Exploring the relationship between journals indexed from a country and its research output: An empirical investigation

TL;DR

This study investigates how the number of scientific journals published by a country correlates with its research output, revealing a generally positive relationship and offering policy insights.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of the link between journal publication volume and research output across 50 countries, including growth trends and subject-specific insights.

Findings

Most countries show a positive correlation between journal count and research output.

Growth in journal publication often aligns with increases in research productivity.

Subject area analysis reveals varying publication and output patterns across disciplines.

Abstract

Scientific journals are currently the primary medium used by researchers to report their research findings. The transformation of print journals into e-journals has simplified the process of submissions to journals and also their access has become wider. Journals are usually published by commercial publishers, learned societies as well as Universities. There are different number of journals published from different countries. This paper attempts to explore whether the number of journals published from a country influences its research output. Scopus master journal list is analysed to identify journals published from 50 selected countries with significant volume of research output. The following relationship are analysed: (a) number of journals from a country and its research output, (b) growth rate of journals and research output for different countries, (c) global share of journals and research output for different countries, and (d) subject area-wise number of journals and research output in that subject area for different countries. Factors like journal packing density are also analysed. The results obtained show that for majority of the countries, the number of journals is positively correlated to their research output volume, though some other factors also play a role in growth of research output. The study at the end presents a discussion of the analytical outcomes and provides useful suggestions on policy perspectives for different countries.