Open Access Journals in the Field of Education: An Informative Study

Abstract

The main purpose of the paper is to study the publishing trends of the Open Access (OA) journals in the field of education, available in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). An online survey was conducted for the collection of data and a quantitative method was applied for data analysis. Data was collected from 567 education journals during the month of February 2013. They were later presented in tabular forms and analysed using quantitative techniques to reveal findings, in accordance with the desired objectives. The findings show that a maximum number of journals (567) listed in the DOAJ is published in education; from the United States (120, i.e., 21.16 per cent); and during the first decade (2001–10) of the 21st century (393, i.e., 69.31 per cent). The linguistic assessment shows that the OA education journals are published in 32 different languages and English is the principal language adopted by the 75.84 per cent (430) of journals. The results also reveal that the majority of the education journals (496, i.e., 87.48 per cent) does not charge any publication fee from the authors and still 100 per cent of them have maintained their continuity. The study is limited to the DOAJ only and the World Wide Web (www) was not explored. Hence, the findings should be studied with caution.