Open-Access Mega-Journals

Feature Open-access mega-journals

As most major publishers have now launched a mega-journal with new approaches to scale, scope, and quality, a project team headed by Stephen Pinfield at Sheffield University is investigating the phenomenon which is causing some debate and controversy.

ONE of the most important trends in scientific publishing over the past decade The authors: at Sheffield University, has been the advent of the so-called Peter Willett is Co-Investigator; Stephen Pinfield is the OAMJ project’s Principal open-access (OA) ‘mega-journal’. In 2015, Investigator; and Simon Wakeling is a team from the Universities of Sheffield Research Associate ([email protected]). and Loughborough, led by Stephen Pinfield, was awarded a grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to analyse the characteristics of the phenomenon and evaluate its significance for the research community and beyond. This article provides a brief introduction to mega-journals, based on the literature review undertaken in the first phase of that project.1 Open-access mega-journals (OAMJs) several titles which can be grouped under now appear to be an established part of At Loughborough University, Valerie Spezi this broad heading. The first such journal, the scholarly communication landscape. ([email protected]) is Research PLOS ONE launched in 2006, has been Associate and Claire Creaser and Jenny Almost all major publishers have now followed by titles such as PeerJ, BMJ Open, Fry are Co-Investigators. launched their own mega-journal. Their and Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing), to combination of new approaches to scale, name only a few. Size is relative, however, scope, and quality – in conjunction with an with both PLOS ONE and Scientific Reports OA business model – mean that they have each publishing more than 10,000 citable given rise to debate and controversy, some articles in 2015, while others are, by com- of it heated. parison, somewhat smaller, albeit still much What is a ‘mega-journal’? larger than many academic journals, e.g. PeerJ published some 800 articles in 2015. The term ‘mega-journal’ was first used One key reason for such large numbers is specifically in relation to journal size, but having a broad subject scope: PLOS ONE is now used more widely, and there are

Table 1: Criteria for a mega-journal

Primary criteria Secondary criteria

l Large publishing volume or aiming for it l Moderate APC l Broad subject area l High-prestige publisher l l Peer review of scientific soundness only Academic editors l Reusable graphics & data Open-access mega-journals l Full open access with APC (OAMJs) now appear to be l Altmetrics an established part of the l Commenting scholarly communication l Portable reviews landscape. l Rapid publication

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Open Acess Mega Journals pp31-33.indd 1 23/02/2017 15:53 accepts articles from all science, technology and medicine (STM) disciplines and some social sciences. Articles are not assessed on their potential ‘interest’ to a nar- row subject community, nor on criteria of ‘novelty’ or ‘importance’, judgements which are traditional- ly central to the acceptance criteria of the majority of established peer-reviewed titles. Rather, PLOS ONE assesses articles based on the primary criterion of ‘scientific soundness’, and all articles which meet this quality threshold (within the very broad subject coverage) are accepted for publication. As a result, the term ‘mega-journal’ has become associated not merely with large-scale publishing output, but also breadth of scope and peer-review criteria based specifically on soundness, as well as the basic criterion of open access, normally with a business model of pre-publication article-processing charges Figure 1: Article numbers in the 11 largest mega-journals, 2006-2015. (APCs). The key elements are summarised in table 1 together with several secondary Source: Scopus. criteria, some or all of which are character- istic of many mega-journals. 2 prolific title, publishing 1,940 research ar- to debate whether some of the smaller me- These criteria (derived from Björk) are ticles compared to PLOS ONE’s 1,756. RSC ga-journal titles are large enough to justify somewhat subjective, so that providing an Advances, the third most productive title in the ‘mega’ prefix. exact classification is challenging – when 2015, published over 12,800 articles in 2015, can a journal be described as ‘mega’? We and is now, as of the beginning of 2017, 2 How broad is ‘broad’? discuss the primary criteria further in the Gold OA, but still has a traditional peer Large publication volumes are generally remainder of this section. review process.4 associated with broad disciplinary scope, Other mega-journal titles also grew the second of the Björk criteria. Broad 1 How large is ‘large’? during the period, but with much smaller scope is a major departure from scholarly Bibliometric work conducted by the re- numbers of articles, between 500-1,000 arti- publishing trends of the last 50 years, which search team reveals variations in mega-jour- cles a year. Bearing in mind that publication have been characterised by ever-increas- nal size.3 In 2015, the combined outputs volumes are strongly discipline-depend- ing levels of subject specialisation. Many of the 11 mega-journals that meet a strict ent, this places them at the same level as mega-journals cover an entire discipline interpretation of Björk’s primary criteria some large, well-established STM journals (e.g. all life sciences; all of physics) or a and that are also indexed in Scopus totalled based on conventional interest and signifi- range of disciplines (e.g. all science, tech- 44,820 articles (Figure 1). PLOS ONE clearly cance-based peer review; indeed, 15 other nology and medicine). Heliyon, launched in dominates this figure. However, 2013 was titles indexed in Web of Science published 2015, covers all academic disciplines. Again, a high point in PLOS ONE output, with a more than 3,000 articles in 2015, and more this is not unique to mega-journals – Nature decline to 27,488 in 2015, while Nature’s than 400 published over 500 articles in that and Science have long covered all scientific Scientific Reports grew from 2,494 in 2013 to year. While such titles are in the largest one disciplines, while RSC Advances covers ‘all 10,600 in 2015. In September 2016, Scientific per cent of all journals, the lack of a clearly of the chemical sciences, including multi- Reports overtook PLOS ONE as the most agreed definition means it remains open disciplinary and emerging areas’ detailing over 100 topics which are included. Notwithstanding their theoretically The OAMJ Project broad scope, mega-journals have been dominated by biomedical disciplines in We are conducting terms of the number of articles published. a two-year project One factor may be the wider acceptance of funded by AHRC to Gold OA publishing by these disciplines, explore the recent and the willingness of the cognate fund- phenomenon of open-access ing agencies to support the associated mega-journals and the future of costs. There is evidence, however, that scholarly communication. other disciplines, particularly the physical This is a collaboration between Lough sciences, are now adopting mega-journals, borough University and Sheffield University. for example AIP Advances in physics, with The project is led by Stephen Pinfield a small number of OAMJ initiatives in the from SheffieldUniversity. Further details humanities and social sciences, notably can be found on our project website at

http://oamj.org/ Follow us on twitter at SAGE Open, launched in 2011, and the @OAMJ_Project Open Library of the Humanities, launched in 2014. 32 CILIPUPDATE March 2017

Open Acess Mega Journals pp31-33.indd 2 23/02/2017 15:53 3 Approach to Peer Review publishing volume is clearly facilitated mega-journals, interviewing publishers, This is perhaps the criterion which most by broad subject scope and objective peer conducting subject-based case studies, and closely defines the mega-journal and is review, but which of these criteria is the a broad survey of academics to analyse the certainly the most controversial. Me- driving aim? Alternatively, do publishers characteristics of the emergent open-access ga-journals’ approach to quality control of mega-journals simply wish to imple- ‘mega-journal’ phenomenon and evaluate – peer review based only on scientific ment a novel and more ‘democratic’ ap- its significance for the research community soundness – has been criticised as rep- proach to scholarly publishing? In practice, and beyond. resenting a decline in quality standards, the answer is likely to differ for the various labelled, for example, as ‘light peer OAMJ publishers, and one of the aims of Conclusion review’. By dispensing with traditional our project is to obtain the views of a range Mega-journals have the potential to peer review processes, mega-journals are of stakeholders on this and other aspects of fundamentally alter the scholarly com- seen as casting off the valuable filtering the OAMJ phenomenon. munication landscape and this may have function of journals that researchers Mega-journals themselves are hetero- direct implications for research support rely on, even if only to save them time. geneous in terms of their characteristics. librarians, serials librarians, and research Mega-journals, it is argued, simply have a Key components of OAMJs are being libraries as a whole. Librarians have a lower quality bar. implemented and combined in different key role to play in the evolving scholarly On the other hand, it is also argued ways. It remains to be seen whether this communication landscape, particularly as that peer review focused on soundness – will simply add to the range of choices for their role as curators of scholarly output is described more positively as ‘objective peer authors so that mega-journals find an ac- changing, moving from serials purchasing review’ – avoids the subjectivity associated commodation with conventional selective decisions to signposting resources in the with peer reviewers judging the novelty of journals, or whether mega-journals signal increasingly open access journal landscape. a piece of work, its potential importance a reshaping of scholarly communication Whether this will be made easier or harder to a field, or its interest to a given subject that will ultimately change its fundamental by the rise of the mega-journal remains to community. All of these, it is suggested, in- character. be seen. nU volve subjective judgements compared with The relative lack of detailed research Acknowledgements the more ‘objective’ assessment of scientific into the mega-journal phenomenon means This article was produced as part of the soundness. It could be argued that the understanding their current place in the Open-Access Mega-Journals and the Future publishing landscape is challenging. of Scholarly Communication project funded process is no less rigorous, and the frequent AHRC, AH/M010643/1. requirement to deposit data alongside the Determining the role OAMJs may play in article can be seen to enhance quality, since the future is an even more difficult task. Clearly a range of factors will influence this the results can be properly assessed, and References & further reading future, including the extent to which funder replicated. 1 Spezi, V. et al. ‘Open-access mega-journals: the Accompanying this argument is the view mandates can drive OA publishing in gen- future of scholarly communication or academic eral, the role and perceived importance of dumping ground? a review.’ Journal of Documenta- that novelty, importance and interest can, in tion, 2017, doi: 10.1108/JD-06-2016-0082 the journal impact factor, how well technol- fact, be better assessed following publica- 2 Björk, B.-C. ‘Have the ‘mega-journals’ reached the tion by measuring the reception and use of ogy can support researchers’ information limits to growth?’, PeerJ, 2015, Vol. 3, p. e981. a paper. This has been part of the motiva- seeking and filtering, and the emergence (or 3 Wakeling, S. et al. ‘Open access mega-journals: a not) of competing models. bibliometric profile.’ PLOS ONE, 2016, doi: 10.1371/ tion for mega-journals giving article-level journal.pone.0165359 metrics (including downloads, citations, Determining how mega-journals will 4 www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/about-journals/ bookmarks, and social-media comment) interact with and shape the development rsc-advances/ of these and other innovations remains a 5 Solomon, D.J. and Björk, B.-C. ‘A study of open greater prominence than has often been the access journals using article processing charges.’ case in conventional journals. key challenge, and one that merits further Journal of the American Society for Information systematic study. Our project is making Science and Technology, 2012, Vol. 63 No. 8, pp. 1485–1495. 4 OA Economic Model a start, analysing the bibliometric data of The fourth primary criterion for defining mega-journals is open access based on an APC-business model. The model is not, of course, unique to mega-journals, and is not the only way to achieve Gold OA. In fact, the majority of journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ, at https://doaj.org/) are not funded by APCs; alternatives, including sponsorship and membership models, are also widely used. Mega-journals typically charge a moderate APC, with an average around US $1,300. This is more than the average APC for fully-OA journals, in the region of US $9005 but substantially less than that of top ranking, fully-OA journals (ranging from US $2,500-$5,000), or hybrid journals (US $3,000).

Mega-journals in the information landscape It is clear that there is great variety in the mega-journal landscape. Björk’s mega-journal criteria are interrelated – large March 2017 CILIPUPDATE 33

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