Scholarly Communication in Library and Information Services: The Impacts of Open Access Journals and E-journals on a Changing Scenario

This book has been written with a view to understand the validity of the perceptions of Open Access (OA) e-journals in the Library and Information Science (LIS) field. Using relevant OA journals this book presents and evaluates journals qualitatively and quantitatively. Over the last three hundred years scholarly journals have been the prime mode of transport in communicating the scholarly research process. However in the last few decades, a changing scenario has been witnessed in their form and format. OA is an innovative idea that attracts a fair amount of support and opposition around the world because it bridges the gap between digitally divided scholars by solving the pricing and permission crises that have imbalanced the scholarly communication process. Some scholars are of the opinion that OA has led to a chaotic environment where anyone can publish anything. Scholarly Communication in Library and Information Services records, in detail, the impact by accessing the journals’ web site qualitatively and quantitatively in measuring the important elements such as articles, authors, countries, subjects and cited references. Finally, the book calculates the impact factor using synchronous and asynchronous approaches.

• First ever study to extensively evaluate LIS Journals’ Web site qualitatively by using a newly developed set of criteria
• LIS OA journals are also evaluated quantitatively
• Counts citations of LIS OA articles in terms of formal citations by using Google Scholar

Bhaskar Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Library and Information Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. As a young science graduate and Doctorate in the field of Library & Information Science, Dr. Mukherjee has been serving this profession for the last 14 years at various positions. He has the exposure of various theoretical and technical aspects of library and information science teaching and working experience with various types of LIS centres. His publication history includes over thirty research articles in various journals like JASIST, Scientometrics, LISR, IFLA, and the Journal of Academic Librarianship. He is the recipient of Raja Rammohun Roy Foundation award for contributing the best article, Prabhakar Rao Gold Medal Award for positioning First Class in his BSc. (Geology) and UTD Gold Medal Award for positioning First Class in his Bachelors of LIS and MLIS. He currently serves as a reviewer for various journals in the field. His research interests are in Webometrics, Open Access, Information Storage and Retrieval, Knowledge Organisation.