Study on accessibility and circulation of Argentine scientific journals

This study is the result of an empirical survey on a list of 1,724 journals, built through multiple sources, which resulted in the verification of a universe of active Argentine journals. For the purposes of the study, scientific journals were defined as those that publish research results, academic essays or discuss scientific literature, as opposed to journals of public communication of science or popularization that are of interest to broader audiences but are not part of this study. Lists of indexed journals (Latindex Catálago 2.0, Scielo, Redalyc, Scopus and Web of Science), the ISSN Argentina database, the Oliva database (CECIC, UNCuyo), professional associations and university journal portals were explored (see Annex ii at the end of the chapter). To explore the group of non-indexed journals, previous studies based on direct surveys within the university system were also used, such as the one conducted by the Council of Deans of Social Sciences (Beigel and Salatino, 2015).
The survey first determined the number of duplicate journals that were verified and then discarded. Then we proceeded to detect the so-called ceased journals, i.e. when no record was found on the web, the pages did not work or explicitly stated that they had been closed. Finally, a group of journals was detected that could be classified as inactive because they do not update content since 2018, without specifying whether they have been closed or if on the contrary, they intend to resume their activity. The difference with the ceased journals is that this group of journals has published content, so it can be expected that they will resume publishing in the future, especially after overcoming the difficulties that may have been brought about by the covid-19 pandemic. Thus, to define active journals, it was established that they should publish at least one issue during 2019 or 2020. The year 2019 was incorporated considering the potential effects of the pandemic in journals that could have entered an impasse but are active. Thus, finally, 786 journals make up the universe of active journals surveyed and analyzed.
The resulting dataset of this study has been recently deposited in the CONICET Repository and can be accessed through the following link.