Impact of Open Access on Journal Indices of Geology Journals

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to analyze the open access status of geology journals and the impact of open access status on journal indices. This paper intends to measure journal indices for open access journals in geology, and compare them with the indices of non-open access journals in geology. The question of whether publishing in the open access mode is beneficial to authors is examined. The data was collected from Scopus Source List on 10thFebruary 2022. Geology journals were filtered from this. Open Access journals covered by Scopus are recognized as Open Access if the journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and/or the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD). For each journal, we extracted different scientometric indicators and then compared these scientometric indicators with respect to the journals’ status as Open Access or Non-Open Access. Upon analyzing the difference between 50 OA and 184 non-OA journals with sufficient metric values in Scopus Source List, no significant differences were found between Geology OA and non-OA journals in the indices like citescore, citation count, scholarly output, percent cited, SNIP, SJR and percentile. Publishing in Open Access and non-Open Access journals in Geology will yield citations.