Abstract
This study explores how the citation of open access (OA) journal articles occurs by analyzing the impact of certain journal characteristics, namely, whether the journal is OA and whether its country of publication is the same as the affiliation of a paper’s author. As the language of a paper is an important factor contributing to paper citations, this study uses papers in English. This analysis included publications from 77 countries from 2010 to 2012. This analysis included 19,530 journals and 3,215,742 papers without duplication. The results showed that papers published in OA and international journals were cited in more countries than non-OA and domestic journals, and a higher percentage of these were being cited by foreign countries. From these findings, it was determined that the more widely accessible OA journals were effectively being accessed by researchers from multiple countries. However, of the top 10% most cited papers in international journals, a higher percentage of these came from non-OA compared to OA journals. Among domestic journals, no such difference was found. Papers published in non-OA international journals were most cited in foreign countries with a large number of published papers. Hence, the effect of OA’s expanded accessibility, while having an apparent effect on heightening the interest of foreign readership, has a limited impact in terms of increasing citations.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Although the USA and the UK are excluded from the discussion, articles published in journals for which the USA or the UK is the country of publication are subject to analysis. In addition, the USA and the UK are included in the analysis in terms extracting articles in the top 10% and identifying countries from which citations originate.
Country identification is based on the country in which the institution that the author is affiliated with is located.
References
Björk, B.-C., & Solomon, D. (2012). Open access versus subscription journals: A comparison of scientific impact. BMC Medicine, 10, 73.
Bohannon, J. (2013). Who’s afraid of peer review? Science, 342(6154), 60–65.
Budapest Open Access Initiative. (2002). Read the Budapest open access initiative. http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read. Accessed March 27, 2017.
Budapest Open Access Initiative. (2012). Ten years on from the Budapest open access initiative: Setting the default to open. http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai-10-recommendations. Accessed March 27, 2017.
Davis, P. M. (2009). Author-choice open-access publishing in the biological and medical literature: A citation analysis. Journal of American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(1), 3–8.
Davis, P. M., Lewenstein, B. V., Simon, D. H., Booth, J. G., & Connolly, M. J. L. (2008). Open access publishing, article downloads, and citations: Randomised controlled trail. BMJ, 377, 568.
Gamba, E., Packer, A., & Meneghini, R. (2015). Pathways to internationalize Brazilian journals of psychology. Psicologia: Reflexao e Critica, 28(1), 66–71.
James, E., & Reimer, J. (2009). Open access and global participation in science. Science, 323(5917), 1025.
Lawrence, S. (2001). Free online availability substantially increases a paper’s impact. Nature, 411, 521.
Meneghini, R. (1992). Brazilian production in biochemistry international versus domestic publication. Scientometrics, 23(1), 21–30.
Meneghini, R., & Packer, A. (2007). Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Reports, 8(2), 112–116.
Meneghini, R., Mugnaini, R., & Packer, A. (2006). International versus national oriented Brazilian scientific journals. A scientometric analysis based on SciELO and JCR-ISI database. Scientometrics, 69(3), 529–538.
Miguel, S., Chinchilla-Rodríguez, Z., & Moya-Anegón, F. (2011). Open access and scopus: A new approach to scientific visibility from the standpoint of access. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(6), 1130–1145.
OECD. (2015). Making open science a reality. OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers, No. 25. Paris: OECD. https://www.fct.pt/dsi/docs/Making_Open_Science_a_Reality.pdf.
Salager-Meyer, F. (2014). Writing and publishing in peripheral scholarly journals: How to enhance the global influence of multilingual scholars? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 78–82.
Solomon, D., Laakso, M., & Bjōrk, B.-C. (2013). A longitudinal comparison of citation rates and growth among open access journals. Journal of Informetrics, 7(3), 642–650.
Sotudeh, H., Ghasempour, Z., & Yaghtin, M. (2015). The citation advantage of author-pays model: the case of Springer and Elsevier OA journals. Scientometrics, 104(2), 581–608.
Wang, L., Liu, X., & Fang, H. (2015a). Investigation of the degree to which articles supported by research grants are published in open access health and life sciences journals. Scientometrics, 104(2), 511–528.
Wang, X., Liu, C., Mao, W., & Fang, Z. (2015b). The open access advantage considering citation, article usage and social media attention. Scientometrics, 103(2), 555–564.
Xia, J., Myer, T. L., & Wilhoit, S. K. (2011). Multiple open access availability and citation impact. Journal of Information Science, 37(1), 19–28.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to convey her sincerest appreciation to Dr. Masatsura Igami of the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, Professor Terutaka Kuwahara of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies and Sotaro Shibayama of the University of Tokyo for their exceptional suggestions and guidance. This study also benefited greatly from researchers and the author’s colleagues at the National Institute of Science and Technology who provided valuable advice.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fukuzawa, N. Characteristics of papers published in journals: an analysis of open access journals, country of publication, and languages used. Scientometrics 112, 1007–1023 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2414-y
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2414-y