Religious Studies Scholarship is Not Widely Available via Open Access, but Some Authors Share Their Work through Institutional Repositories or Social Networking Sites

A Review of: Avery, J. M. (2018). The open access availability of articles from highly ranked religious studies journals: A study of ten journals. Theological Librarianship, 11(1), 12-17. Retrieved from https://theolib.atla.com/theolib/index Abstract Objective – To examine the current state of open access scholarship among the most highly rated religious studies journals. Design – Quantitative analysis. Setting – Research articles published in 2014, in the ten most highly rated religious studies journals. Subjects – 377 peer-reviewed articles. Methods – Using the SCImago Journal & Country Rank, the researcher identified the top ten most cited religious studies journals from mid-2015. Articles published in these journals during 2014 were evaluated. The researcher identified 377 research articles through online databases and journal websites. The researcher then used both Google and Google Scholar to search for these articles using titles and authors. If the article was not found, other search strategies were employed, such as the use of additional search terms, limits, and quotes, as well as other search engines. Main Results – Open access (OA) versions were found for 132 of the 377 articles (35%), and the percent of OA articles by journal ranged from 5% to 100%. The researcher found 70 OA articles in institutional repositories (53%), 70 in Academia.edu or ResearchGate.net (53%), 19 from organizational websites (14.4%), 13 on personal websites (9.8%), and 4 on other sites (3%). The researcher found 44 articles in more than one location (33.3%). Of the 132 OA articles found, 87 (65.9%) were found by both Google and Google Scholar, and 43 (32.6%) articles were found by either Google or Google Scholar, but not both. Conclusion – Overall, the research results reveal that finding OA content can be done via Google and Google Scholar. While articles in religious studies journals are not typically accessible through OA, authors who tend to publish in these journals who support OA may use institutional repositories or social networking sites to make their work available.