Identification and Portraits of Open Access Journals Based on Open Impact Metrics Extracted from Social Activities

Abstract

This article focuses on open impact metrics extracted from social media activities that demonstrate the identification and portraits of open access journals based on these alternative forms of open impact metrics. The research sample consists of open access journals from Scopus, with open impact metrics retrieved from Altmetric.com. The open impact metrics extracted from social activities established that an evaluation system based on altmetrics can better reflect the portraits of open access journals than traditional citation-based metrics. This study finds that open access journals strengthen international academic communication and cooperation, build cross-border and cross-regional knowledge-sharing projects, realize the knowledge of interdisciplinary sharing and exchange, and, most importantly, provide a one-stop service for readers. This research indicates that through the use of open impact metrics, it is possible to identify the portraits of open access journals, thus providing a new method to construct and reform open access journal evaluation systems.