Bjork, B C (2012) A comparison of subscription and open access journals in construction management and related fields. Construction Economics and Building, 12(2), pp. 27-42. ISSN 2204-9029
Abstract
The Internet has profoundly changed the technical infrastructure for the publishing of scientific peer reviewed journals. The traditional business model of selling the content to subscribers is increasingly being challenged by Open Access (OA) journals, which are either run at low cost by voluntary academics or which sell dissemination services to authors. In addition authors in many fields are taking advantage of the legal possibilities of uploading free manuscript versions to institutional or subject-based repositories, in order to increase readership and impact. This study looks closer at the current publishing situation in construction management and related fields and compares empirical data about 17 OA journals and 16 traditional subscription journals. Of the articles published in 2011 in the subscription journals only 9 % could be found as OA copies. The overall OA availability (including articles in OA journals) was 14 % for Construction Management and Economics and 29 % for construction IT scholarship. The study also compared the scientific quality of OA journals to subscription journals using a number of citation indexes. Four of the OA journals are approaching the citation levels (using Scopus data) of the average subscription journals. OA journals are outperforming subscription journals by almost a year in speed of publication.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | business model; internet; open access; scholarly publishing |
| Index terms: | Construction IT, dissemination, low cost, internet, business model, publication, journal |
| Subjects: | bidding, knowledge translation, computing systems, business, information systems, research dissemination and communication |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Digital Applications, Procurement, Information Management, Business Strategy |
| Descriptive scope: | 2 PC |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here