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 during the last two decades has not only simplified the process of submissions to journals but has also increased their access across the world. It is well-known that there are significant differences in the total number of journals indexed from different countries. It is, however, not very concretely known whether the lack of appropriate number of publication venues in a country (including in one or more subject areas) may inhibit its publication propensity in one way or other. This article, therefore, attempts to explore the relationship between the number of journals indexed from a country and its research output. Scopus database is used as reference database and the master journal list of Scopus is analysed to identify number of journals indexed from 50 selected countries, that have significant volume of research output. The publication data for the countries is obtained from Scopus. The following major relationships are observed: (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. The results show that for majority of the countries, the number of journals indexed is positively correlated to their research output volume. A similar relationship is also observed in the subject area-wise analysis, confirming existence of the positive correlations between number of journals in a subject area and the research output in that subject area. However, several countries do not fully conform to the observed relationship, indicating that there are several other factors driving the research output of a country. The study, at the end, presents a discussion of the outcomes and provides implications for policy perspectives for different countries.