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Purpose – This study aims to analyze the resources used in the citations of 156 postgraduate dissertations submitted to the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) through the Acharya & BM Reddy College of Pharmacy (ABMRCP), and prepares the core journal list according to the Bradford’s law of scattering. For any research and academic institutional libraries, books and journals are considered as key resources. As the resources are more and diverse, collection building is a tough task for librarians. Citation analysis is one of the best methods to list the most used resources by the users. The paper highlights the extent use of in-house resources and open access journals in the citations. Design/methodology/approach – Citations of PG dissertations during 2010-2013 (four years) were compiled, the data about the resources cited in each were taken and the list of resources used in PG dissertations was prepared. The list of core journals obtained by citation analysis was matched with the list of online journals provided by Health Science Library & Information Network (HELINET) of RGUHS as well as print list of journals subscribed by ABMRCP Library, and evaluated the print and online consortia journals used by ABMRCP community. The list of core journals’ ranking in the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) list-pharmaceutical sciences was identified to know the impact of the journals. Findings – The study gives the list of different information resources cited in the pharmacy dissertations. The core list obtained by applying the Bradford’s law of scattering in this study has 19 journals pertaining to pharmacy. After matching the core list with the Keogh’s list, it is found that 31 journals can be considered very useful in the field of pharmacy. Twelve journals listed in the core list have different positions in the SJR ranking 2013. The results indicate that open-access journals with online journals subscribed through HELINET and print holdings have been cited more in the PG dissertations. Originality/value – The topic of journal use in this case may be of greatest interest to those who purchase journals in the sciences and, very specifically, the pharmaceutical sciences.

Purpose -The aim of this paper is to assess and catalogue the magnitude of URL attrition in a high-impact, open access (OA) general medical journal. Design/methodology/approach -All Public Library of Science Medicine (PLoS Medicine) articles for 2005-2007 were evaluated and the following items were assessed: number of entries per issue; type of article; number of references per entry; number of references that contained URLs; and the access date listed for each URL citation. URLs were then evaluated for accessibility status (i.e. active or defunct). Findings -In total, 1,133 articles were published from 2005-2007 in PLoS Medicine. The 1,133 articles contained 28,177 references, with 2,503 (8.9 per cent) identified as URLs. Non-research articles accounted for a substantially higher percentage of URL references (17.4 per cent) compared to research articles (4.2 per cent). Almost 17 per cent of the URL references were defunct and the rate of URL attrition increased as time elapsed.

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Purpose – This paper aims to analyse the impact of open-access (OA) journals in engineering and technology institutions, if libraries are not subscribed to the journals through the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) mandatory packages. In India, many engineering colleges do not subscribe to journals through business subscription models or consortia and invariably a majority of them depend on OA journals to fulfil their users’ needs. Design/methodology/approach – The paper identifies the impact factors of mandatory journals made in big-deal subscriptions with the impact factors of OA journals available to access in Directory of OA Journals pertaining to engineering and technology. Findings – The study reveals that journals subscribed through big-deal subscriptions have better impact in the scholarly communications than the OA journals. Research limitations/implications – The results of this study cannot be generalized to all disciplines. Impact factors of journals can also be calculated by use of SCImago Journal Rank indicator, which uses the Scopus database. Publish or Perish can also be used to analyse Google Scholar rankings to identify the individual journal’s impact. Originality/value – The result of the study is useful for selection of e-journals in big-deal subscriptions and it highlights the implications and impact of OA journals in engineering and technology.