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This paper highlights the quantitative performance of scholarly LIS research in Asian countries based on articles published during 2001-2007 in journals indexed by the Social Science Citation Index of Web of Knowledge. The quantitative performance of Asian countries has been judged and compared on the basis of various quantitative indicators: (a) size of scientific activity measured by volume of production in various types of publications during the period of study, (b) authorship pattern and collaboration of scientific activity measured by co-authorship and the amount of national and international collaboration, (c) the pattern of citations measured by counting the cited and citing references of published articles, and (d) a newly developed metrics-research performance. The results show that during the last seven years, the publication rate has increased twofold and, among the Asian countries, the authors of the People's Republic of China contributed the greatest number of articles, followed by Taiwan and South Korea. There is also an increasing trend toward collaborative research among Asian authors, with most of the collaboration occurring either among authors from the same country or with authors of non-Asian origin. The research performance analysis indicates that articles written by authors from South Korea received the highest number of citations, followed by Taiwan. Although the quantity of articles published by authors of Taiwan and South Korea is higher than Singapore and Israel, the articles contributed by authors from these latter two blocks appear in higher-impact journals. These findings show the increasing contribution made by Asian scholars to the international LIS literature, and the quality of that research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative scientific journals play a vital role in scholarly communication processes. However, during the last few years, there is a mushroom growth of journals in every discipline in India. There has been no single source of systematic advice on how to measure the scientific value of Indian journals. The present study is an attempt to minimize the gap by developing a mechanism for measuring scientific value of Indian journals. Consulting various international databases and their journal inclusion policy, a viable mechanism has been devised and tested with 100+ Indian journals in the fields of physics, chemistry and biology. The results indicate that although the quantity of yearly additions of new journals in each of the three disciplines is quite impressive, the yearly discontinuation is also alarming. Almost 29% of physics journals, 11% of chemistry journals and 21% of biology journals were stopped within a year. Although irregularity in publication, improper execution of review process, non-disclosure of article processing charges, lower percentage of foreign contributors and low citation rate were identified as some drawbacks with Indian physics, chemistry and biology journals. The percentage of predatory journals in these three disciplines is quite less till date. In order to choose a better platform of scholarly publishing, this study suggests some recommendations for prospective authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses a study aimed at evaluating the use of open access publishing by researchers and scholars in science and technology fields in India. Topics include the difficulties faced by researchers in India concerning the visibility and circulation of their published materials, the importance of the open access movement in science and technology fields due to the serial subscriptions crisis facing libraries throughout the world, and the importance of improved information and communication technology (ICT) facilities in supporting the open access publishing movement.

The article discusses the status of institutional repositories (IRs) in Asia, with information on the effect of information communication technologies (ICT) on academic publishing. Topics include the efforts to launch an Open Access (OA) model that utilizes the Internet to broaden access to information resources and publications, the definition of IRs as a platform through which the research output of a specific university or research organization is available, and the growth and distribution of IRs throughout Asian countries based upon survey results.

The article presents a study that determines the importance of scholarly communications (SCs) in literature. It provides an overview of the definition and different means of SC, which describes the processed involved in a research and how they were communicated and evaluated among peers. It also mentions the significant transformation of SCs from print to electronic journals, as well as the evolution of their publications.

Using 17 fully open-access journals published uninterruptedly during 2000 to 2004 in the field of library and information science, the present study investigates the impact of these open-access journals in terms of quantity of articles published, subject distribution of the articles, synchronous and diachronous impact factor, immediacy index, and journals' and authors' self-citation. The results indicate that during this 5-year publication period, there are as many as 1,636 articles published by these journals. At the same time, the articles have received a total of 8,591 Web citations during a 7-year citation period. Eight of 17 journals have received more than 100 citations. First Monday received the highest number of citations; however, the average number of citations per article was the highest in D-Lib Magazine. The value of the synchronous impact factor varies from 0.6989 to 1.0014 during 2002 to 2005, and the diachronous impact factor varies from 1.472 to 2.487 during 2000 to 2004. The range of the immediacy index varies between 0.0714 and 1.395. D-Lib Magazine has an immediacy index value above 0.5 in all the years whereas the immediacy index value varies from year to year for the other journals. When the citations of sample articles were analyzed according to source, it was found that 40.32% of the citations came from full-text articles, followed by 33.35% from journal articles. The percentage of journals' self-citation was only 6.04%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly communication through Open Access (OA) journals has become a global phenomenon. This article reports on a study that measures the value of OA journals based on citation counts (ISI's Journal Impact Factor). It compares three highly ranked commercial electronic journals to five OA electronic journals. The non-OA journals are MIS Quarterly, Journal of American Medication Informatics Association, and Annual Review of Information Science and Technology; the five OA journals are Ariadne, D-Lib Magazine, First Monday, Information Research, and Information Technology and Disabilities. The criteria are established by ten major databases: Thompson's ISI, American Psychological Association's PsycInfo, Latin American and Canadian Health Science's LILCS, National Medical Library's MEDLINE, Scientific Electronic Library's SciELO, The IOWA Guide, CSA's LISA, EBSCO's LISTA, H.W. Wilson's Library Literature and Information Science, and R.R. Bowker's Ulrich International Periodical Directory. These basic criteria are categorized under 11 broad issues: availability, authority and review policy, scope and coverage, exhaustiveness of articles, page format, availability of hyperlinks, currency, updating policy, search facility, and other miscellaneous issues. Ten years' growth of Library and Information Science (LIS) OA journals has been measured by counting articles manually. During the last ten years the highest number of articles was published by First Monday, followed by D-Lib Magazine and Ariadne; the average number of articles per issue reported in Ariadne ranks first. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]