چکیده:
Ranking is one of the key measures for evaluating universities. Progress of
research at universities is often measured by the rate of its publications. It is also
common knowledge in the field of research that journal publications owe their
success to their impact factor. However, one of the contributing factors that affect
a journal's impact factor is the accessibility and availability of its content. The law
of statistics suggests that publishing an electronic version of the journal content
through online publications is likely to boost the visibility of a journal; hence,
improving the impact factor. The ability to publish electronically is often received
favorably by the research community. Despite advances in electronic journal
publishing, only recently, online journals have made their way into Iranian
university journal publishing. This paper evaluates and reports on the extent of
online journal publications among Iranian universities. For the purposes of this
study, 653 journals published by 183 universities were studied. The results reveal
that 66.7% of all universities have online copies of their journals. This study is
carried out for three categories of universities; the Ministry of Health and medical
Education universities, the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology
universities (MSRT), and Islamic Azad University Branches (IAU).
خلاصه ماشینی:
The law of statistics suggests that publishing an electronic version of the journal content through online publications is likely to boost the visibility of a journal; hence, improving the impact factor.
This paper intends to measure the readiness of the Lanian universities with respect to making the transition to online electronic publications (Directory of Open Access Journals, 2011).
Since the impact of a journal on scholarly research depends on the rate of accessed and referenced content, it is a considerable advantage for a publisher to maintain an online presence (Hitchcok, 2005).
From 70 universities belonging to the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology that were selected in the study, 46 of them had journal publications, producing a grand total of 364 journal titles.
Table 1 Frequenc y of the Online Journals f‹›r Selected Iranian Universities {مراجعه شود به فایل جدول الحاقی} Distribution of Archive Management As the online publishing is becoming an expected norm, it is important to accommodate for access to the past issues of the journal.
From 39 universities belonging to the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology that have online journals, 20 of them accept papers from authors through an electronic submission process.
Amongst 29 different universities belonging to the Ministry of Health that produce online journals, 25 of them accept the manuscripts through an electronic submission process, constituting 86'7o of the total online journals in this category.
From 39 universities belonging to the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology that have online journals, 18 of them provide the search functionality for accessing the content.