Characteristics of open access journals in the field of libraries and information available in the DOAJ directory: an analytical study

Abstract

Free access to information has become one of the principles that the entire society, especially researchers and specialists, aspires to, with the aim of achieving communication among themselves in the field of research, exchanging ideas, making scientific research available, enriching dialogue between researchers, and creating appropriate conditions that would contribute to advancing scientific progress.

Open access, in general, means electronic access free of any obstacles or restrictions to scientific intellectual production via the Internet for all beneficiaries. Some believe that the emergence of the trend of “free access to scientific information” in the past few years is a major development in the world of scientific communication, due to the facilitation of the flow of information to the entire scientific community, as well as to the researcher himself, who achieves the highest benefit from his scientific studies when he learns about them. everyone .

Steven Harnad, the most prominent pioneer of the movement calling for free access to information, asserted that: The best thing that a researcher wants and sees as inevitable is to find all peer-reviewed scientific literature online and that he can view it via his personal computer from anywhere and at any time... and for all articles to be interconnected. Through reference citations, it is retrievable, navigable, and also downloadable.

Open access journals emerged as an inevitable result of the new scientific communication movement, and as a reaction to subscription prices for scientific journals that exceeded the limits of logic and the private capabilities of scientists, research institutions, and libraries alike, which added new restrictions on the spread of research results.

The Directory of Open Access Journals is one of the most prominent models that embody the principle of free access to information, as it is a comprehensive directory of periodicals that is available for free. It provides full texts of peer-reviewed scientific and academic journals in various fields of human knowledge and in all languages.

This guide provides about 91 specialized periodicals in the field of libraries and information, and it should be noted, as previously mentioned, that it covers one Arab electronic periodical in the field of information science, which is the Cybrarian journal.