3.2. Countries and Main Authors of the Theme Open Access in the International Scientific Literature
shows the 22 major producing countries from a total of 74 countries that have published on the topic open access. Each country produced at least 13 articles in the period, corresponding to at least 1% of the total production of articles on the theme and their respective percentages.
It is observed that the countries presented in Table 1
, in general, are the most prominent in world science, with some exceptions, such as Japan, which, according to the SCImagoJR Portal, ranks fifth in the world rankings and is not found among the main producing countries on open access, as well as South Korea, the Russian Federation and Taiwan. On the other hand, Spain, The Netherlands and Brazil occupy top rankings in the scientific literature on open access in relation to those occupied in world science, suggesting that these countries, especially Spain, have undertaken a major effort in the development of the analyzed subject.
Regarding the directions of open access strategies, it is emphasized that the United States has privileged the green road. In 2013, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act demanded open access to articles resulting from major federal agencies funding via repositories. In their scientific production, the most recurrent keywords indexing the articles are: articles (62), access to information (48), bibliometrics and keywords related to its procedures (31), journals (30), database (30) and repositories (22), among others. Given the emphasis on the keyword “articles”, we point out the alignment between the produced scientific literature and the privileged open access strategy adopted by the country (green road).
The United Kingdom, through the Research Council, favors open access via the golden road, by largely incentivizing publishers. In its scientific production, a wide dispersion of indexing keywords of articles is observed, highlighting the following: articles (31), access to information (23) and journal (15), among others.
In Spain, Law 14/2011 on Science, Technology and Innovation (Boletín Oficial del Estado, 2 June 2011), in its Article 37 that addresses the dissemination in open access, makes it clear that public officials of the Spanish System of Science, Technology and Innovation must encourage the development of open access repositories for publications belonging to their researchers and must establish systems that allow connecting them to similar initiatives nationally and internationally. Its scientific production emphasizes the following keywords in the articles: repository (21), access to information (15), journals (22), articles (14) and bibliometrics and keywords related to its procedures (9).
In The Netherlands, twenty institutions, including the KNAW—Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, VSNU—Association of Universities in the Netherlands and The Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences (Vereniging Hogescholen) signed the Berlin Declaration [28
]. The Dutch government intends to change completely to open access via the golden road, within approximately ten years, i.e.
, by 2024. In line with this proposal, the NOW—Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research , the main funder of scientific research in Dutch universities and institutions, primarily adopts the golden OA program for research funds and, where this is not possible, supports the green OA program [29
]. The following keywords stand out in the scientific production of this country: journals (5), article (4) and repository (2), with a large dispersion of terms indexing the articles.
In Brazil, Bill 387/2011 is based on the green model. Through this project, higher education institutions and research units must build institutional open access repositories with the use of internationally-standardized metadata. The following keywords indexing the articles are: journals (6), access to information (4) repository (3) and articles (2).
In relation to the authors responsible for the 1179 articles, we found a total of 2407 authors, which results in an average of 2.04 authors per article. It is noteworthy that 2108 authors have produced one single article (87.6%), suggesting a large dispersion of researchers producing scientific literature on the theme.
presents the 22 most productive researchers, in descending order of quantity of published articles, with the publication of at least five articles on the topic. This criterion was adopted, since 50 authors published four articles, indicating a large dispersion.
It is initially highlighted that the 22 researchers presented in Table 2
were responsible, together, for 132 (11.2%) articles of the total of the analyzed articles, all of which are published from 2003. Thus, the 34 articles that comprise the period 1982–2002 were from less quantitatively-expressive authors, considering that they published, individually, fewer than four articles.
Analyzing Table 2
, researchers from different countries are found, but especially the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain and Finland. Among the researchers with the highest number of articles, pioneer and precursor authors on the theme open access are found, such as Stevan Harnad, who is found in the study of Duzyol et al.
Among the 22 researchers presented in Table 2
, 13 have significant influences on the set of 1179 analyzed articles, being cited in at least 1% of these articles, namely: Harnad (20.4%), Oppenheim (12.4%), Björk (10.6%), Davis (8.3%), Willinsky (7.8%), Laakso (6.6%), Nicholas (5.9%), Xia (3.6%), Solomon (3.6%), Kousha (3.1%), Beall (2%), Jacsó (1.6%) and Melero (1.4%).
Stevan Hanard, defender and activist for the green road, from Université du Québec à Montréal, was the advocate of open access in the 1990s by proposing that all scientific literature were to be available on the Internet for free and unrestricted access and proposing the names of the strategies green road, golden road and self-archiving [30
]. His articles, retrieved in this research, were published in the 2005–2013 period, individually or in co-authorship with researchers from Canada, the United Kingdom and France. He addresses, especially, issues related to cognitive science and open access, which have contributed with the grounds of the research of many investigators from different countries from all continents. Within the analyzed literature, he was the most cited author (in 240 of 1179 analyzed articles) in the scientific production of researchers from 41 different countries, especially the USA, the U.K., Spain, India, Canada, Finland, Germany, Iran and Brazil, produced in seven different languages, especially English, Spanish and Portuguese. This result is aligned to what Duzyol, Taskin and Tonta [15
] found in identifying Harnad as the most influential author on the subject.
Charles B. Oppenheim, from Cass Business School, London, expert in copyright, data protection, freedom of information, open access and other aspects of the dissemination of research, bibliometrics and research evaluation, with five articles published between 2003 and 2010, is the second most cited author in the analyzed literature (cited in 146 articles) to be referenced by researchers from 37 different countries, especially the USA, the U.K., Spain, India, Canada, Argentina, Japan and Finland, in articles published in six different languages, mainly English and Spanish.
Bo-Christer Björk, researcher at the Department of Management and Organization, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, and proponent of the scientific communication model named the global distributed information system (2007), was the author with the highest number of published articles, with almost twice as many articles compared to the second most productive author. His publications, constituting this study, are distributed regularly from 2004–2014, published individually authored or an elite at the front of scientific research in the studied subject.
Philip M. Davis, researcher at Phil Davis Consulting, Ithaca, published eight articles presented in Table 2
, individually or co-authored with researchers from his own country more recently (2008–2013), investigating in particular the theme open access with bibliometric analyses, especially citation analysis. He was theoretical referenced to 98 articles, published by authors from different countries (28), especially the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain and Canada.
John Willinsky, researcher from Stanford University, Graduate School of Education, Palo Alto, published five articles individually or co-authored with researchers from his own country and Canada in the 2003–2013 period, addressing especially open access in the medical field. His articles compose the theoretical reference of 92 of 1179 analyzed articles, published by researchers from 27 different countries, mainly the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Spain, published in five different languages, mainly English, Portuguese and Spanish.
Mikael Laakso, from the Department of Management and Organisation, Hanken, Svenska Handelshögskolan, Helsinki, published his articles recently (2010–2014), with six of them in co-authorship with researchers from five different countries, as well as researchers from his country. His articles discuss, especially, meta-theoretical studies on open access, as well as issues related to the green road strategy. His articles form the theoretical reference of 78 of the 1179 analyzed articles published by researchers from 27 different countries, mainly the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Canada, Finland and India, published in seven different languages, especially English and Spanish.
David Nicholas, from the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research/School of Library, Archive and Information Studies at University College London, published all of his articles in co-authorship with researchers from the United States and Iran, as well as his own country’s researchers in the area of social and computer sciences in the period 2005–2009. These articles form the theoretical reference of 70 of the 1179 analyzed articles published by researchers from 24 different countries, especially, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, published in four different languages, especially English and Spanish.
Jingfeng Xia, from the Department of Library & Information Science, Indiana University (USA), showed significant scientific production on the theme, disseminated from 2009–2012, in particular related to repositories and analysis of the impact of open access scientific production via citation of scientific production. He developed research in individual authorship and in co-authorship with researchers from his country. Among the 1179 analyzed articles, he was cited in 43, especially in articles in the fields of social sciences and computer science, published in English, especially by authors from the United States, Spain, Canada and Germany.
David J. Solomon, from the College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, published his articles in individual authorship or in collaboration with the Finnish researchers Björk and Laakso, addressing, especially, issues related to open access journals in the medical field and meta-theoretical studies based on bibliometric analyses, from 2006–2014. He was cited in 42 articles, especially by researchers from the United States, Canada, Finland, Spain and the United Kingdom, as well as 26 other countries, mainly published in English and Spanish.
Kayvan Kousha, from the Department of Library and Information Science, University of Tehran, published his articles in individual authorship and also in co-authorship with researchers from the United Kingdom (Mike Thelwall) and Spain from 2007–2014, in the area of social sciences and computer sciences, especially addressing the issue of the impact and citation of OA publications. This scientific production grounded 37 articles of the set of analyzed articles, produced by researchers from seven countries, especially the United States, Canada, India and Iran.
Jeffrey Beall, from the University of Colorado, Denver, individually published articles retrieved in this study, from 2009–2013, in which he presents reflections, debates and controversies around open access, among them the issue of predatory publishers and OA funding via the golden road. This scientific production was referenced in 23 articles, published by researchers from 10 countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Finland.
Péter Jacsó, from the Department of Computer Science and Information System, University of Hawaii, Hawaii, published articles in the period 2003–2010, in individual authorship, discussing technical and methodological aspects of indexing and scientific information retrieval and bibliometric analysis on the theme OA. This scientific production was referenced in 19 articles, published by authors from 13 countries, in particular India, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Remédios Melero, Spanish researcher at the Instituto de Agroquímica y Tecnología de Alimentos (IATA), Valencia, published her articles in the period 2009–2014, in individual authorship and also in co-authorship with other Spanish researchers in the fields of social sciences and computer science, especially in Spanish. Her scientific production grounded 17 articles of the analyzed corpus of researchers from Spain, Argentina and Brazil, Mexico and Malaysia, published in English and Spanish.
It is noteworthy that the nine investigators presented in Table 2
with less impact (cited by less than 1% of the articles) in the analyzed literature, in general, published their articles more recently, from 2009, with most of them published in 2014, the last year of the analyzed period, namely: J. Schopfel (2005–2014); E. Abadal (2009–2014); B. Bauer (2009–2014); V. Moskovkin (2008–2014); B. Mukherjee (2007–2014); A. Abrizah (2009–2013); M. McGrath (2012–2013); R. Rodrigues (2010–2014); N. Sánchez-Tarragó (2007–2012). Thus, one of the possible hypotheses for the low impact is the fact that these publications are less likely to have been accessed by the scientific community, while among the authors with the greatest impact, in general, their articles had been disseminated in previous years.
Another possible hypothesis for the low impact relates to the fact that these researchers are from non-English speaking countries and have published individually or, when co-authored, only with collaborators from their own countries or neighboring countries, also non-English speaking countries, such as Germany (Bauer), Serbia and Russia (Moskovkin), Brazil (Abadal), Malaysia and Iran (Abrizah) and Spain (Rodrigues and Sánchez-Tarragó). This characteristic aligns with the observation of several bibliometric scholars who claim that there is a tendency: the higher the international scientific collaboration, the higher the impact of the published literature [31
3.4. Scientific Collaboration Network among the Most Productive Authors
The scientific collaborative network of the most productive researchers on the theme, together with the co-authors with whom researchers have published more than one article in co-authorship, is presented in Figure 2
. The 22 authors highlighted in red correspond to the most productive ones on the theme, and the thickness of segments represents the frequency of co-authorship between two authors.
Collaborative network among the 22 most productive authors who had at least two co-authorships.
Collaborative network among the 22 most productive authors who had at least two co-authorships.
The network is fragmented into small subnets and does not constitute an organic whole. The author Björk, B-C (Finland) is highlighted in the biggest subnet, as the most productive one, who has co-authorship with five researchers, two of them belonging to the group of most productive authors, namely: Laakso, P. (Finland), with whom he has five co-authorships, the biggest number of co-authorships, and Solomon, D.J. (United States), with whom he has four co-authorships.
It is also noted that author Björk, B-C presents the greatest degree centrality equal to five, as he has the largest number of connections, i.e., with Welling P. (Finland), Hedlund T. (Finland) and Turk, Z. (Slovenia), together with the two most productive authors that were previously mentioned. Considering the geographic distances among the origin of these researchers, it is worth highlighting that author Björk, B-C has wide-ranging relationships, and this subnet can be an indicator of a more dense net creation.
A second subnet highlighted is the triad consisting of the two most productive researchers, Melero, R.M. (Spain) and Abadal, E. (Spain), together with the collaborator Abad-Garcia, F. (Spain). Spain primarily adopts the gold OA.
Although collaborations between Spanish and Brazilian researchers do not appear in the network, it is interesting to highlight a recent publication, of April 2014, by Rosangela Rodrigues and Ernest Abadal, who outline an overview of the open access publishing model in Brazil and Spain. The authors conduct an analysis of the journals from these countries that are indexed by the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, according to some aspects of publication format, either online or printed, the type of access, either open and by subscription, and the technology platform used.
Five other small subnets stand out: with Davis, P.M. (United States) in the center of the subnet and the co-authors Conolly, D. (United States), Booth, J.G. (United States), Simon, D.H. (United States) and Lewestein, B.V. (United States), a typically American subnet, whose country has emphasized the green road.
Nicholas, D. (United Kingdom) has four co-authorships with Jamali, H.R. (Iran) and four with Huntington, P. (United Kingdom), defined by the strongest segments, and with Rowlands, H. (United Kingdom). It is worth highlighting the homogeneity of this group, with a single researcher coming from an Asian country.
Small subnets, centered on Bauer, B. (Austria) and his two colleagues, Kaminger, E. (Austria) and Katzmayr, M. (Austria), another subnet centered on Abrizah, A. (Malaysia) and his two collaborators, Singeh, F.W. (Malaysia) and Karim, N.H.A. (Malaysia), and, lastly, Oppenheim, C. (United Kingdom) and his two colleagues Gadds, E. (United Kingdom) and Probets, S. (United Kingdom), are presented. Therefore, there are two subnets with researchers belonging each to the same country.
There are still four dyads that in every case included the most productive authors in co-authorship with other researcher; eight of the most productive authors are isolated. It is noticed that among those, two of them, Jacsó and Beall, work individually; and McGrath, Moskovkin, Rodrigues, Mukherjee, Willinsky and Xia had co-authorships, but with authors of one single work. Therefore, these last authors are not contemplated in the subnet. As conclusions of the network analysis, it is noticed that there are a few subnets where co-authors come from different countries, such as the first and largest subnet centered on Björk, B.C., and the small subnet centered on Nicholas, D. The others are small subnets, consisting of co-authors coming from the same country, showing a very incipient collaborative net, with subnets that scarcely extrapolate to the limits of their own countries, justified by the recent expansion of the matter and the underdevelopment of policies encouraging open access.