Positioning Open Access Journals in a LIS Journal Ranking

Jingfeng Xia is Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University; e-mail: [email protected]. The author is grateful to Professor Debora Shaw for her help. © Jingfeng Xia Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) CC BY-NC This research uses the h-index to rank the quality of library and information science journals between 2004 and 2008. Selected open access (OA) journals are included in the ranking to assess current OA development in support of scholarly communication. It is found that OA journals have gained momentum supporting high-quality research and publication, and some OA journals have been ranked as high as the best traditional print journals. The findings will help convince scholars to make more contributions to OA journal publications, and also encourage librarians and information professionals to make continuous efforts for library publishing.