Open Access Journals and their Research Impact

Open access emerged as a bridge between the haves and have not’s of the access and as the solution to inaccessible information. With the predominant emergence of the Internet the OA flourished and overcome the information access divide. In the present research not only OA publishing was studied but also the research impact will be comparatively measured in comparison to the subscription access. The present problem is chosen for the study keeping in view the vital development in the number of journals and the openly accessible research output and in order to verify that open access increases the research impact which is shown in some of the recent studies. All the open-access journals from Elsevier’s Science Direct database were chosen to compare the research impact of the journals before and after they were made open access. Analytical Research Method was applied to evaluate and compare the research impact of the open access journals. Statistical tools will be used for testing the hypothesis. This book is framed into 5 chapters.