Citation indicators’ comparison of LIS open access and subscription publications based on Scopus

Abstract

Purpose

There are different opinions about the quality and reputation of publications. Given that one of the ways to analyze the quality of journals and articles is citation indicators, the purpose of this paper is to compare the citation indicators of open access (OA), full subscription and hybrid journals and articles based on the Scopus in the field of library and information science (LIS) for a period of ten years (2004-2013).

Design/methodology/approach

The research population is all LIS journals and articles in LIS hybrid journals in Scopus. The data related to citation indicators (number of received citations, two years’ impact, Citescore [IPP] and H-index) were extracted from Scopus, Journal Metrics and SCImago and analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics with SPSS and Excel.

Findings

The findings indicate that number of OA journals and articles were less than that of full subscription and hybrid journals. The average rate of all citation indicators in hybrid journals were more than that of OA and full subscription journals. However, in the level of articles, the average number of citations received by OA articles (15.6) was more than that of non-OA articles (2.25).

Originality/value

Unlike journals, OA seems to be an advantage for articles in LIS. LIS hybrid journals receive more citations than OA and subscription journals. Thus, the authors’ approach to publishing in OA, hybrid or subscription journals and the publishers approach to the publication type may also be influenced by the findings of the present study.

Citation

Abbasi, Z., Shekofteh, M., Shahbodaghi, A. and Kazemi, E. (2019), "Citation indicators’ comparison of LIS open access and subscription publications based on Scopus", Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, Vol. 68 No. 4/5, pp. 288-299. https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-02-2018-0016