Research Articles about Open Access Indexed by Scopus: A Content Analysis

Abstract

This study analyzes research articles about open access (OA) indexed by the Scopus database, published from 2001 to 2015, in order to: (a) propose a categorization scheme about OA; (b) categorize the scientific production about OA; and (c) identify research trends on OA through disciplines at international level over time. The authors used descriptive statistical methods and deductive content analysis using an unconstrained matrix in 347 selected research articles. The most explored themes were found to be "overview, current state, and growth of OA" counting for 98 articles (28.2%), and "awareness, perceptions, and attitudes toward OA" for 75 articles (21.6%). As a conclusion, this study reveals a continuous and growing research interest by the OA community in studies focused on case studies regarding the development or evolution of OA in relation to certain groups, institutions, regions, periods, and how different actors perceive and address the OA movement.

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“…Consistent with acknowledged qualitative procedures, the process involved: the researcher as the key instrument for conducting the research; multiple sources of data obtained from peer-reviewed journals and specialist reports; and a theoretical lens that seeks to identify the social and political context of the issues studied and that represents a holistic account to better reflect the complex picture of the study elements (Cresswell, 2009). A thematic analysis of the literature was undertaken to identify patterns across the research data and identify the critical issues through a process of data familiarization, coding, and theme development (Braun & Clarke, 2006;Rodrigues et al, 2016). The results provided a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the publishing industry, its challenges, and the impacts, implications, and trends likely to be experienced by multiple stakeholders such as authors and academic researchers -including those based in developing countries, readers, university librarians, traditional publishers, scholarly societies, open access journals, academic social networks, and mobile technology users.…”

“…Burchardt, 2014;Clobridge, 2014a;Eger et al, 2015;Fecher & Wagner, 2016;Harington, 2017;Jubb et al, 2015;Rodrigues et al, 2016;Solomon, 2013;Wellen, 2013) and can be classified as follows:…”

Renewable Energy in Urban Areas: Worldwide Research Trends

“…Nevertheless, if the scope of WoS and Scopus journals is taken as an indicator, a comparative study shows that Scopus has a greater coverage of active academic journals (20,346 journals) compared to WoS (13,605 journals) [42], being the correspondences between the data obtained with both databases in relation to the quantity of documents and citations by country and range extremely high (R 2 ≈ 0.99) [43]. The advantages of Scopus database are highlighted in diverse papers and, consequently, is frequently employed for many bibliometric analyses [44,45].…”

Worldwide Scientific Production Indexed by Scopus on Labour Relations

“…However, related to the journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus, a comparative analysis shows that the coverage of active scholarly journals in WoS (13,605 journals) is lower than Scopus (20,346 journals) [39], and the correlations between the measures obtained with both databases for the number of papers and the number of citations received by countries, as well as for their ranks, are extremely high (R2 ≈ 0.99) [40]. The advantages of Scopus are shown in several research papers and therefore also used for numerous bibliometric analysis [41][42][43].…”