Comparison of the impact factors of subscription access and open access orthopedics and sports medicine journals in the SCImago database.

Objectives: This study aims to compare the annual impact factors (IFs) for the period 1999-2017 and the tri-annual IFs in 2011, 2014 and 2017 of the subscription access (SA) and open access (OA) journals published in the field of orthopedics, traumatology and sports medicine according to the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR).

Material and methods: All data for this study were obtained from the SCImago Journal & Country Rank database. We compared the change in the mean annual IFs of 197 SA journals with 52 OA journals in the field of orthopedics and sports medicine for the period between 1999 and 2017. In addition, we determined and compared the changes in the mean tri-annual IFs of these journals in 2011, 2014 and 2017. The mean publication fee values of the OA journals as well as the correlation between the three-year IFs of the year 2017 and the publication fee values were evaluated.

Results: From 1999 to 2017, the mean IF of SA journals increased 0.47-fold to 0.69, while the mean IF of the OA journals increased 0.85-fold to 0.63. Significant positive correlation was observed between the tri-annual IF and publication fee of OA journals in 2017 (r=0.458, p=0.001).

Conclusion: We can predict that the mean IFs of OA journals in the field of orthopedics and sports medicine will reach the mean IFs of SA journals after several years. Choosing OA journals becomes advantageous when the desire for a higher number of citations is the most important factor.