A Study of Distribution and Growth of Open Access Research Journals Across the World.

The study aims to assess the growth of Open Access (OA) research journals indexed in Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) during the last two decades viz., for the period 2002 through 2021 across the world. More so the growth has also been assessed at the continental and subject level. Some of the key aspects evaluated include computation of research journals indexed each year during the period of study, their corresponding growth, subject wise distribution of OA journals, leading OA journals publishing countries and various other related aspects have been evaluated. From the data analysis it emerged that in 2002, 22 OA journals were indexed in DOAJ and on July 17, 2021 the date of data retrieval, the number of OA journals indexed were found 16,589, published across 126 countries. On average each year around 830 journals are indexed in DOAJ registering an average annual growth of around 51.46%. 46% journals were indexed during the last three years, reflecting exponential growth of OA research journals from 2018 onwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]