INFORUM 2006 - 12. Annual Conference On Professional Information Resources

Trends in Accessibility of Chemical Journals

Author: Aliaksandr Rahoisha,  Belarusian State University, Belarus

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Abstract

The growing Open Access movement and present publishers' marketing strategy promote the formation of a comfortable reader's environment. This paper analyses the tendencies in accessibility of scholarly chemical publications. The object of our analysis is the content of the directory Free Full-Text Journals in Chemistry (http://www.abc.chemistry.bsu.by/current) maintained by the author during the last four years. The directory comprises links to online journals with at least one-year free content and designated as "peer-reviewed" by the publishers. The journals were included in the directory on the basis of "free to user" with different publishing policies. Two snapshots taken in September 2004 and August 2005 have shown that more than half of the journals (128 of 244 listed in 2004) increased the amount of free content and only 5 % disappeared from the Web or became fully paid. The major part of the increase was caused by additions of current issues in 2004-2005; 4,5 % of the journals have offered also extra back volumes. In most cases, URLs of titles were stable through the period investigated; 15 % of the journals changed their addresses, however, for 12 % the changes were insignificant and did not effect accessibility. The favourable proportions remain valid in the current year.

About the author

Aliaksandr Rahoisha, the author of this contribution, graduated from Chemistry Department, Belarusian State University, Minsk, Belarus in 1973. He works presently as a Reader at the same University and teaches Inorganic Chemistry at Biology Department and Online Retrieval of Chemical Information at Chemistry Department. He has been maintaining the online directory Free Full-Text Journals in Chemistry (English and Russian versions) and the tutorial ABC of Web Search (in Russian, http://www.abc.chemistry.bsu.by) for chemistry students for the last four years.