Scientific potential of European fully open access journals

Maja Jokić (), Andrea Mervar and Stjepan Mateljan ()
Additional contact information
Maja Jokić: Institute for Social Research in Zagreb
Stjepan Mateljan: Institute for Social Research in Zagreb

Scientometrics, 2018, vol. 114, issue 3, No 28, 1373-1394

Abstract: Abstract The scientific potential of European countries measured by their participation in publication of all peer-review journals as well as open access journals (OAJs) is significant. In this paper we focus on European fully open access journals (OAJs) as a potentially optimal channel of communication in science. We explore fully OAJs (n=1201) indexed by Scopus with several bibliometric indicators: quartile rankings, SJR (SCImago Journal Ranking) and h-index. As countries in our focus have entered EU at different times and have diverse backgrounds, we divide them into three groups: A (members before 1995), B (became members in 2004–2013 period) and C (EU candidate countries). Analysis across country groups is complemented with analysis across major subject fields. Quartile rankings indicate that journals in Q1 dominate in group A, followed by journals in Q2. In the remaining two country groups, journals belonging to Q3 have more than 50% of the share. Analysis by different scientific fields stresses that life and health sciences have the highest shares of OAJs in Q1. In physical sciences the highest share of OAJs is in Q3 while combined shares of Q2 and Q3 are above 50%. Only 10% of all European OAJs in social sciences is in Q1. Furthermore, we find the least difference between journals in group A and groups B and C in social sciences, both in respect to coverage and quality indicators. In all scientific fields median SJR indicators is, in the case of groups B and C, higher for OAJs than non-OAJs as opposed to group A.

Keywords: Open access journals; Bibliometric analysis; H-index; SJR; Quartiles; EU countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-017-2629-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:114:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2629-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2629-y

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().