunachalam <subbiah_a@yahoo.com>
>
>     [ The Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org/ ]
>     lists [only] 600.
>
> From: sathya <sathya@informindia.co.in>
>
>     It is possible that [http://www.doaj.org/ is] peer-reviewed journals
>     available free online. This could be 600. I can't separately count
>     peer-reviewed journals in my database.

[The following is from the AmSci Forum's Archive/]

"Re: Need for systematic scientometric analyses of open-access data"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2522.html

    "It seems that (apart from a few well known titles) [of] the 14% free
    access biological periodicals listed by the Electronic Journal Library
    http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?lang=en
    ...some are newsletters, some look like catalogues..."

"Request for journal/article/field statistics from Ulrichs and ISI"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2972.html

    "The total number of refereed (peer-reviewed) journals
    Ulrich's indexes currently (24,116 active was latest figure)"
    [This is about 10% of the total of about 250,000 serials
     indexed by Ulrichs]
    http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/

Stevan Harnad

NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
    http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html
    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
    Post discussion to: september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org

Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
    BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
            journal whenever one exists.
    BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
            toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
    http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin.htm
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0026.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0021.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0028.gif