An Investigation of Open Access Availability of Library and Information Science Research

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the Open Access (OA) availability of Library and Information Science (LIS) research and determine the extent to which research published in high-impact LIS journals is openly available to researchers via different OA routes. Using Google Scholar Metrics, ten core high-impact LIS journals were selected to collect the required data for the study. Bibliographic and citation details of each article published in these journals during 2016-2020 were extracted by searching the ISSN of each journal in the document search option of the Scopus database. The OA status of each article (Gold, Hybrid Gold, Green, and Bronze) was determined by querying the DOI API using the Simple Query Tool of Unpaywall. The findings show that LIS journals reviewed in this study demand $2500 to $3500 as an Article Processing Charge (APC). Almost all the journals have explicit self-archiving policies and lenient restrictions for making articles OA. However, accepted articles can be made available OA at designated Web locations after an embargo of 12months. The study’s findings indicate that 36.5 % of the total 5029 articles published during 2016-2020 in selected LIS journals were OA. Of the total OA articles, around 29 % were available through the publishers’ Website (Gold or Bronze OA), and 71 % were available through the repositories (Green OA). The average citation rate for OA articles is 13.37, which is higher than that of non-OA articles, showing a clear citation advantage for OA articles over non-OA articles.