A citation analysis of Iranian journals to open access (OA) articles and journals

This study was survey on citation research of Open Access (OA) journals in English papers of Iranian universities journals during year 2007. The main purposes of this paper were: to examine the state of English papers in Iranian journals in Thomson Scientific Master Journal List (TSMJL); and to analyze their visibility through citations to OA journals in DOAJ database. In fact, the researcher has used of citation analysis technique of bibliometric and large-scale sociometric analyses on about 16,219 citations. The method followed in the first part of this study is obtaining data from e-journal articles which indexed in TSMJL, conducting descriptive analyses, and reporting the findings in tables and figures. In the second part of the study, DOAJ database is used to behaviour cited reference searches and other citation analyses. It found that there are 960 Iranian print-based journals and only 37 Iranian Journals was indexed in TSMJL. Sixteen English Journals in TSMJL of eight Iranian universities. Throughout sixteen journals only one journal didn’t publish during 2007 and there were 704 articles all over the fifteen journals. Using large-scale sociometric analyses on about 16,219 citations all over 15 journals, it is notable that number of journals without citation to DOAJ was 3,101 (99.7%) and the number of journals with citation to DOAJ was 9 (0.3%). It shows that there was huge difference between the journals which had citing to DOAJ and without citing to DOAJ.