Abstract

This study aimed to analyze open access features of 1,890 Korean scientific journals registered in the Korea Citation Index (KCI). To this end, this study classified open access features of the target scientific journals into two main aspects, free access and free redistribution. The analysis results indicated that the target scientific journals had strong free access aspects. Based on websites, 67% of the target scientific journals allowed for free access without a login process and based on free database, 48% provided free access. On the other hand, the target scientific journals had weaker free redistribution aspects compared to their free access aspects. Only 14% of them offered the CC (creative commons) license. Another finding was that there were clear differences in open access aspects by academic field. Medicine, pharmacy, natural science, agriculture, fisheries, oceanography, and engineering had stronger open access aspects than humanities, sociology, arts, physical education, and interdisciplinary science. It appears that the difference was caused by the presence or absence of organizations supporting distribution of scientific journals of the fields concerned. To narrow the gap, it is recommended that the open access governance system is established to set up open access policies for Korean scientific journals regardless of academic fields and to support them.