Collection and Curation

Mapping the use of open access resources by doctoral students in the USA by employing citation analysis
Zahid Ashraf Wani, Showkat Ahmad Wani,
Article information:
To cite this document:
Zahid Ashraf Wani, Showkat Ahmad Wani, (2018) "Mapping the use of open access resources by doctoral students in the USA
by employing citation analysis", Collection and Curation, https://doi.org/10.1108/CC-05-2018-0014
Permanent link to this document:
https://doi.org/10.1108/CC-05-2018-0014
Downloaded on: 20 October 2018, At: 09:35 (PT)
References: this document contains references to 28 other documents.
Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND (AUS) At 09:35 20 October 2018 (PT)

To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 7 times since 2018*
Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:320271 []
For Authors
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service
information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit
www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.
About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com
Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of
more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online
products and additional customer resources and services.
Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics
(COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.

*Related content and download information correct at time of download.

 Mapping the use of open access resources by
doctoral students in the USA by employing
citation analysis
Zahid Ashraf Wani and Showkat Ahmad Wani
Department of Library and Information Science, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to measure the fully open access (OA) contents cited by researchers from top three universities in the USA
(MIT, CIT and Stanford) in the field of physics. This study aims to identify the core fully OA journals widely used by researchers in the field of physics
and evaluate the cited fully OA resources by applying various scientometric parameters to check the credibility of these OA resources.
Design/methodology/approach – The PhD theses awarded during 2014 in the field of physics and hosted in the institutional repositories of
Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND (AUS) At 09:35 20 October 2018 (PT)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), California Institute of Technology (CIT) and Stanford University, respectively, were selected and
scanned to extract references of sources cited. Later on, Google Scholar was used to identify source journals of the extracted references. Only source
“journals” were selected and analyzed; rest of other sources were ignored; accordingly, toll-access and OA journals were segregated, as such the
OA-cited journals could be identified. The scientometric performance indicators were used to check the quality of identified core fully OA journal
cited by USA researchers in the field of physics.
Findings – The results of this study show that fully OA resources are sufficiently used by the researchers of top three academic institutions of the
world/USA. The study was also successful in identifying the core fully OA journals; besides it also reveals that these fully OA journals are highly
impressive as showed by performance indicators applied. The major finding of the research includes the identification of top ten fully OA journals
along with their impact based on different scientometric parameters like number of times cited, impact factor, h-index, immediacy index, impact per
publication and Scimago Journal Rank (SJR).
Research limitations/implications – Because of a limited corpus of literature scrutinized in this study, the findings of the study may or may not
represent the global picture in the field of physics.
Practical implications – The paper confirms that fully OA resources usage trend is positively increasing day by day, and there are vast numbers of
core OA journals with high-quality impact available for use to researchers around the world. Besides, the paper also affirms the view that there
should be more publicity of fully OA literature around the globe to reap the benefits of the same.
Social implications – This paper will assist researchers, libraries, information centers and research and development institutions to take a cost-
efficient approach in using and disseminating the scholarly literature.
Originality/value – This paper is one of the first pieces of research conducted on electronic theses and dissertation (ETD’s) in top three universities
of the USA, to check usage percentage and quality of fully OA journal resources cited by doctoral students in the field of physics.
Keywords Scientometrics, Open access, IPP, Immediacy-index, Impact-factor, USA-open access
Paper type Research paper

Introduction quality and costly publications is a dream. Those researchers,

Every scholar requires access to latest qualitative research articles
for completing their research undertaken; however, generally,
these articles are not accessible without the subscription.
Publishers provide access to these articles by charging an
exorbitant amount of money from subscribers. We all know that
there is an economic divide between countries in general and
individuals in particular throughout the world. How can scholars
access these subscriptions-based research articles especially those
who belong to a developing country, where subscription of high
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/2514-9326.htm
who access the costly and high-quality publication, produce high-
level output and mind-blowing discoveries and inventions. The
bottleneck which widens the gap between researchers from the
developed world and underdeveloped or developing world is
unequal access to high-quality research publications. In toll-
based scholarly communication model, it has been usually seen
the prime focus is on better financial returns while giving
secondary significance to their social responsibility thereby
limiting the access. The problem of inaccessibility prevails
frequently in present times, because of the adaption of toll-access
model of scholarly communications for disseminating the
scientific findings. Open access (OA) model of scholarly
communication can provide a reliable solution to this problem.
By “OA” to this literature, we mean its free availability on public
internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy,

Collection and Curation

© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 2514-9326] Received 27 May 2018
[DOI 10.1108/CC-05-2018-0014] Accepted 22 July 2018
 Open access resources
Zahid Ashraf Wani and Showkat Ahmad Wani
distribute, print, search or link to the full texts of these articles,
crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use
them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal or
technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining
access to the internet itself (Budapest Open Access Initiative,
2002 as cited by Ghosh and Kumar Das, 2007).
Similarly, free or OA to research increases its visibility,
accessibility and impact. It is a worldwide movement to
disseminate scientific and scholarly findings online, free of cost
and free from unnecessary licensing restrictions (Suber, 2007).
As OA is a cost-effective way to disseminate and use
information, it is an alternative to the traditional subscription-
based publishing model made possible by new digital
technologies and networked communication (Association of
Research Libraries, 2004 as cited by Ghosh and Kumar Das,
2007).There are varied types of OA resources, which enhance
Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND (AUS) At 09:35 20 October 2018 (PT)
the OA movement throughout the globe. There are varied types
of open access resources, which enhance the OA movement
throughout the globe like open access journals, eBooks, audio,
videos and electronic theses and dissertation (ETD’s),
benefitting knowledge seekers globally. OA can offer greater
benefits to both the researchers and the public; the researcher
can get the benefit of increased impact of their publications and
public can save their money by getting free unrestricted access
to anywhere anytime to qualitative scientific literature. Certain
questions are evident regarding the OA literature such as
whether this literature is used by researchers, are these OA
resources qualitative or not and which are the core OA
resources which can be used by needy researchers across the
globe without any barrier. In this milieu, the study focuses on
how OA resources are used by the scholarly community by
assessing the magnitude and quality of OA resources cited by
doctoral students in the USA. The premise is that the USA is a
developed country and can afford access to toll-access
resources and it will be interesting to investigate, what
percentage of OA resources particularly research journals are
used by the researchers of the CIT, MIT and Stanford in their
doctoral thesis. The study also makes sure to access the quality
of identified OA journals cited by researchers, by using different
scientometric performance indicators. The study can help
researchers in other parts of the globe in the identification of
quality OA journals and can encourage them to publish their
research findings in OA journals.
Problem
The researchers face the problem of inaccessibility to high-
quality research publications because of lack of finance,
technical and legal feasibility. This acts as an impediment to
generate quality research, especially from developing world.
The said problem could be resolved by supporting the OA to
scholarly literature. The catechism arises here, whether these
OA resources are credible in terms of quality or not. How much
usage they have, what is the latest trend in this vein? In this
context, the present study is an effort to assess and observe the
proportion of OA journals cited by researchers in their doctoral
theses in top-ranked institutions of the USA, especially in the
field of physics. The study also examines the value and
reliability of these identified OA journals by using different
scientometric performance indicators.
Collection and Curation
Literature review
The researchers from a developed country are fortunate to get
access to high-quality toll-access scientific literature with the
result doing exceptional research. On the other side,
researchers who do not have access to toll-based literature fail
to conduct quality research (Rens and Kahn, 2009). As
information and knowledge industries have increased across
the globe, scientific literature became accessible to those who
have sound economic capabilities and other technical and legal
efficiencies. The researchers are always in need of scientific
literature to fulfill their research requirements, those who have
financial resources to subscribe the qualitative toll-access
literature can easily get access, but those who are already living
in underdeveloped and financially unstable states can hardly
afford to access subscription-based scientific literature. The
wall of economic divide between the developed and
underdeveloped countries is creating serious problems for
researchers across the globe, especially in accessing the
scientific literature. This major problem of un-equal
accessibility on latest research publications can be solved by
supporting OA movement. It is believed that OA to scholarly
literature can lead the research world into a paradise, where
each researcher can access anything that he needs or desires
and can contribute everything which he/she has. OA means the
unrestricted, free access, without any subscription, to the
fulltext, peer-reviewed scientific literature. So that others can
replicate, examine, corroborate and conclusively contribute
in solving the underlying research questions. So that others can
replicate, examine, corroborate and conclusively contribute in
solving the underlying research questions (Björk, 2017; Terras,
2015; Eysenbach, 2006).
The researcher’s ability has been enhanced by the
development of the internet, as it enabled them to access the
gray literature, working papers, unpublished reports and studies
and government papers that were previously inaccessible and
unknown (Herring, 2002).The existence of internet was
primarily responsible for OA movement, as it enables every user
to access the contents provided via it across different locations
but must possess required computer hardware and software
along with internet connections and usability skills. Ghosh and
Kumar Das (2007) mention:
Open access facilitates the availability and distribution of scholarly
communication freely, as a means and effort to solve the problem of
inaccessibility, primarily due to financial constraints, particularly in the
developing countries.
The feature of OA is numerous which explicates that OA is
highly profitable and appreciable mode of using and publishing
the scholarly findings. Bernius (2010) asserts that:
OA accelerates the creation and widens the dissemination of scientific
knowledge. Subject-based repositories are suggested to provide the best
conditions for retrieval of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, in terms of
economic efficiency, OA has the potential to significantly decrease the costs
of scholarly communication.
Similarly, OA stretches the access to research outputs by
enabling the authors to make their research publications freely
available to all (Awre, 2003). Open access can act as a cost-
efficient approach for accessing the quality literature without
paying and it can also bridge the scientific temper of researchers
by fostering the concept of interdisciplinary research. Apart
from enabling to access the qualitative scientific literature, OA
 Open access resources
Zahid Ashraf Wani and Showkat Ahmad Wani
can also be used as an excellent way to publish the scientific
findings to achieve major benefits by the authors in terms of the
increased impact of their publications. If the authors realize that
impact of their works increased because of OA, they will be
willing to use OA publishing routes. Harnad et al. (2004)
contemplate that open access articles have higher citation
impact because of their more visibility as compared to toll-
access articles which are less visible due subscription barriers.
Similarly, Gargouri et al. (2010) advocates that:
[. . .] articles whose authors have supplemented subscription-based access to
the publisher’s version by self-archiving their own final draft to make it
accessible free for all on the web (Open Access) are cited significantly more
than articles in the same journal and year that have not been made OA.
It is found that OA citation advantages are greater than
disadvantages; physics and astronomy have the highest increase
in citations by opting OA routes, followed by mathematics and
Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND (AUS) At 09:35 20 October 2018 (PT)
biology (Swan, 2010). In the literature, there are two
arguments of OA advocacy that could convince researchers to
use OA: first, OA decreases the costs of the scientific publishing
system in general, and second, OA increases the research
impact of an individual author (Swan, 2010; Bernius and
Hanauske, 2009; Bernius, 2010). Similarly, comparing OA
articles with non-open access articles in the same journal or in
the same year, it is observed that OA articles have gained more
citations due to free access and more visibility than non-OA
articles (Hajjem et al., 2006; Xia et al., 2011 as quoted by
Koler-Povh et al., 2014).
Antelman (2004) founded that the articles which adopted
OA at different stages in the disciplines of philosophy, political
science, electrical and electronic engineering and mathematics
have a major impact; this indicates that scholars who adopted
OA practices are rewarded for it. Apart from scientific articles,
OA had a significant impact on journals as well. It has been
founded that:
An increasing number of journals covered in the ISI citation databases are
adopting an OA distribution model. In addition, we continue to evaluate
and select new OA journals. Although the largest number of OA journals is
in Medicine and Life Sciences, OA journals in Physics, Engineering &
Mathematics are more frequent among the highest ranking journals in their
categories (McVeigh, 2004).
The results and findings revealed that OA journals are
resembling the same scientific impact and quality as toll-access
journals (Björk and Solomon, 2012). The OA has influenced
all facets of scholarly communication, whether it is article,
journal, repository, directory, publishing or utilization of
scientific knowledge. Open access repositories have also grown
significantly to disseminate the scholarly findings, presently
there were more than 2,600 repositories registered in Directory
of Open Access Repositories (Open DOAR, 2018). In the same
manner, currently, there are more than 11,105 OA journals
published in all subjects (DOAJ, 2018). The concept of OA has
also changed the information dissemination pattern of
institutions by constraining them to create e-print archives. An:
[. . .] e-print archive is simply an online repository of these materials.
Typically, an e-print archive is normally made freely available on the web
with the aim of ensuring the widest possible dissemination of its contents
(Pinfield et al., 2002).
Mostly, e-print archives disseminate the knowledge through
ETDs. Since 1987, the electronic theses/dissertations
movement gained a good impetus and ETD became much
popular in the USA, Canada and through entire Europe. The
Collection and Curation
original research findings can be brought to light by putting on
the Web and providing free and OA to all. ETDs are the best
channels for this purpose (Fineman,2003). Similarly, an
important source of research is ETDs, as it helps the
researchers to avoid the duplication of resources by exploring
the past literature which is easy to locate, deliver and access via
World Wide Web (Sivakumaren, 2015; Vijayakumar and
Murthy, 2001). Moreover, Moxley (2001) asserts:
While in the past a university’s quality was linked to its library, in the future
a university’s quality will be linked to its digital library of theses and
dissertations, which are easily available over the Internet.
Concluding the literature reviewed on OA it can be safely
deduced that:
OA already has a significant positive impact on the availability of the
scientific journal literature and that there are big differences between
scientific disciplines in the uptake. Due to the lack of awareness of OA-
publishing among scientists in most fields outside physics, the results should
be of general interest to all scholars (Björk et al., 2010).
Thus, there is a vital need to expose the quality OA resources
particularly the OA journals that can help researchers to meet
their research requirements.
Scope
The scope of this study is confined to the top three universities
of the USA, to identify usage percentage of OA journals and
evaluate the core fully OA journals to check their quality, which
is cited by researchers in the field of physics in their selected
ETDs submitted during the year 2014.
Objectives
The main objectives of this study are to:
 measure the OA content cited by ETD’s in the field of
physics;
 identify the core fully OA journals widely used by
researchers in the field of physics in the USA; and
 evaluate the sources cited by the select ETD’s in terms of
various scientometric parameters, namely, the number of
times cited, impact factor, h-index, immediacy index,
impact per publication (IPP) and Scimago Journal Rank
(SJR).
Methodology
Phase I
The present study was keen to check the reliability and usage of
OA resources. An adequate amount of literature was reviewed
on OA resources to get the sufficient knowledge about OA and
methods used by earlier studies. After scrutinizing the existing
literature on OA resources, it reveals that a substantial amount
of literature is published on the significance of OA resources
and its other facets. However, no work has been done on
revealing the scenario of OA resources (journals) usage in
doctoral theses of researchers, from the top research institutes
(MIT, CIT and Stanford) and quality evaluation of OA
journals. We take this initiative to check the usage percentage of
OA resources; their quality and what are the core OA journals
used in the above-said institutions by researchers in the field of
physics, by scrutinizing references of ETD’s submitted during
the year 2014.
 Open access resources
Zahid Ashraf Wani and Showkat Ahmad Wani
Phase II
The study was keen to know the magnitude and quality of OA
resources used in top three universities in the USA, these
institutes were selected by using the Times Higher Education
Website. The questions were inevitable, why we selected only
this site for selecting the top-ranked universities? The reason
includes, The Times Higher Education World University
Ranking Website uses 13 indicators to rank universities around
the world. This ranking aims to provide an overview of an
institution by analyzing thirteen indicators, which are designed
to represent all university activities as widely as possible.
Therefore, the indicators are focused on areas such as research,
teaching, knowledge transfer and internationalization. Two
of the indicators that have considerable weight are based on
surveys of the reputation of teaching and research, completed
by a significant sample of experts in the academic field. (The
Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND (AUS) At 09:35 20 October 2018 (PT)
Times Higher Education World University Rankings, 2017) .
While probing the world university ranking through Times
Higher Education Website, it was found that top three
universities in the USA are MIT, CIT and Stanford.
Phase III
After selecting the top three universities, doctoral theses in the
field of physics were chosen, to measure the OA contents cited
by each ETD. The question arises, why we choose doctoral
theses in physics, why not in another field. The reason is that
physic is one of the first disciplines that adopted, supported OA
publishing and advocates its usage. Therefore, it was quite
logical & rational to choose the field of physics. After choosing
the ETD’s in the field of physics, these ETD’s were scanned in
order to measure OA contents cited. The references of each
selected ETD were extracted and run on the Google Scholar to
reach the source journal in which the referenced article was
published. List of all source journals of referenced articles cited
by each selected ETD was compiled.
Phase IV
After compiling the entire list of source journals of referenced
articles cited in selected ETD’s in the field of physics, each and
every journal was examined by accessing the journal website to
identify which journal is toll-access and which one is open
access. On the basis of judgment, core OA journals were
identified and listed, then aggregate corpus of OA and toll-
access references were calculated.
Phase V
The study was keen to evaluate the quality of OA journals cited
by selected ETD’s; for achieving this objective the study
applied the scientometric parameters, namely, citation count,
impact factor, h-index, IPP and SJR. The study was also
curious to list the top open access journals as per different
scientometric parameters, for this journal citation reporter
(JCR) of Clarivate Analytics and SJR of Scimago was
employed to obtain the performance status of identified fully
OA journal. A rank list of top ten OA journals based on highest
value as per each parameter was compiled.
Collection and Curation
Results and discussion
Aggregate corpus of references
The study was conducted on top three universities of the USA
(MIT, CIT and Stanford). It was found that a total of 36 ETDs
(out of which two ETD’s were available in closed mode) were
deposited in respective repositories of the selected institutions
during the year 2014. Accordingly, ETDs were scanned to
extract references from them; around 5,227 references were
extracted from these selected ETDs. Google Scholar was used
to running these extracted references and pursued up to the
referred article. The antecedents of the ensuring journal were
checked one by one to confirm the nature of access offered by
the journal. The study divulged a small number of referenced
articles (327; 6.25 per cent) extracted from select ETDs are
related to fully open access journals (Table I).
Top ten open access journals on the basis of no of times
cited
The citation analysis is the process whereby the impact or
“quality” of an article is assessed by counting the number of
times an article is cited by other works to measure the impact of
a publication or author. Thus, it is quite profitable to make its
application for evaluating the quality OA journals. The top ten
OA journals, cited by researchers in the field of physics were
identified, most popular among them as per citation count are:
Journal of High Energy Physics (158), followed by Physics Letters
B (50), Nature Communications (22), Optics Express (13) and
New Journal of Physics (13). These OA journals can be
considered as top qualitative journals. Besides, the journals
PLOS Computational Biology (13), Living Reviews in Relativity
(11), Molecular Systems Biology (9), Journal of Physics:
Conference Series (6) and Physical Review X (4) can also be
considered as qualitative journals because they were also used
frequently by researchers (Table II).
Top ten OA journals on the basis of impact factor
Impact factor measures the average number of citations to
recent articles published in the journal. The impact factor of a
Table I Percentage of references OA and TA
Total references Open access (OA) Closed access (CA)
5227 327 (6.25%) 4900 (93.74%)
Table II Top ten OA journals on the basis of no. of times cited
Rank Name of journal No. of times cited
1 Journal of High Energy Physics 158
2 Physics Letters B 50
3 Nature Communications 22
4 Optics Express 13
5 New Journal of Physics 13
6 PLOS Computational Biology 13
7 Living Reviews in Relativity 11
8 Molecular systems biology 9
9 Journal of Physics: Conference Series 6
10 Physical Review X 4
11 Other fully Open Access 28
 Open access resources Collection and Curation
Zahid Ashraf Wani and Showkat Ahmad Wani

journal is calculated by dividing the number of current year Table IV Top ten fully OA journals on the basis of h-index
citations to the source items published in that journal during
Rank Name of journal h-index
the previous two years. IF: is a measure specific to a particular
period. It is the most widely used scientometric indicator. It 1 Physics Letters B 216
aims to allow direct comparison of sources in a specific 2 Optics Express 194
subject field. As the impact factor is the most popular 3 PLOS Biology 185
scientometric parameter used since its inception, the study 4 PLOS ONE 181
was keen to know the credibility of cited OA journals, on the 5 PLoS Genetics 166
6 Journal of High Energy Physics 153
basis of impact factor. It was found that OA journals also have
7 BMC Bioinformatics 144
decent impact factor. The study selected top ten OA journals,
8 BMC Genomics 123
as per impact factor the topmost among them are Living
9 Nature Communications 114
Reviews in Relativity (19.25), followed by Nature
10 PLOS Computational Biology 112
Communications (11.47), Molecular systems biology (10.872),
Journal of Statistical Software (9.91) and PLOS Biology
(9.343). Not only the above OA journals have highest impact Top ten OA journals on the basis of immediacy index
Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND (AUS) At 09:35 20 October 2018 (PT)

factor which shows how qualitative they were, but the
following are also some other OA journals with decent impact
factor. These are Physical Review X (8.701), Cell Reports
(8.36), PLoS Genetics (7.17), Journal of High Energy Physics
(6.023) and Scientific Reports (5.228) (Table III).
Top ten OA journals on the basis of h-index
The h-index is another important scientometric parameter used
to measure the productivity and impact of a journal. This index
is based on the set of the scientist’s most cited papers and the
number of citations that they have received in other
publications. It aims to allow direct comparison of sources in a
specific subject field. H-index can be applied to check the
productivity and impact of a group of scientists, such as a
department or university or country, as well as a scholarly
journal. It has numerous features which make us desirous to
use this indicator to evaluate the credibility and quality of OA
journals. The list of top ten OA journals was generated on the
basis of highest h-index among all OA journals identified, these
highly influential OA journals include: Physics Letters B (216),
followed by Optics Express (194), PLOS Biology (185), PLOS
ONE (181) and PLoS Genetics (166). The h-Index of the above
OA journals is quite impressive in any scientific field. In
addition, there were certain other OA journals which too
possess an impact creating h-index; and these include Journal of
High Energy Physics (153), BMC Bioinformatics (144), BMC
Genomics (123), Nature Communications (114) and PLOS
Computational Biology (112) (Table IV).
The immediacy-index is the average number of times an
article is cited in the year it is published. For comparing
journals specializing in cutting-edge research, the
immediacy index can provide a useful perspective. It is
believed that journals which have highest immediacy index
can be considered as qualitative journals. The study reveals
that researchers use OA journals and top OA journals cited,
as per immediacy index, are Living Reviews in Relativity
(11.71) followed by, Physical Review X (3.146) and Journal
of High Energy Physics (2.35), Physics Letters B (2.1) and
PLOS Biology (1.87). Besides, the OA journals like Nature
Communications (1.71), Molecular systems biology (1.44),
PLoS Genetics (1.37) , Cell Reports (1.31) and Solar Physics
(1.19) have also reasonable Immediacy index (Table V).
Top ten OA journals on the basis of impact per
publication
The IPP measures the ratio of citations per article published and
serves as an additional metric for comparing and evaluating
journals to help confidently know where to publish. The IPP
equals the ratio of citations in a year to scholarly articles published
in the three previous years divided by the number of scholarly
articles published in those same years. It is not normalized for the
subject area and provides a basic indication of the average number
of citations an article published in the journal will likely receive.
The study used this parameter to reveal the quality scenario of
identified OA access journals. The list of top ten OA journals was
compiled as per highest IPP, most prominent among them are,
Molecular systems biology (11.881), followed by Nature

Table III Top ten OA journals on the basis of impact factor Table V Top ten OA journals on the basis of immediacy index
Rank Name of journal Impact factor Rank Name of journal Immediacy-index
1 Living Reviews in Relativity 19.25 1 Living Reviews in Relativity 11.71
2 Nature Communications 11.47 2 Physical Review X 3.146
3 Molecular systems biology 10.872 3 Journal of High Energy Physics 2.35
4 Journal of Statistical Software 9.91 4 Physics Letters B 2.1
5 PLOS Biology 9.343 5 PLOS Biology 1.87
6 Physical Review X 8.701 6 Nature Communications 1.71
7 Cell Reports 8.36 7 Molecular systems biology 1.44
8 PLoS Genetics 7.17 8 PLoS Genetics 1.37
9 Journal of High Energy Physics 6.023 9 Cell Reports 1.31
10 Scientific Reports 5.228 10 Solar Physics 3 TIMES 1.19
 Open access resources
Zahid Ashraf Wani and Showkat Ahmad Wani
Communications (10.166), PLOS Biology (7.96), Physical Review X
(7.658) and Cell Reports (7.354). There are certain other OA
journals, which too have a decent IPP; these include Living Reviews
in Relativity (7.179), Journal of Statistical Software (5.836), Physics
Letters B (4.505), PLOS Computational Biology (4.429) and
Scientific Reports (4.364) (Table VI).
Top ten OA journals on the basis of SJR
The SC Imago Journal Rank (SJR) is a prestige metric based on
the idea that “all citations are not created equal” with SJR, the
subject field, quality and reputation of the journal has a direct
effect on the value of a citation. It aims to allow direct comparison
of sources in different subject fields. Unique point of SJR is:
weighted by the prestige of the journal, thereby “levelling the
playing field” among journals, eliminates manipulation: the SJR
ranking is raised by being published in more reputable journals; a
Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND (AUS) At 09:35 20 October 2018 (PT)
journal’s prestige is “divided” equally among the total number of
citations in that journal, and normalizes for differences in citation
behavior between subject fields.
The Study depicts that in the USA researchers concerned with
physics field are appreciating and citing OA journals. Top ten OA
journals were identified based on SJR, among which the most
qualitative with highest SJR include Molecular systems biology
(8.87), Cell Reports (8.59), Physical Review X (6.944) Nature
Communications (6.54) and Living Reviews in Relativity (6.21). In
addition to above named OA journals, the following OA journals
can also be considered qualitative as they too possess a decent SJR
factor, these include PLOS Biology (5.29), PLoS Genetics (5.18) ,
PLOS Computational Biology (3.41), Physics Letters B (3.186) and
Journal of Statistical Software (2.97) (Table VII).
Conclusion
The findings of this study revealed that a total 6.25 per cent
fully OA resources were used by the researchers of MIT, CIT
and Stanford universities in the field of physics. It augurs well
for the OA movement, that QA resources are used and valued
by researchers in the USA. As we know that the USA is a
developed country, the researchers there are sufficiently able to
access subscription-based resources, but they also make use of
an adequate amount of OA resources, indicates that OA
resources are trustworthy and should be used by the researchers
from other parts of the world too, especially who face financial
insecurity. The study was in the quest to reveal the truth behind
the quality of these OA resources which were cited by the
Table VI Top ten fully OA journals on the basis of IPP
Rank Journal name IPP
1 Molecular systems biology 11.881
2 Nature Communications 10.166
3 PLOS Biology 7.96
4 Physical Review X 7.658
5 Cell Reports 7.354
6 Living Reviews in Relativity 7.179
7 Journal of Statistical Software 5.836
8 Physics Letters B 4.505
9 PLOS Computational Biology 4.429
10 Scientific Reports 4.364
Collection and Curation
Table VII Top ten OA journals on the basis of SJR
Rank Journals SJR
1 Molecular systems biology 8.87
2 Cell Reports 8.59
3 Physical Review X 6.944
4 Nature Communications 6.54
5 Living Reviews in Relativity 6.21
6 PLOS Biology 5.29
7 PLoS Genetics 5.18
8 PLOS Computational Biology 3.41
9 Physics Letters B 3.186
10 Journal of Statistical Software 2.97
researchers of the USA in the physic field. It applied the
scientometric parameter for that purpose, and it was found that
the quality of cited OA journals was very impressive and should
not be neglected for this reason. The study also succeeded in
listing the core OA journals as per scientometrics parameters
applied, which can be used as readily available sources to access
the scientific literature. However, there is need to identify the
similar resources in another field other than physics, in other
parts and institutions across the world. The study suggests that
the researchers, libraries, information centers and research and
development agencies should be more aware of OA resources
available and should encourage both OA publishing and usage,
by whatever means necessary.
References
Awre, C. (2003), “Open access and the impact on publishing and
purchasing”, Serials, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 205-208, available at:
www.researchgate.net/profile/Chris _ Awre/publication/
276594507_Open_access_and_the_impact_on_publishing_
and_purchasing/links/5603709d08ae460e2704de31.pdf
Antelman, K. (2004), “Do open-access articles have a greater
research impact?”, College & Research Libraries, Vol. 65
No. 5, pp. 372-382, available at: http://crl.acrl.org/index.
php/crl/article/download/15683/17129
Bernius, S. (2010), “The impact of open access on the
management of scientific knowledge”, Online Information
Review, Vol. 34 No. 4, pp. 583-603, available at: www.
emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/14684521011072990
Bernius, S. and Hanauske, M. (2009), “Open access to scientific
literature-increasing citations as an incentive for authors to make
their publications freely accessible”, in System Sciences, 2009.
HICSS’09. 42nd HI International Conference on, IEEE,
pp. 1-9, available at: www.is-frankfurt.de/publikationenNeu/
OpenAccesstoScientificLiteratu3032.pdf
Björk, B.C. (2017), “Open access to scientific articles: a review
of benefits and challenges”, Internal and Emergency Medicine,
Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 247-253, available at: https://link.springer.
com/article/10.1007/s11739-017-1603-2
Björk, B.C. and Solomon, D. (2012), “Open access versus
subscription journals: a comparison of scientific impact”, BMC
Medicine, Vol. 10 No. 1, p. 73, available at: https://bmcmedicine.
biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-10-73
 Open access resources
Zahid Ashraf Wani and Showkat Ahmad Wani
Björk, B.C., Welling, P., Laakso, M., Majlender, P., Hedlund,
T. and Guðnason, G. (2010), “Open access to the scientific
journal literature: situation 2009”, PloS One, Vol. 5 No. 6,
p. e11273, available at: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/
article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0011273
DOAJ (2018), Directory of Open Access Journals, available at:
https://doaj.org/
Eysenbach, G. (2006), “Citation advantage of open access
articles”, PLoS Biology, Vol. 4 No. 5, p. e157, available at:
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/
journal.pbio.0040157&imageURI=info:doi/10.1371/
journal.pbio.0040157.t003
Fineman, Y. (2003), “Electronic theses and dissertations”,
Portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 219-227,
available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/42858/pdf
Ghosh, S.B. and Kumar Das, A. (2007), “Open access and
institutional repositories – a developing country perspective: a
Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND (AUS) At 09:35 20 October 2018 (PT)
case study of India”, IFLA Journal, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 229-250,
available at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/
0340035207083304
Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Larivière, V., Gingras, Y., Carr, L.,
Brody, T. and Harnad, S. (2010), “Self-selected or mandated,
open access increases citation impact for higher quality
research”, PloS One, Vol. 5 No. 10, pp. e13636, available at:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.
pone.0013636
Herring, S.D. (2002), “Use of electronic resources in scholarly
electronic journals: a citation analysis”, College & Research
Libraries, Vol. 63 No. 4, pp. 334-340, available at: http://crl.
acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/viewFile/15538/16984
Harnad, S., Brody, T., ValliÃ, –res, F.O., Carr, L., Hitchcock,
S., Gingras, Y. and Hilf, E.R. (2004), “The access/impact
problem and the green and gold roads to open access”,
Serials Review, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 310-314, available at:
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/259940/6/34.html
Hajjem, C., Harnad, S. and Gingras, Y. (2006), “Ten-Year
Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open
Access and How It Increases Research Citation Impact”,
arXiv preprint cs/0606079, available at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/
cs/0606079
Koler-Povh, T., Južnič, P. and Turk, G. (2014), “Impact of
open access on citation of scholarly publications in the
field of civil engineering”, Scientometrics, Vol. 98 No. 2,
pp. 1033-1045, available at: http://drugg. fgg.uni-lj.si/
4264/1/Povh_Juznic_Turk_Scientometrics_2014.pdf
McVeigh, M.E. (2004), Open Access Journals in the ISI
Citation Databases: Analysis of Impact Factors and Citation
Patterns: A Citation Study from Thomson Scientific,
Thomson Scientific, available at: www.academia.edu/
download/39476484/openaccesscitations2.pdf
For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm
Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
Collection and Curation
Moxley, J.M. (2001), “American universities should require
electronic theses and dissertations”, Educause Quarterly,
Vol. 3, p. 61, available at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/
cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1112&context=eng_facpub
Open DOAR (2018), “Directory of open access repositories”,
available at: www.opendoar.org/index.html
Pinfield, S., Gardner, M. and MacColl, J. (2002), “Setting up
an institutional e-print archive”, Ariadne, Vol. 31, available
at: www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue31/eprint-archives/intro.html
Rens, A. and Kahn, R. (Eds) (2009), Access to Knowledge in
South Africa: part of the Access to Knowledge Research Series,
University of Cape Town, available at: www.academia.edu/
download/30876140/A2K-in-SA.pdf
Suber, P. (2007), “Open access overview”, available at: www.
researchgate.net/profile/ Arunachalam_ Subbiah/publication/
48547497_Open_access_to_science_in_the_developing_world/
links/09e415058b88dbf15c000000/Open-access-to-science-in-
the-developing-world.pdf#page=8
Swan, A. (2010), “The open access citation advantage: studies
and results to date”, available at: https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/
268516/2/Citation_advantage_paper.pdf
Sivakumaren, K.S. (2015), “Electronic thesis and dissertations
(ETDs) by Indian universities in shodhganga project: a
study”, Journal of Advances in Library and Information Science,
Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 62-66, available at: http://jalis.in/pdf/4-1/
Sivamit.pdf
Terras, M. (2015), “Opening access to collections: the making
and using of open digitised cultural content”, Online
Information Review, Vol. 39 No. 5, pp. 733-752, available at:
https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-06-2015-0193
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings
(2017), “Top three universities of the USA”, available at:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/
Vijayakumar, J.K. and Murthy, T.A.V. (2001), “Need of a
digital library for Indian theses and dissertations: a model on
par with the ETD initiatives at international level”, available
at: http://eprints.rclis.org/7217/1/vijayakumarjk_06.pdf
Further reading
Koler-Povh, T., Južnič, P. and Turk, G. (2014), “Impact of open
access on citation of scholarly publications in the field of civil
engineering”, Scientometrics, Vol. 98 No. 2, pp. 1033-1045,
available at: www.academia.edu/download/43828143/
Impact_of_open_access_on_citation_of_sch20160317-17331-
yqcbgs.pdf
Corresponding author
Zahid Ashraf Wani can be contacted at: zahidrais@gmail.
com