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The scientific potential of European countries measured by their participation in publication of all peer-review journals as well as open access journals (OAJs) is significant. In this paper we focus on European fully open access journals (OAJs) as a potentially optimal channel of communication in science. We explore fully OAJs (n=1201) indexed by Scopus with several bibliometric indicators: quartile rankings, SJR (SCImago Journal Ranking) and h-index. As countries in our focus have entered EU at different times and have diverse backgrounds, we divide them into three groups: A (members before 1995), B (became members in 2004–2013 period) and C (EU candidate countries). Analysis across country groups is complemented with analysis across major subject fields. Quartile rankings indicate that journals in Q1 dominate in group A, followed by journals in Q2. In the remaining two country groups, journals belonging to Q3 have more than 50% of the share. Analysis by different scientific fields stresses that life and health sciences have the highest shares of OAJs in Q1. In physical sciences the highest share of OAJs is in Q3 while combined shares of Q2 and Q3 are above 50%. Only 10% of all European OAJs in social sciences is in Q1. Furthermore, we find the least difference between journals in group A and groups B and C in social sciences, both in respect to coverage and quality indicators. In all scientific fields median SJR indicators is, in the case of groups B and C, higher for OAJs than non-OAJs as opposed to group A. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The equality of the European Union (EU) Member States is one of the principles that the European Union is based on. However, in terms of the economy, culture and infl uence, a hierarchy of EU Members States is evident. The European post-socialist or Central and East European (CEE) countries are often perceived as being at the lower end of the scale or on the 'periphery' of the EU. The aim of this paper is to gain insights into the specifi cities of the CEE countries' legal scientifi c communication and the visibility of legal scholars' work within the EU. Bibliometric analysis results show that scientifi c productivity has been signifi cantly contributed to by papers published in domestic journals indexed in Scopus, with a share of 70%, and that the largest contributions are from Croatian, Romanian, Slovenian and Hungarian law journals. The Baltic States and EU candidate countries, representing nine out of 15 CEE countries, did not have their law journals indexed by Scopus in the period 1996-2013, which infl uenced their potential accessibility and visibility. The remaining 30% of papers were scattered over 112 international law journals, predominantly from the EU15 countries. On the other hand, the research shows that the recognition of papers measured in terms of the average number of citations speaks in favour of publication in international journals, with 2.9 citations per paper compared to 1.2 in domestic journals. It also shows that the citation of a paper is infl uenced by the language of the text and whether the paper has more than one author. Thus, although the vast majority of papers are published in domestic journals, the ones published in international journals are distinctly more visible in the academic community. In order to accomplish the integration of CEE countries into EU academic legal communication, the visibility of CEE countries' legal scholars' work is crucial. According to the analysis of this research, to achieve visibility, CEE countries' legal scholars should publish more in a lingua franca, which nowadays means English. The other possible way is to enhance the visibility and strengthen the position of scientifi c journals published in CEE countries by accepting professional journal standards. Needless to say, the aspect of the content and issues explored and published is also crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]