Indexing of Open Access Journals in Communication

The latest issue of Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian (Jan-March 2014) features research targeted directly at our field,  Open Access Journals in Communication Studies: Indexing in Five Commercial Databases by Sonia Poulin and Robert Tomaszewski. The five databases the authors look at are: Communication Abstracts, Communication and Mass Media Complete (CMMC), Web of Science, Scopus, and EBSCO's Academic Search Complete.

ABSTRACT
This study investigates the degree of indexing of gold open access (OA) journals within the field of communication studies in five major commercial bibliographical databases commonly subscribed to by academic libraries and used by researchers and students. Results of the study indicate that 32 percent of the 147 gold OA journals identified were indexed in the five target databases. The communication studies databases provided the most complete indexing, while among the multidisciplinary databases, Scopus provided more coverage, compared to Academic Search Complete and Web of Science.