Open Access in China: A Study of Social Science Journals

Abstract

To learn about the current situation of open access (OA) in Chinese social science journals, 714 journals listed in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) in 2012 to 2013 were chosen to investigate, and search engines were used to analyze the OA status of these journals and their articles. The results showed that 13.73 per cent of journals in the CSSCI are OA, their OA format is mostly PDF, and 84.69 per cent of their OA resources are gathered from the publishing years 2004 to 2012. The level of OA journals focusing on different subjects is unbalanced in China. Articles from each journal published in 2007 were selected according to different standards to study the relationship of OA and citation. The results showed that the OA level of highly cited articles is higher than that of low- and non-cited articles. Factors that may restrict OA development in China were analyzed.

Chinese researchers, scholarly communication behaviour and trust

“…There has been one study, Guo et al . (), on the progress towards open access among social sciences journals published in China. None of the journals in the sample had eliminated print, and the authors write with some disappointment: ‘Electronic publishing is used as a complement to existing paper digitization.…”

Open Access with Chinese Characteristics: Understanding Recent History and Current Practice via Qualitative Interviews at a Large Chinese Research University

“…Instead, OA journals in China face challenges unique to the Chinese academic environment, perhaps the most important of which is a lack of widespread investment in technical infrastructure for journals themselves, particularly in the social sciences. An investigation of OA journals in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI), an index of the country's most prestigious social science publications, found that only half of the 714 journals included in the index had their own websites, and fewer than 14% of the journals could be considered OA in the most generous sense (Guo et al, 2014). Although there has been investment in the creation of institutional repositories, these platforms often provide access to legacy literature rather than newly published scholarship or preprints (Zhong & Jiang, 2016).…”

Going Open Access: The Attitudes and Actions of Scientific Journal Editors in China

“…Furthermore, the OA status of these journals is not stable, with some OAJs later becoming non-OA. Most of China's OAJs are published independently and are not part of a larger aggregation [16,17]. Although the gap between China and the US in terms of total papers and OA papers has been narrowing, the US still has a greater influence on the academic and societal aspects of OA publishing, and the coverage rates for Chinese OA papers are lower than those for American OA papers in most indexes [18][19][20].…”