Quantitative comparison of undergraduate research journals success

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine, quantitively, what characteristics of undergraduate research journals generate the most downloads. Thirtyeight journals were included in the study and ten different characteristics were recorded for each journal based on the availability of the information. The ten characteristics were discipline of the journal, acceptance rate, total downloads of the journal, downloads in the last year, total articles published over the life of the journal, cost to the auth ors for publishing, access to open text, the average number of articles per released issue, the school the journal is based out of, and the year the journal was started. These metrics were compared to one another as they relate to downloads of the journals . We found that most successful journals had the following metrics: they published 8 or more articles per issue, published works from any discipline, had open access to the journal, were started between 2010 and 2015, and had simplified websites with easy access to information.