Mega-journals: the future, a stepping stone to it or a leap into the abyss? | Times Higher Education (THE)
lterrat's bookmarks 2016-11-08
Summary:
"One of the most important trends in scientific publishing over the past decade has been the advent of the open access mega-journal.
Plos One, still seen as the exemplar mega-journal, is 10 years old this year. At its peak in 2013, it published 31,509 articles – an unprecedented scale of output for a single journal title. The fact that it has for some time been the largest academic journal globally is partly due to its wide scope: Plos One accepts papers right across science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects (and some social sciences), reversing the 50-year trend for greater and greater specialisation in journal publishing. In recent years, a number of publishers have tried to imitate Plos One but none has been so successful. Until now."