Open source journals of library and information science: a bibliometric study

Abstract

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate the scholarly communications in open access journals of library & information science and to study the key dimensions of these publications. Design/methodology/approach – For the analysis of the study, top ten open access journals of 2011, which were indexed in SCOPUS, have been selected. The authors employed necessary bibliometric measures to analyze different publication parameters. Findings – It is found that the contribution of articles in these top ten open access journals in 2011 is good, i.e. 37.3 percent. Single authored papers are found to be the highest (40.48 percent), followed by two-authored and then three-authored papers. The degree of collaboration is found to be between 0.33 and 0.8. The numbers of citations used in the paper are also good (average 21.48 percent paper). In regards to ranking of country productivity, the USA topped the list. Research limitations/implications – This paper focuses on the publication traits of top ten open access journals of library & information science of the year 2011. A total of 373 papers from these ten journals are analyzed. Further studies can include more open access journals of this field for a period of more than one year. Practical implications – Scholars can benefit from insights into the scholarly contributions of top ten open access journals of 2011 in the field of library & information science. Originality/value – This paper provides valuable insights into the nature of academic publishing of open access journals of library & information science. It can help the researchers, professionals, teachers and students to understand the top open access journals, valuable contributions, highly cited journals, country productivity, and other parameters.