Associations among Open Access, QUALIS CAPES and citation performance (Indices h, e, AW and hl Annual) in Brazilian Information Science scientific journals – exploratory, documentary study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The scientific journal was coopted and transformed into a commodity by commercial publishers, resulting in the scientific community devising the Open Access paradigm. OBJECTIVE: To investigate if QUALIS CAPES stratification, OA practices and citation performance in Brazilian Information Science journals are correlated. METHODS: An exploratory, documentary, comparative study, surveying all Information Science journals ranked from A1 to B2 strata in QUALIS CAPES in Communication & Information, their adherence to OA policies and their citation performance collected by the software Harzing's Publish or Perish version 6.49.6406.7079. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Only five journals (21.7%) were found to adhere to established OA criteria, and this conduct was more frequent in the B1 stratum. It has been found that 09 journals (39% of the sample) retained the copyright and/or did not have a clear copyright policy. This conduct was more frequent in stratum B1, but also appeared in strata A1 and A2. However, no regularity of citation associated with QUALIS stratification or Open Access was found. CLOSING REMARKS: For the analyzed sample, evidence has been provided that QUALIS A1 and A2 did not necessarily translate into full alignment to OA nor with citation incidence. Greater alignment to OA was found in the intermediate layer B1. Notwithstanding, that stratum was also the one in which clear copyright policies were absent the most. Additional studies to investigate whether and how other editorial aspects might correlate to citation performance were recommended.