Evolution of the scholarly mega-journal, 2006–2017

Introduction

Electronic dissemination on the web has long been envisioned as a “game changer” for the publishing of scholarly peer reviewed journals. Open access publishing, in which readers no longer pay for access content, has become possible due to this (Suber, 2012). Nevertheless, leading mainstream publishers have been slow in adapting OA, simply because the subscription model is still very lucrative (Björk, 2017a). The big change in their business model has been from paper to electronic delivery, and the bundling of journals into huge e-licenses.

The leading publishers (commercial, society and university press) have consequently been quite cautious in starting new OA journals or converting existing journals to open access funded by author-side payments. They have instead partially opened around 10,000 journals in a hybrid form, in which authors can pay to make their articles open in otherwise closed subscription journals (Laakso & Björk, 2016).

Electronic web delivery has also made possible experiments with new types of peer review, for instance open peer review, in which the manuscripts have been posted on the web and readers provide reviews. One type of review which web publishing indirectly has facilitated is a review based only on scientific soundness, not on the perceived importance of the findings. The reason is that electronic-only OA journals no longer need to restrict the number of articles yearly published, but can easily scale up according to the number of submissions.

Using such review methods several publishers have started so-called mega-journals, in the wake of the phenomenal success of the pioneering PLOS ONE journal. Over the last ten years the total article output of such journals has rapidly grown, and nowadays constitutes a significant share of all output in OA journals.

A number of authors have proposed slightly varying definitions of what constitutes a mega-journal (Norman, 2012; Spezi et al., 2017). The definition of a mega-journal used in this study is the same as in Björk (2015). A mega-journal has to fulfil five primary criteria:

• A big publishing volume or aiming at it

• Peer review by scientific soundness only

• Broad subject area

• Full open access

• Funded by authors paying publishing fees.

In addition, a mega-journal should fulfil several (but not necessarily all) of a number of secondary criteria. These include:

• Rapid publication

• Moderate author fee

• High prestige publisher.

For the full list see (Björk, 2015).

The aim of this study was to provide new updated data on the longitudinal evolution of mega-journal output, and to compare that with the article volumes of related phenomena such as articles in full OA journals and hybrid OA journals.

Earlier Research

There have been relatively few empirical studies of mega-journals. In addition, there have been a number of interesting newsletter and blog items, which to some extent have reported data, but which also express opinions about the phenomenon. In addition to the more scholarly studies, advocates for OA and sceptics have debated the merits and dangers of mega-journals. Titles such as: “Open Access Megajournals—have they changed everything” (Binfield, 2013), “and “Mega-journals: the future, as stepping stone to it or a leap into the abyss?” (Pinfield, 2016) describe the discourse pretty well.

Academic studies concerning mega-journals have covered a number of aspects. Topics which have been covered in the earlier literature include:

• Definition of a mega-journal, features, lists of journals (Norman, 2012; Björk, 2015; Spezi et al., 2017).

• Bibliometric studies of citations, etc. (Björk & Catani, 2016; Wakeling et al., 2016).

• Author surveys, factors affecting journal choice, etc. (Solomon, 2013).

• Case studies of individual journals (Wilson & Humphrey, 2017; Wakeling et al., 2017).

Spezi et al. (2017) provides an excellent review of the literature to date, and the reader is referred to that article for a more in-depth discussion.

There have been a handful of studies and blog-items that, in particular, have included data on the article volume development of mega-journals (Binfield, 2013; Björk, 2015; Spezi et al., 2017). The range of included journals varied somewhat but since all tend to have included the leading journals PLOS ONE and Scientific Reports, they are roughly comparable. All these show a very rapid growth period from 2010, which seems to have started levelling out in 2013–2015.

Methods

The basis for the list of mega-journals studied were the 14 journals which had been identified in the earlier study (Björk, 2015). Springer Plus was included, despite the fact that it has ceased publishing from the start of 2017. In addition, five additional journals were added. Medicine, F1000 research, and BMC research notes had been included in the previous study of Spezi et al. (2017). Heliyon started publishing only recently. The Cogent series of 15 mega-journals (Cogent Engineering, Cogent Social Sciences, etc.) were also added and considered as one journal.

The publication volumes for the journals were checked 15-16.1.2018 using Scopus for all the journals included in that index, using the advanced search function which allows searching articles in a particular journal. Only articles were included and all other types of indexed items (reviews, errata, retractions) were excluded. In the case of the Cogent series of journals and the Journal of Engineering, articles were hand counted from the websites.

The share of Chinese authors in the journals was obtained using the Scopus numerical breakdown of country affiliation of the authors. Thus the count is based on where the author is working, not directly on nationality. What Scopus counts are articles with at least one author from the country in question. Since many articles have more than one author, the sum of the country affiliations will be higher than the number of articles (had only the corresponding authors been counted the sums would be equal). This is not a problem if the longitudinal changes in shares are studied or in comparisons between countries or with other disciplines. The same method has been used in the earlier study by Wakeling et al.  (2016).

Results

Discussion

The article output of mega-journals should be seen in context, for instance as part of the publications from all credible peer reviewed journals (so-called predatory OA journals excluded). A good tool for measuring this is the Scopus index which currently indexes around 20,700 mostly English language journals, including 17 of the 19 journals in this study.

Between 2010 and 2016 the overall number of articles indexed in Scopus grew by 28%, to around 2,170,000. In a separate on-going study together with Mikael Laakso, we have estimated that in 2010 the share of OA articles of all Scopus articles was 10.3% and grew to 19.4% by 2016. The by far biggest growth rates in this period were for mega-journals (0.4% to 2.6% Scopus share) and articles in hybrid OA journals (0.6% to 2.0%). The numbers for hybrid journals are from a recent separate study (Björk, 2017b). In 2010 almost every second OA article was still published in a journal not charging authors (81,000 vs 93,000 in APC-charging) but by 2016 charging the authors had started dominating the picture (129,000 free vs 293,000 for which APCs were paid).

This study is a straightforward empirical study using robust data available from high-quality indexing services. No sampling has been required. It is easily replicable and can also be renewed at a later stage to study subsequent developments. The results for the earlier years are well in line with the results from research reported in the “earlier research” section. The minor differences can be explained by slightly different lists of included journals and using Scopus vs counting articles from journal websites. A key challenge is obviously also in future studies to identify new Mega-journals as such are started up or converted from subscription journals.

A very challenging future research topic is what the effects of the “scientific soundness” only review criterion has on the internal citation patterns of articles in mega-journals vs. traditional journals (Björk & Catani, 2016; Wakeling et al., 2016).

Conclusions

All in all, the developments in article numbers indicate that mega-journals have found a place in scholarly publishing. From a business perspective they complement well the journal portfolios of major commercial and society publishers, and thrive in symbiosis with more selective journals, for instance via rejected submissions being redirected to them via so-called cascading reviews (Spezi et al., 2017). Mega-journals will not revolutionize the industry and the way mainstream peer review works, but they cater to the needs of particular groups of authors in providing rapid publication, better predictability of getting a submission accepted and reasonable brand recognition in publication lists.