Bibliographic index coverage of open‐access journals in six subject areas

Abstract

We investigate the extent to which open-access (OA) journals and articles in biology, computer science, economics, history, medicine, and psychology are indexed in each of 11 bibliographic databases. We also look for variations in index coverage by journal subject, journal size, publisher type, publisher size, date of first OA issue, region of publication, language of publication, publication fee, and citation impact factor. Two databases, Biological Abstracts and PubMed, provide very good coverage of the OA journal literature, indexing 60 to 63% of all OA articles in their disciplines. Five databases provide moderately good coverage (22-41%), and four provide relatively poor coverage (0-12%). OA articles in biology journals, English-only journals, highimpact journals, and journals that charge publication fees of $1,000 or more are especially likely to be indexed. Conversely, articles from OA publishers in Africa, Asia, or Central/South America are especially unlikely to be indexed. Four of the 11 databases index commercially published articles at a substantially higher rate than articles published by universities, scholarly societies, nonprofit publishers, or governments. Finally, three databases-EBSCO Academic Search Complete, ProQuest Research Library, and Wilson OmniFile-provide less comprehensive coverage of OA articles than of articles in comparable subscription journals.

Journal impact and proximity: An assessment using bibliographic features

“…Online access and open access raise further questions on how to assess journal impact. Walters and Linvill (2011) investigated database coverage, journal size (number of articles), subject, publisher, and language of open access journals; they reported that impact factor correlated with database coverage. Bornmann, Neuhaus, and Daniel (2011) analyzed journals in chemistry and physics to see if the impact factors were influenced by a new two-stage publishing process.…”

Open Access Journals in Communication Studies: Indexing in Five Commercial Databases

“…If an OA article has been cited by others, it may facilitate its discovery as scholars follow-up citations they find of interest. Although search engines such as Google Scholar significantly enhance access to OA journals (Neuhaus et al 2006;Norris, Oppenheim, and Rowland 2008), Open Access Journals in Communication Studies 4 commercial bibliographic databases are considered primary and authoritative sources for searching the scholarly journal literature (Cummings 2013, 167;Walters andLinvill 2011, 1615). Research by King et al (2009, 132-3) indicates that in terms of articles found via online searching, scholars are still finding the majority of articles from commercial databases: 14 percent as a result of using web search engines, and 58 percent as a result of searching commercial abstracting and indexing databases.…”

Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries (2000 – 2013): A Bibliometric Study

“…Research by Walters and Linvill (2011) found that open access journals have a low coverage (22.7%) in bibliographic and indexing databases. Open access journal characteristics that reduced the likelihood of a journal being covered in the indexing and abstracting databases were: a subject classification of computer science, articles originating from Africa, Asia and Central/South America, university sponsorship of a journal, absence of a journal impact factor as well as low or undisclosed publications fees.…”

“…Open access journals published outside the UK, the USA, Germany and the Netherlands also have low journal impact factors (Björk and Solomon, 2012:9). Open access journals have high visibility and coverage (92%) in internet search engines like Google Scholar (Neuhaus et al, 2006) but low visibility and discoverability in commercial databases and resources (Walters and Linvill, 2011).…”