Open-Access Mega-Journals: A Bibliometric Profile

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

In this paper we present the first comprehensive bibliometric analysis of eleven open-access mega-journals (OAMJs). OAMJs are a relatively recent phenomenon, and have been characterised as having four key characteristics: large size; broad disciplinary scope; a Gold-OA business model; and a peer-review policy that seeks to determine only the scientific soundness of the research rather than evaluate the novelty or significance of the work. Our investigation focuses on four key modes of analysis: journal outputs (the number of articles published and changes in output over time); OAMJ author characteristics (nationalities and institutional affiliations); subject areas (the disciplinary scope of OAMJs, and variations in sub-disciplinary output); and citation profiles (the citation distributions of each OAMJ, and the impact of citing journals). We found that while the total output of the eleven mega-journals grew by 14.9% between 2014 and 2015, this growth is largely attributable to the increased output of Scientific Reports and Medicine. We also found substantial variation in the geographical distribution of authors. Several journals have a relatively high proportion of Chinese authors, and we suggest this may be linked to these journals’ high Journal Impact Factors (JIFs). The mega-journals were also found to vary in subject scope, with several journals publishing disproportionately high numbers of articles in certain sub-disciplines. Our citation analsysis offers support for Björk & Catani’s suggestion that OAMJs’s citation distributions can be similar to those of traditional journals, while noting considerable variation in citation rates across the eleven titles. We conclude that while the OAMJ term is useful as a means of grouping journals which share a set of key characteristics, there is no such thing as a “typical” mega-journal, and we suggest several areas for additional research that might help us better understand the current and future role of OAMJs in scholarly communication.

Related collections

Most cited references 2

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Is Open Access

A survey of authors publishing in four megajournals

David Solomon (2014)

Aim. To determine the characteristics of megajournal authors, the nature of the manuscripts they are submitting to these journals, factors influencing their decision to publish in a megajournal, sources of funding for article processing charges (APCs) or other fees and their likelihood of submitting to a megajournal in the future. Methods. Web-based survey of 2,128 authors who recently published in BMJ Open, PeerJ, PLOS ONE or SAGE Open. Results. The response rate ranged from 26% for BMJ Open to 47% for SAGE Open. The authors were international, largely academics who had recently published in both subscription and Open Access (OA) journals. Across journals about 25% of the articles were preliminary findings and just under half were resubmissions of manuscripts rejected by other journals. Editors from other BMJ journals and perhaps to a lesser extent SAGE and PLOS journals appear to be encouraging authors to submit manuscripts that were rejected by the editor’s journals to a megajournal published by the same publisher. Quality of the journal and speed of the review process were important factors across all four journals. Impact factor was important for PLOS ONE authors but less so for BMJ Open authors, which also has an impact factor. The review criteria and the fact the journal was OA were other significant factors particularly important for PeerJ authors. The reputation of the publisher was an important factor for SAGE Open and BMJ Open. About half of PLOS ONE and around a third of BMJ Open and PeerJ authors used grant funding for publishing charges while only about 10% of SAGE Open used grant funding for publication charges. Around 60% of SAGE Open and 32% of PeerJ authors self-funded their publication fees however the fees are modest for these journals. The majority of authors from all 4 journals were pleased with their experience and indicated they were likely to submit to the same or similar journal in the future. Conclusions. Megajournals are drawing an international group of authors who tend to be experienced academics. They are choosing to publish in megajournals for a variety of reasons but most seem to value the quality of the journal and the speed of the review/publication process. Having a broad scope was not a key factor for most authors though being OA was important for PeerJ and SAGE Open authors. Most authors appeared pleased with the experience and indicated they are likely to submit future manuscripts to the same or similar megajournal which seems to suggest these journals will continue to grow in popularity.

0 comments Cited 37 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

China's chemists should avoid the Vanity Fair

Nai-Xing Wang (2011)

0 comments Cited 2 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Contributors

Pablo Dorta-González: Role: Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS ONE

Journal ID (publisher-id): plos

Journal ID (pmc): plosone

Title: PLoS ONE

Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )

ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203

Publication date (Electronic): 18 November 2016

Publication date Collection: 2016

Volume: 11

Issue: 11

Electronic Location Identifier: e0165359

Affiliations

[1 ]Information School, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

[2 ]LISU, Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom

[3 ]School of the Arts, English and Drama, Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom

Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria, SPAIN

Author notes

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Conceptualization: SW PW SP VS JF CC.
Formal analysis: SW.
Funding acquisition: SP CC JF PW.
Investigation: SW.
Methodology: SW PW SP.
Project administration: SP.
Visualization: SW CC.
Writing – original draft: SW PW.
Writing – review & editing: SW PW SP VS JF CC.

* E-mail: s.wakeling@ 123456sheffield.ac.uk

Author information

Simon Wakeling http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0611-9083

Article

Publisher ID: PONE-D-16-23068

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0165359

PMC ID: 5115662

PubMed ID: 27861511

SO-VID: a52e3d94-1be7-4a65-b8bf-a4c15fd2da86

License:

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

History

Date received : 8 June 2016

Date accepted : 10 October 2016

Page count

Figures: 9, Tables: 10, Pages: 26

Funding

Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000267, Arts and Humanities Research Council;

Award ID: AH/M010643/1

Award Recipient : Stephen Pinfield

This research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK (grant number AH/M010643/1) ( http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/projects?ref=AH/M010643/1).

Custom metadata

Data Availability The data are owned by and have been obtained from Elsevier’s Scopus database. Any researcher with access to the Scopus database can obtain the data using the methods described in the paper. Readers that do not have access to the Scopus database should contact Elsevier to obtain a license. As per the Elsevier terms of use, the authors may also be able to provide limited access to data, subject to Elsevier’s agreement.

Open-Access Mega-Journals: A Bibliometric Profile

Read this article at

Abstract

Related collections

PLOS Climate