Status of Open Access Journals in the Field of Chemistry as Indexed in Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): A Study

Abstract

There is a growth in number of Open Access Journals (OAJs) that are setting new dimension to the ways information is published, managed and disseminated. Open Access (OA) culture has been impacting knowledge business and associated institutions. The present study intends to evaluate the status of 180 OAJs in Chemistry as indexed in Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) database. Various characteristics such as Geographic and language wise distribution, Impact Factor (IF), coverage of Indexing/Abstracting databases, adopted licensing model, policy of plagiarism, adoption of Web 2.0 and related issues of the journals are examined in the paper. The results found that Hindawi Publishing Corporation from Egypt has topped with more number of publications. Chemical Abstract Service, Google Scholar and Scopus were found to be covering most of Chemistry OAJs. The study records the trend of commercial print journals switching to OAJs in Chemistry.