Open Access E-Books in the Field of Health Sciences: A Scientometric Study

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a discovery service for open access e-books. It provides a searchable index to peer-reviewed e-books published under an open access business model. The present study aims to assess the scientometric trends of the open access e-books in the field of the Health Sciences available through the Directory of Open Access Books. In order to fulfil the set objectives, the relevant details of the Health Sciences e-books were collected. The results reveal that 916 e-books are available in the field of the Health Sciences through the Directory of Open Access. The highest number of e-books is contributed in General Medicine (40.61%, 372) and in the English language (83.84%, 768). These e-books also contain current information as the majority (88.32%, 809) of these are published from 2011 onwards by the reputed publishers like Frontiers Media, SciELO, Springer, Palgrave Macmillan, and Oxford University Press etc. The Directory of Open Access Books was selected as a source for data collection whereas the Health Sciences was selected as the field of study. Therefore, the finding can’t be generalised across directories and subjects.