iranian scientists' approach to publishing in and referencing to open access journals

normal 0 false false false en-us x-none ar-sa microsoftinternetexplorer4 introduction: providing free access to the latest research and more publishing channels, open access (oa) is hoped to decrease the south countries' information poverty and professional isolation. due to its particular importance, it is necessary to investigate how they exploit open access resources. methods: applying a citation analysis method, the present study explores iranian scientists approach to publishing in and to citing open access journals. using science citation index, we extracted data related to iranian scientific outputs. using the list of prestigious open access journals previously identified, we then labeled iranian open access papers and open access references. applying regression analysis, we try to investigate the mathematical models that best fit the data to predict the growth rate of iranian open access papers and references. results: iranian scientists in material engineering and multidisciplinary sciences are most inclined to open access journals, while those in medicine and health sciences and physical sciences are the least. the results reveal that iranians' approach to open access journals has been growing based on an exponential model. open access papers, plotted versus total iranian papers, grow at a linear rate. however, open access references plotted versus total papers yield a power model. the same is true for papers citing open access journals. conclusion: iranian scholars widely benefit from open access journals. however, disciplines differ in their patterns, as proved at international level, too. generally, the number of iranian open access papers are growing based on a constant rate, compared to that of their total papers; while the number of open access references is growing at a relatively more rapid rate. the difference may be due to differences in publication strategies. while scientists experience journal limitations in getting their papers accepted, they have few limitations, if any, in referencing to an accessible paper.