A Quantitative Analysis of the Open Access Business and Economics Journals

Abstract

The main purpose of the paper is to study the publishing trends of the open access business and economics journals available in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The online survey was conducted for collection of data and quantitative method was applied for data analysis. The data were collected from the December 10-20, 2013 about more than six hundred business and economic journals and later presented in tabular forms to reveal the findings in accordance with desired objectives. The findings show that 607 business and economics journals are listed in the DOAJ and are published from the 67 countries of the world. The maximum number of journals (88, 14.50%) is published from Brazil, and during the first decade (2001-2010) of the 21st century (382, 62.93%). The linguistic assessment shows that the open access business and economics journals are mostly monolingual (405, 66.72%) and the majority of these are published in English language (498, 82.04%). The results also reveal that the majority of the business and economics journals (415, 68.37%) doesn’t charge publication fees to authors whereas almost one-fourth (147, 24.22%) of the journals demand article processing charges. The study does not explore the whole World Wide Web, but only the DOAJ and therefore, figures do not represent the actual number of the open access business and economics journals available online. The study is very beneficial for the business and economics scientists, academicians, researchers, information experts and open access advocates across the globe.