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Evidence of open access of scientific publications in Google Scholar: A large-scale analysis

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  • Martín-Martín, Alberto
  • Costas, Rodrigo
  • van Leeuwen, Thed
  • Delgado López-Cózar, Emilio

Abstract

This article uses Google Scholar (GS) as a source of data to analyse Open Access (OA) levels across all countries and fields of research. All articles and reviews with a DOI and published in 2009 or 2014 and covered by the three main citation indexes in the Web of Science (2,269,022 documents) were selected for study. The links to freely available versions of these documents displayed in GS were collected. To differentiate between more reliable (sustainable and legal) forms of access and less reliable ones, the data extracted from GS was combined with information available in DOAJ, CrossRef, OpenDOAR, and ROAR. This allowed us to distinguish the percentage of documents in our sample that are made OA by the publisher (23.1%, including Gold, Hybrid, Delayed, and Bronze OA) from those available as Green OA (17.6%), and those available from other sources (40.6%, mainly due to ResearchGate). The data shows an overall free availability of 54.6%, with important differences at the country and subject category levels. The data extracted from GS yielded very similar results to those found by other studies that analysed similar samples of documents, but employed different methods to find evidence of OA, thus suggesting a relative consistency among methods.

Suggested Citation

  • Martín-Martín, Alberto & Costas, Rodrigo & van Leeuwen, Thed & Delgado López-Cózar, Emilio, 2018. "Evidence of open access of scientific publications in Google Scholar: A large-scale analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 819-841.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:12:y:2018:i:3:p:819-841
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2018.06.012
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Vivek Kumar Singh & Rajesh Piryani & Satya Swarup Srichandan, 2020. "The case of significant variations in gold–green and black open access: evidence from Indian research output," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 515-531, July.
    3. Niels Taubert & Anne Hobert & Najko Jahn & Andre Bruns & Elham Iravani, 2023. "Understanding differences of the OA uptake within the German university landscape (2010–2020): part 1—journal-based OA," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(6), pages 3601-3625, June.
    4. Fakhri Momeni & Philipp Mayr & Nicholas Fraser & Isabella Peters, 2021. "What happens when a journal converts to open access? A bibliometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(12), pages 9811-9827, December.
    5. Elizabeth Gadd & Chris Morrison & Jane Secker, 2019. "The Impact of Open Access on Teaching—How Far Have We Come?," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-17, August.
    6. Anne Hobert & Najko Jahn & Philipp Mayr & Birgit Schmidt & Niels Taubert, 2021. "Open access uptake in Germany 2010–2018: adoption in a diverse research landscape," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(12), pages 9751-9777, December.
    7. David Walters & Christopher Daley, 2018. "Enhancing Institutional Publication Data Using Emergent Open Science Services," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-17, May.
    8. Debarshi Kumar Sanyal & Plaban Kumar Bhowmick & Partha Pratim Das & Samiran Chattopadhyay & T. Y. S. S. Santosh, 2019. "Enhancing access to scholarly publications with surrogate resources," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(2), pages 1129-1164, November.
    9. Vivek Kumar Singh & Satya Swarup Srichandan & Hiran H. Lathabai, 2022. "ResearchGate and Google Scholar: how much do they differ in publications, citations and different metrics and why?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(3), pages 1515-1542, March.
    10. Wei Ming & Zhenyue Zhao, 2022. "Rethinking the open access citation advantage: Evidence from the “reverse‐flipping” journals," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(11), pages 1608-1620, November.
    11. Mingyang Wang & Jiaqi Zhang & Guangsheng Chen & Kah-Hin Chai, 2019. "Examining the influence of open access on journals’ citation obsolescence by modeling the actual citation process," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1621-1641, June.
    12. Fernanda Morillo, 2020. "Is open access publication useful for all research fields? Presence of funding, collaboration and impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 689-716, October.
    13. Najko Jahn & Lisa Matthias & Mikael Laakso, 2022. "Toward transparency of hybrid open access through publisher‐provided metadata: An article‐level study of Elsevier," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(1), pages 104-118, January.

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