Open Access in China: A Study of Social Science Journals

To learn about the current situation of open access (OA) in Chinese social science journals, 714 journals listed in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) in 2012 to 2013 were chosen to investigate, and search engines were used to analyze the OA status of these journals and their articles. The results showed that 13.73 per cent of journals in the CSSCI are OA, their OA format is mostly PDF, and 84.69 per cent of their OA resources are gathered from the publishing years 2004 to 2012. The level of OA journals focusing on different subjects is unbalanced in China. Articles from each journal published in 2007 were selected according to different standards to study the relationship of OA and citation. The results showed that the OA level of highly cited articles is higher than that of low- and non-cited articles. Factors that may restrict OA development in China were analyzed.