Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
3-18-2021
Abstract
This study is based on metadata extracted from the well known and authoritative global Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a database of fully open access peer-reviewed scholarly journals managed by Infrastructure Services for Open Access (IS4OA), United Kingdom. Disciplines chosen for the quantitative study belong to Science as categorised in DOAJ were analysed using different criteria like language, Creative Commons (CC) licence, publisher country, etc.,. Findings of the study reveal that there are 104 Zoology Journals, 218 Chemistry Journals, 111 Botany Journals, 139 Geology Journals, 242 Physics Journals, 85 Microbiology Journals, 38 Astronomy Journals, 52 Physiology Journals, 11 Anatomy Journals and 544 Mathematics Journals indexed in DOAJ published from 82 countries in 32 languages. English emerged as the dominant language of publication with 1355 Journals publishing primarily in this language. On the basis of the total journals published in DOAJ of select Journals of Science United Kingdom is ranked 1st with 248 Journals followed by Indonesia (164). The study revealed that 21 Indian Science Journals meet the DOAJ inclusion criteria for indexing. Maximum number of Journals used CC-BY licencing i.e., 830. The study has also found that 2020 can be marked as the most significant year as the highest number of (220) Journals have been added in DOAJ. Most of the Journals do not charge Article Processing Charge (APC) and most of the Journals do not fulfil the guidelines for DOAJ Seal. The paper also highlights the peer review process adopted by the DOAJ Science journals.