Open Access Journals in China: The Current Situation and Development Strategies

We have identified and examined the 685 online journals that offer some form of open access (OA) among the 8,814 scholarly journals indexed by the Chinese National Knowledge Information (CNKI) database in China. Data concerning each journal's organizer, discipline, region and/or province, publishing cycle, and first date that content was offered free of charge were analyzed, together with the journals' Web site construction, the way full text was accessed, and the delay between the print and online publication of the journal. On the basis of the survey results, we identified key problems associated with OA journals in China and outlined strategies to address these issues, including radically reforming the current publication system and mechanism for scholarly journals, actively promoting the transition of scholarly journals from print to OA, speeding up network construction and promoting full-text availability, and building a national open access journal platform.

► We identify all 685 OA journals in China. ► We summarize the current status of Chinese OA journals. ► We analyze their OA-related characteristics in China. ► We identify key problems associated with Chinese OA journals. ► We outline development strategies to address these issues.