The Megajournal Lifecycle - The Scholarly Kitchen

"PLOS ONE and Scientific Reports have been very successful journals. Any publisher would be thankful to have them in their portfolio. Nonetheless, their unstable performance should also serve as a warning. In the year of their steepest decline, each journal shrunk by about 7,000 articles, which can translate to a loss of more than $10m year-on-year. That will reflect poorly on the balance sheet of any publisher.

The takeaways for publishers are simple:

• Do not get carried away; the revenue of megajournals can be inconsistent, so avoid overselling their success to investors and avoid reckless investments
• Invest heavily in marketing; if the journal is shedding 10% of citability every year, marketing should try plug this hole as well as possible
• Build around their success; launch affiliated, higher impact journals that will absorb some of the eventual content loss
• Do not put all your eggs in one basket; pursue a less risky, broad portfolio approach rather than a smaller, focused megajournal approach...."