Open Access publishing in Medicine: lights and shadows.

Abstract

The widespread use of internet has had enormous consequences in changing the way of accessing to scientific literature in all domains of knowledge and, in particular, in medicine. One of the most important related factors is the idea of making research output freely available: the so-called Open Access (OA) option. OA is considered very important in spreading of knowledge, breaking down barriers in benefit of research, and increasing the impact of research outputs within the scientific community. Here, we carried out a comparison between Non-Open Access (NOA) and OA medical Journals in terms of growing rate, geographical distribution, and the impact on scientific community. We collected the bibliometric data on the scientific Journals indexed in Scopus starting from 2001 to 2016 published either as NOA or OA. Then, we analysed the number of Journals, their geolocalization, their impact on the scientific community, and the parameters as SJR, H index, and cites for document (2 years). As a result, we found that while the number of NOA Journals is virtually stable, that of OA is dramatically increasing, with a growing rate higher than 400% in 2016. Then, the majority of OA Journals are published in developing Countries (Brazil, India, South Africa, South Korea, New Zealand, Serbia, and Poland) and their impact within researchers is lower compared to the NOA Journals. In conclusion, our data provide an updated and unprecedented picture of OA adoption in medical field, with its lights and shadows. Article HighlightsO_LIWe are seeing in medicine a huge increase in the number of Journals that use OA; C_LIO_LIThis trend is mainly due to the increase in publishing Journals in Countries with emergent economies; C_LIO_LIThe use of OA for Journals in the medical field, did not guarantee a vantage in term of bibliometric parameters. C_LI MCS92C99 JELI30