A bibliometric study of scholarly articles published by library and information science authors about open access

Introduction. This study aims to gain a greater understanding of the development of open access practices amongst library and information science authors, since their role is integral to the success of the broader open access movement. Method. Data were collected from scholarly articles about open access by library and information science authors from 2003 until 2011 found in the Library and Information Science Abstracts database. Analysis. A bibliometric approach is taken for the information gathered from 203 articles. Excel and SPSS were used to derive descriptive statistics and correlations. Results. Overall an open access rate of 60% was found, which was lower than expected considering 94% of these articles appeared to endorse open access. Conclusions. Although these results show a higher open access rate than previous studies, and a linear growth of open access publications over the years, there is still a large gap between theory and practice which needs to be addressed.