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

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.