Research Impact of the Open Access Journals-An Analytical Study

The main purpose of this paper is to carry out a comparative analysis of the Open Access (OA) journals published by Elsevier’s ScienceDirect from Medical Science domain and which are indexed in CWTS Journal Indicators database maintained by Leiden University, Netherlands and powered by Scopus for before and after making these journals OA. Around 50 OA journals from Medical Science domain indexed on or before 2007 and made OA in 2010 were taken into consideration for this research study. Data was retrieved from 2007 -2011 and from 2012-2016 for before and after making these journals OA respectively. Analytical research methodology was used and found suitable for this research study. The results of this study will help the authors, researchers, scholars, and scientists of the developing nations to follow the footsteps of the scholars of developed nations who are publishing and citing the research published in the OA journals since the journals have higher impact factor after making open access compared to the impact factor before.