Evolution of open access publishing in Chinese scientific journals

Based on the 1,608 journals covered by the Chinese Science & Technology Journal Citation Reports (2005 edition), we analyzed the open access (OA) publishing situation of Chinese scientific journals. From this database we identified 91 journals offering full OA; a further 139 journals offered delayed OA. Data collected at three different time points (January 2006, July 2006, and January 2007) showed that the OA status of these journals is not stable; some OA journals subsequently became non-OA. Most of the Chinese OA journals are not part of a larger aggregation, but are published independently. Relatively more OA journals are published in the fields of medicine and biology. Citation indicators of OA journals were found to be higher than those of non-OA journals.