The essential role of journals as registries of scientific activity in all areas of knowledge justifies concern about their ownership and type of access. The purpose of this research is to analyze the main characteristics of publishers with journals that have received the DOAJ Seal. The specific objectives are a) to identify publishers and journals registered with the DOAJ Seal; b) to characterize those publishers; and c) to analyze their article processing fees. The research method involved the use of the DOAJ database, the Seal option and the following indicators: publisher, title, country, number of articles, knowledge area, article processing charges in USD, time for publication in weeks, and year of indexing in DOAJ. The results reveal a fast-rising oligopoly, dominated by Springer with 35% of the titles and PLOS with more than 20% of the articles. We've identified three models of expansion: a) a few titles with hundreds of articles; b) a high number of titles with a mix of big and small journals; and c) a high number of titles with medium-size journals. We identify a high number of titles without APCs (27%) in all areas while medicine was found to be the most expensive area. Commercial publishers clearly exercise control over the scope of journals and the creation of new titles, according to the interests of their companies, which are not necessarily the same as those of the scientific community or of society in general.

Science requires its own communication system; advances are made by consulting previously published results in journals, making access to publishing selections crucial. The goal of this report is to describe the publishers and the main journals where the scientific results of Brazilian researchers are published. The objectives are (1) to identify types of publisher and the access to these journals, (2) to examine the research area, origin, and the impact factor of these journals; and (3) to determine the distribution of types of publisher. The method is mainly by use of descriptive statistics with data collected from Clarivate Analytics using articles published in 2016. We found a total of 43.633 articles by Brazilian-based authors published in 2.313 journals, of which 54% published less than ten articles. Of the 20 journals that published the most articles, 13 were Brazilian, and most of these were open access journals, published by universities or associations, which charged authors either zero, or low (under USD 300,00) article-processing fees. The main research area was life sciences & biomedicine, which accounted for more than half of all articles and journals. The impact factor of more than 50% of these journals was between 1.0 and 3.0, and less than 13% of the journals had impact factors of over 4.0. Commercial companies are responsible for 65% of the journals and 50% of the articles published. The diversity of publishers indicates the relevance of alternative publishing institutions.