scholarly journals What happens when a journal converts to open access? A bibliometric analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fakhri Momeni ◽  
Philipp Mayr ◽  
Nicholas Fraser ◽  
Isabella Peters

AbstractIn recent years, increased stakeholder pressure to transition research to Open Access has led to many journals converting, or ‘flipping’, from a closed access (CA) to an open access (OA) publishing model. Changing the publishing model can influence the decision of authors to submit their papers to a journal, and increased article accessibility may influence citation behaviour. In this paper we aimed to understand how flipping a journal to an OA model influences the journal’s future publication volumes and citation impact. We analysed two independent sets of journals that had flipped to an OA model, one from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and one from the Open Access Directory (OAD), and compared their development with two respective control groups of similar journals. For bibliometric analyses, journals were matched to the Scopus database. We assessed changes in the number of articles published over time, as well as two citation metrics at the journal and article level: the normalised impact factor (IF) and the average relative citations (ARC), respectively. Our results show that overall, journals that flipped to an OA model increased their publication output compared to journals that remained closed. Mean normalised IF and ARC also generally increased following the flip to an OA model, at a greater rate than was observed in the control groups. However, the changes appear to vary largely by scientific discipline. Overall, these results indicate that flipping to an OA publishing model can bring positive changes to a journal.

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Nilaranjan Barik ◽  
Puspanjali Jena

Purpose This study aims to establish an idea on visibility and growth of research publications of select Library and Information Science (LIS) open access journals indexed in Scopus database during the period 2001-2015. Design/methodology/approach The study covers its scope to the research publications published during the period 2001-2015. All retrieved data were analyzed using bibliometric methods. The data of the select journals were searched in Scopus database using the name of the journal as search term in source of the database. Findings The results of the study reveal that visibility of LIS research articles in country based, university/ institution based, types of document based, authors based and citation based is significant. Authors from 83 countries and 990 universities/ institutions across the world have published their research in such LIS open access journals. The American and European countries are the leaders among all contributing countries and “Article” is the most popular types of documents with 61.37 per cent publications. The citation impact of publications shows an average 8.08 citations per publication. Originality/value The study raises concern on the global visibility of LIS research publications. Authors from underdeveloped countries do not prefer to publish their publications in open channel. Also government and other research bodies of these countries do not give proper weightage to the publications in open access journals. So, the study intends to assess the visibility of LIS research publications and their growth pattern.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-130
Author(s):  
Mohammad Reza Ghane ◽  
Mohammad Reza Niazmand ◽  
Ameneh Sabet Sarvestani

In this study of access models, we compared citation performance in journals that do and do not levy article processing charges (APCs) as part of their business model. We used a sample of journals from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) science class and its 13 subclasses and recorded four citation metrics: JIF, H-index, citations per publication (CPP) and quartile rank. We examined 1881 science journals indexed in DOAJ. Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports and Web of Science were used to extract JIF, H-index, CPP and quartile category. Overall, the JIF, H-index and CPP indicated that APC and non-APC open access (OA) journals had equal impact. Quartile category ranking indicated a difference in favour of APC journals. In each science subclass, we found significant differences between APC and non-APC journals in all citation metrics except for quartile rank. Discipline-related variations were observed in non-APC journals. Differences in the rank positions of scores in different groups identified citation advantages for non-APC journals in physiology, zoology, microbiology and geology, followed by botany, astronomy and general biology. Impact ranged from moderate to low in physics, chemistry, human anatomy, mathematics, general science and natural history. The results suggest that authors should consider field- and discipline-related differences in the OA citation advantage, especially when they are considering non-APC OA journals categorised in two or more subjects. This may encourage OA publishing at least in the science class.


2008 ◽  
Vol 109 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 65-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nana Turk

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-27
Author(s):  
Nina Schönfelder

With the ongoing open-access transformation, article processing charges (APCs) are gaining importance as one of the main business models for open-access publishing in scientific journals. This paper analyzes how much of APC pricing can be attributed to journal-related factors. With UK data from OpenAPC (which aggregates fees paid for open-access articles by universities, funders, and research institutions), APCs are explained by the following variables: (a) the “source normalized impact per paper” (SNIP), (b) whether the journal is open access or hybrid, (c) the publisher of the journal, (d) the subject area of the journal, and (e) the year. The results of the multivariate linear regression show that the journal’s impact and hybrid status are the most important factors for the level of APCs. However, the relationship between APC and SNIP is different for open-access journals and hybrid journals. APCs paid to open-access journals were found to be strongly increasing in conjunction with higher journal citation impact, whereas this relationship was observed to be much looser for articles in hybrid journals. This paper goes beyond simple statistics, which have been discussed so far in the literature, by using control variables and applying statistical inference.


2011 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 372-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Walters ◽  
Anne C. Linvill

We examine the characteristics of 663 Open Access (OA) journals in biology, computer science, economics, history, medicine, and psychology, then compare the OA journals with impact factors to comparable subscription journals. There is great variation in the size of OA journals; the largest publishes more than 2,700 articles per year, but half publish 25 or fewer. While just 29 percent of OA journals charge publication fees, those journals represent 50 percent of the articles in our study. OA journals in the fields of biology and medicine are larger than the others, more likely to charge fees, and more likely to have a high citation impact. Overall, the OA journal landscape is greatly influenced by a few key publishers and journals.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matheus Pereira Lobo

A huge collaborative open science model is proposed. Many authors collaborating in a paper leads to a substantial reduction for the Article Processing Charges (APCs) in the Open Access Journals. This can significantly stimulate research within a healthier citizen and open science culture.


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