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The effect of collaboration with large publishers on the internationality and influence of open access journals for research institutions

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Abstract

Many academic societies and universities entrust the publication of their open access journals to large publishers, and this collaboration strengthens the presence of these publishers in the open access journal market. This study empirically examines the effect of collaborating with large publishers on the internationality and influence of research institutions’ journals. The study compiles 60 Scopus-indexed open access journals and finds their citation frequency through the SCImago journal rank and source normalized impact per publication. Furthermore, it uses the country distribution of authors and citations to determine the journals’ internationality. The results revealed that most journals increased the number of articles written by overseas researchers and their citation scores, which indicates that collaborating with large publishers is an effective method for enhancing the internationality and influence of institutions’ official journals in non-English-speaking countries in particular. However, in addition to publishing journals on publishers’ websites, research institutions’ efforts toward internationality, such as appointing overseas researchers as editors, are essential to accomplish the desired outcome.

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Notes

  1. While Universities UK (2015) reported that 212 out of 279 academic societies (76%) outsourced journal publication to publishers, Wise and Estelle (2020) stated that 72% of academic societies outsourced publications to publishers based on the sample studied.

  2. The issue should be discussed using the number of articles submitted by authors, and not the number of articles published. However, the information regarding the number of articles submitted by the authors or the acceptance rate is not provided by most sampled journals.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant number 15K03470. The author would like to thank the referee for the insightful suggestions and Editage (www.editage.com) for English language editing.

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  1. School of Political Science and Economics, Meiji University, 1-1, Kanda-Surugadai Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 101-8301, Japan

    Sumiko Asai

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  1. Sumiko Asai
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Correspondence to Sumiko Asai.

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Asai, S. The effect of collaboration with large publishers on the internationality and influence of open access journals for research institutions. Scientometrics 124, 663–677 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03426-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03426-4

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