Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Access to traditional Chinese medical journals

W.Y. Fan and six co-authors, Traditional Chinese Medical Journals Currently Published in Mainland China, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, June 2008.  The June issue isn't yet online, so I'm linking to the abstract at PubMed.  From the abstract:

Background: Traditional Chinese Medical (TCM) journals have been playing an important role in scholarly communication in China. However, the information in those periodicals was not enough for international readers.

Objective: This study aims to provide an overview of TCM journals in China....

Results: One hundred and forty-nine (149) TCM journals are currently published in mainland China....One hundred (100) TCM journals have accessible URLs, but only 3 are open access with free full texts.

Conclusions: Publication of TCM journals in China has been active in academic communication in the past 20 years. However, only a few of them received recognized high evaluation. English information from them is not sufficient. Open access is not extensively acceptable. The accessibility of those journals to international readers needs to be improved.