Scholarly journals in the information sciences: titles indexed in WoS

This article studies the journals in the subject area of Information Science indexed in the Web of Science (WoS). The specific objectives are to: a) describe the publishing characteristics of information science journals indexed in the Web of Science database; b) indicate the type of access; c) identify which titles are indexed in DOAJ. The methodology is based on descriptive and exploratory research. The results identify 84 journals indexed in the Web of Science database in 2012, 9 of which are open access but, of these, only 6 are indexed in DOAJ. The predominant publishing model is that of commercial publishers with 56 titles (67% of total), and the most common frequency is quarterly. The majority (62.1%) of the journals has an impact factor of between 0 and 0.999; only 2 titles - published in the US and the Netherlands-- have an impact factor greater than 4,999. The study also reflects on the fact that Information Science is the discipline with the greatest perception on the issues of access to, and cost of, scientific journals. Likewise this area presents a representative quantity of titles from commercial publishers equivalent to that of publishers in general and there is a higher proportion of open access titles coming from Brazil.