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Webometrics as a method for identifying the most accredited free electronic journals: The case of medical sciences

Alireza Isfandyari-Moghaddam (Department of Knowledge and Information Studies, Islamic Azad University, Hamedan Branch, Iran)
Farshid Danesh (Knowledge and Information Science, Young Researchers and Elite Club, Hamedan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Hamedan, Iran)
Nadia Hadji-Azizi (Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran)

The Electronic Library

ISSN: 0264-0473

Article publication date: 2 February 2015

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Abstract

Purpose

The present study aims at determining the most accredited free English electronic journals (EJs) in Medical Sciences, as finding free scholarly EJs including medical ones is difficult in the web environment.

Design/methodology/approach

The research population consisted of 700 free EJs of Medical Sciences, which were collected from two reputable websites, namely, Directory of Open Access Journals and Free Medical Journals. After first screening, 269 free EJs including 76 journals in health, 4 journals in nursing, 175 journals in medicine and 14 free EJs in dentistry remained for final investigation […].

Findings

The most accredited journals in four medical disciplines studied here are health: New South Wales Public Health Bulletin, PLoS Biology and Environmental Health Perspectives – National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; nursing: Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care and Online Journal of Nursing Informatics […].

Originality/value

This research can be treated as an addition to the webometrics literature.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the respected reviewers of the article for their helpful comments and Professor David Raitt who gave them an opportunity to revise the present work and publish it through The Electronic Library.

Citation

Isfandyari-Moghaddam, A., Danesh, F. and Hadji-Azizi, N. (2015), "Webometrics as a method for identifying the most accredited free electronic journals: The case of medical sciences", The Electronic Library, Vol. 33 No. 1, pp. 75-87. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-10-2012-0141

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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