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The purpose of this paper is to report results of a study which investigated the growth of open access (OA) journals across the world with reference to the Asian region. Details of 117 OA journals were collected from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to determine the geographic distribution, language of publication and growth of periodical year-wise. The study makes detail analysis of four OA periodical published from India, Iran, Pakistan and Taiwan. Pattern of authorship and contribution according to nature of professional work were analyzed. The study reveals that most contributions were made by teaching professionals in comparison to working library and information officers. Single-authored contributions dominated (44 per cent) in all periodicals of the Asian region, indicating low amount of teamwork/collaborative contributions to library and information science (LIS) research by the authors of this region. To know the subject distribution of articles, the study was limited to 27 subfields within the broad spectrum of LIS. Annals of Library and Information Sciences (ALIS) published in India carried the highest number of articles (165) followed by Journal of Library and Information Sciences (JLIS) from Taiwan. The findings of the study also indicate that there is varied distribution of topics within the Asian LIS literature published in OA journals. Most popular areas of writing among authors in OA journals have been found to be bibliometics, webometrics, research productivity or research methods besides information seeking pattern, information need of users and digital libraries.

To gather data for the present investigation, survey of OA e-journals was made across the Web. The collection of data from OA journals and content was accompanied by searching the DOAJ. After selecting the OA journals, these were analyzed using the descriptions on their content page and key words chosen from each contribution. Selection of additional key words, i.e. words not in the title, was also made. Analysis of this data is discussed in this paper.

OA removes restrictions that exist on access to scholarly information and knowledge, it empowers the readers to read, download, distribute and make use of relevant literature, besides giving authors and their work fairly good visibility, readership and impact. The OA movement is gaining importance and the scholarly community is now realizing that tolled or subscribed access is creating a barrier and preventing their work from wider accessibility and readership. A number of journals across the world are now being published in OA mode. The present study attempts to map the growth of LIS literature in OA journals with special reference to periodicals published from Asian countries. The finding of this sample study suggests that many counties are promoting OA journals. While USA ranks first in publication of OA journals in the world. Taiwan publishes the highest number of articles in Asia. Majority of OA journals are published in English, and English appears to be most popular language for communicating research information. Of the four OA LIS journals analyzed in detail, it is observed that single-authored contributions are most popular. Collaborative contributions to LIS research were not so evident among authors of the Asian community. The teaching professionals or LIS teachers contributed the greatest number of articles, except for the Indian journal ALIS, demonstrating that working professional are more actively involved in writing and they outnumber the teaching community. Contributions from research students in all OA journals have been fairly significant. Research students may be encouraged to publish their master’s and doctoral research work in OA periodicals for better visibility, readership and impact. The study further reveals that ALIS from India and JLIS from Taiwan carried the highest number of articles. While areas like bibliometrics, webometrics and e-resources and OA are most popular areas of writing among Indian authors, information-seeking pattern, information need, digital and virtual libraries have been popular among authors from Taiwan. Webology from Iran has predominant articles on Web study or evaluation and social networking. Universities and LIS need to come forward to take a need-based approach to LIS research, suggesting ways for improving existing LIS services in their respective countries. To get the correct picture of growth of OA journals in the Asian region, more exhaustive and extensive study may be required. Researchers interested to carry further investigation will have to adopt appropriate measures to overcome the limitations mentioned in the study, for example, the source of data DOAJ may not be very extensive to give correct picture of OA journals. It is likely that some journals may not have been included in this directory. Researchers interested to carry further investigations will have to adopt appropriate measures to overcome these constraints.

Scope and limitation access to data and timely completion are the two vital factors for the success and accomplishment of the objectives of any investigation. Hence, considering the vast range of literature from every geographical region and limited time to complete research, the present study adhered to the following limitations. The study covers in its scope literature published in the period of five years (accessed from March 28 to May 25, 2011, only). The study includes only those publications/journals contributed by authors in English. The study includes four OA journals having full-text articles in English, abstracts not included. It considers those publications primarily inclined and relevant to library and information services. The study includes only those OA LIS journals listed or included in DOAJ.

The present study has been taken with view to analyze the growth of OA journals in LIS with special reference to Asian countries. While several studies have been conducted on growth and publishing of traditional LIS journals, the present study is perhaps an interesting attempt to make a comprehensive review of the phenomena. The finding of the recent study will be of interest to many LIS professionals, researchers and academicians as it demonstrate the growth of OA journals.

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).

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.

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).

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.

This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of a digital medical library, including department-based electronic journal access, library training course participation and scholarly publications.

The data on full-text electronic journal access, participants of library training courses and scholarly publications were exported from a digital medical library database during 2017–2021. In addition, electronic journal access and library training courses were divided into high-level and low-level groups, while scholarly publications were divided into physician and non-physician groups.

The scholarly publications had a positive correlation to library training courses and electronic journal access. Furthermore, scholarly publications showed a significant difference between the high-level and low-level electronic journal access groups but not between the high-level and low-level library training course groups. Scholarly publications and electronic journal access had positive correlations for both the physician and non-physician groups. Scholarly publications and library training courses, and electronic journal access and library training courses had positive correlations only in the non-physician group.

The importance of electronic journal access for scholarly publications is suggested based on the findings of the present study. The training courses held by the medical library had a positive effect on scholarly publications for the non-physician group.

The current study provides insights relevant to the electronic journal access of library-supported scholarly publications among medical departments. These results can serve as a reference for medical library development planning and decision-making in the future.

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2020.

The paper provides a brief description of all 440 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested in a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy. It provides an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts. The selected bibliography is useful to efficiently keep up with trends in library instruction for busy practitioners, library science students and those wishing to learn about information literacy in other contexts.

This article annotates 424 English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, theses and reports on library instruction and information literacy published in 2021. The sources were selected from the EBSCO platform for Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Scopus, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and WorldCat, published in 2021 that included the terms “information literacy,” “library instruction,” or “information fluency” in the title, abstract or keywords. The sources were organized in Zotero. Annotations summarize the source, focusing on the findings or implications. Each source was categorized into one of seven pre-determined categories: K-12 Education, Children and Adolescents; Academic and Professional Programs; Everyday Life, Community, and the Workplace; Libraries and Health Information Literacy; Multiple Library Types; and Other Information Literacy Research and Theory.

The paper provides a brief description of 424 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy within 2021.

The main purpose of this paper is to measure the scholarly impact of LIS (Library and Information Science) open access journals (OA journals), most of which are not indexed by the Web of Science (WoS). In addition, the paper seeks to discuss measurement methods beyond citation analysis.

The study selected 97 LIS OA journals as a sample and measured their scholarly impact on the basis of citations and links. The citation counts in WoS, coverage in LISA, Web links, WIFs and Page Rank of the journals are retrieved and calculated, and correlations between citation counts, links, pages, WIFs, and Page Rank are also analyzed.

The results indicate that LIS OA journals have become a significant component of the scholarly communication system. The Journal of the Medical Library Association enjoys the highest citation counts in WoS. This journal, together with D‐Lib Magazine, Information Research, Ariadne, Cybermetrics, and First Monday are the six most important LIS OA journals. With regard to coverage in LISA, Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France (2151) performs best. As a whole, the Page Rank is relatively high, mostly at 6, 7, or 8. The study finds that correlation between citation‐based measurements and link‐based measurements tends to be significant.

This paper uses the web as a global resource to measure the impact of LIS OA journals by analyzing citation, coverage, web links and Page Rank. The focus of this study is the value of the web as a source of impact indices, rather different from the traditional research methods. It contributes to the scholarly impact measurements of OA journals.

This paper aims to explore the effective ways to utilize current awareness services (CAS) for library and information science (LIS) professionals. It seeks to identify core journals for systems librarianship based on Bradford analysis.

The study explored the methods for CAS based on literature review, followed by Bradford analysis of systems librarianship literature, which was conducted by the quantitative analysis approach.

A core journal list for systems librarianship was built based on Bradford analysis. Three effective ways to utilize CAS by table of contents (TOCs) alerts were identified.

To keep up to date with the latest literature in the field of interest, LIS professionals should take advantage of CAS. The study found three effective ways to utilize CAS by TOCs alerts and identified core journals for systems librarianship. The research can help LIS professionals efficiently navigate the information tsunami to obtain the reliable and relevant information that deserves their time and attention, and stay aware of new developments in their area of interest.

The main purpose of this paper is to measure the status and quality of library and information science (LIS) open-access (OA) journals in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI).

The study selected 86 source journals of LIS in the SSCI as a sample and measured their status of open access. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to analyze 36 OA journals of 86 source journals, especially their production capability, academic influence and network communication ability.

The results indicate that OA journals have become an increasingly important part of LIS journals. Production capability, academic influence and network communication ability are important factors affecting the quality of OA journals. These three evaluation indicators of LIS OA journals are high, but many still have room for improvement.

As the paper is limited by collecting data, the indicators of OA journals’ quality are not all-around. So, they cannot reflect the quality of LIS OA journals. In the selection of the evaluation method, the evaluation results are limited because only one AHP method is used.

The research on evaluation of OA journals can help library and scientific research personnel use OA journals effectively. Identifying key factors on evaluation can help researchers to construct OA journals better.

The research on OA journals’ quality can also promote the study on OA process in academic circles and promote the communication, development and utilization of academic information. Such research can also enrich the theory of OA, and provide some new perspectives for the study of journals’ evaluation.

This paper measures the quality of LIS OA journals by analyzing production capability, academic influence and network communication ability. Rather than the traditional research methods, the focus of this study is on the value of the Web as a source of impact indices. It contributes to the scholarly impact measurements of OA journals.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2019.

The paper provides a brief description of all 370 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.