Usage Trends of Open Access and Local Journals: A Korean Case Study

Articles from open access and local journals are important resources for research in Korea and the usage trends of these articles are important indicators for the assessment of the current research practice. We analyzed an institutional collection of published papers from 1998 to 2014 authored by researchers from Seoul National University, and their references from papers published between 1998 and 2011. The published papers were collected from Web of Science or Scopus and were analyzed according to the proportion of articles from open access journals. Their cited references from published papers in Web of Science were analyzed according to the proportion of local (South Korean) or open access journals. The proportion of open access papers was relatively stable until 2006 (2.5 ~ 5.2% in Web of Science and 2.7 ~ 4.2% in Scopus), but then increased to 15.9% (Web of Science) or 18.5% (Scopus) in 2014. We analyzed 2,750,485 cited references from 52,295 published papers. We found that the overall proportion of cited articles from local journals was 1.8% and that for open access journals was 3.0%. Citations of open access articles have increased since 2006 to 4.1% in 2011, although the increase in open access article citations was less than for open access publications. The proportion of citations from local journals was even lower. We think that the publishing / citing mismatch is a term to describe this difference, which is an issue at Seoul National University, where the number of published papers at open access or local journals is increasing but the number of citations is not. The cause of this discrepancy is multi-factorial but the governmental / institutional policies, social / cultural issues and authors' citing behaviors will explain the mismatch. However, additional measures are also necessary, such as the development of an institutional citation database and improved search capabilities with respect to local and open access documents.开放获取（open access）期刊与本土期刊刊载的论文，是韩国科研领域的重要资源；此类论文的使用趋势，亦是评估当前科研实践状况的关键指标。本研究分析了首尔国立大学（Seoul National University）研究者于1998年至2014年间发表的机构馆藏论文，以及这些论文在1998年至2011年间刊载的参考文献。本次研究所收录的已发表论文来自Web of Science或Scopus数据库，我们依据开放获取期刊论文的占比开展了相关分析；同时，针对这些论文所引用的、刊载于Web of Science收录论文中的参考文献，我们依据本土（韩国）期刊或开放获取期刊的占比展开了分析。开放获取论文的占比在2006年前保持相对稳定（Web of Science数据库中为2.5%~5.2%，Scopus数据库中为2.7%~4.2%），随后于2014年增长至15.9%（Web of Science）或18.5%（Scopus）。本研究共分析了52,295篇已发表论文的2,750,485条被引参考文献。研究结果显示，本土期刊刊载论文的总被引占比为1.8%，开放获取期刊刊载论文的总被引占比则为3.0%。尽管开放获取论文的被引增长幅度低于其出版量增幅，但自2006年起，开放获取论文的被引占比已攀升至2011年的4.1%。本土期刊刊载论文的被引占比则更低。我们认为，可使用“出版-被引错配”这一术语来描述上述差异；这一问题在首尔国立大学尤为突出——该校开放获取期刊与本土期刊刊载的论文数量持续增长，但其被引数量却并未同步提升。造成这一差异的原因具有多重性，可从政府/机构政策、社会文化因素以及作者的引用行为等方面进行解释。不过，仍需采取额外举措，例如搭建机构级被引数据库，以及优化本土文献与开放获取文献的检索功能。