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Open Access Mega-Journals: Quality, Economics and Post-publication Peer Review Infrastructure

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Publishing Research Quarterly Aims and scope

Abstract

As the publishing industry evolves towards the predominant open access (OA) model, publishers are establishing OA journal power-houses, the OA mega-journals (OAMJs), which are wide in scope, with larger-than-usual editor boards, and that pump out large numbers of papers. OAMJs are thus able to accommodate a surge in submissions, or transfers from other journals within the same publisher’s fleet. OAMJs represent a simple but effective publishing model that can also be an effective business model. We question whether the peer review system is robust enough to accommodate for effective post-publication peer review in OAMJs. As examples, we examine Scientific Reports, PLOS One, Heliyon, F1000Research, PeerJ, and BMJ Open, as well as a possible developing OAMJ, eLife, for clues to the dynamics of OAMJs and the possible links to quality control via peer review or post-publication peer review. We also take a closer look at the economics of OA publishing that might be driving the expansion of the OAMJ market.

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Notes

  1. For simplicity sake, we only refer to the most gamed metric, the Clarivate Analytics journal impact factor (JIF) [30, 42], when we use the term “rank” in this paper.

  2. https://scholarlycommunications.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2017/08/23/article-processing-charges-in-2016/; in this survey, there are several limitations that might not reflect a global trend: (1) UK-based; (2) assessment across 11 institutions; 38 publishers assessed.

  3. https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/.

  4. https://creativecommons.org.nz/2013/10/open-access-megajouncrearnals-have-they-changed-everything/.

  5. eLife, which is financially supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust, and which charges a publishing fee (APC) of US$ 2500 per paper, pays its Editor-in-Chief, three Deputy Editors, 39 Senior Editors and almost 300 Reviewing Editors for their time https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/b6365b76/setting-a-fee-for-publication.

  6. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/04/06/scientific-reports-overtakes-plos-one-as-largest-megajournal/.

  7. https://springerplus.springeropen.com/.

  8. https://springerplus.springeropen.com/about/springerplus-faqs (“Ultimately, we felt that SpringerPlus covered too wide a range of disciplines, from the natural sciences to engineering and the social sciences. These are very different research communities, with very different needs when submitting or transferring manuscripts, and a one-size-fits-all journal is not the solution.”).

  9. https://www.springeropen.com/.

  10. https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/journal-author/the-springer-transfer-desk.

  11. https://blog.frontiersin.org/2017/06/28/quality-impact-journal-analysis-frontiers-in-plant-science/.

  12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_journal.

  13. As a hypothetical example, a “cost per journal JIF” of $2900 APC for a JIF = 2.0 journal would be rewarded less than a publication in a journal with JIF = 4.0 journal that charges an APC of $400.

  14. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/01/06/plos-one-shrinks-by-11-percent/; https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/11/27/plos-reports-2016-financial-loss/.

  15. http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2018/04/plos-update/.

  16. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/mega-journals-future-stepping-stone-it-or-leap-abyss.

  17. https://forbetterscience.com/2018/01/22/plos-one-publishes-near-copy-of-retracted-jbc-paper-sans-coauthor-carlo-croce/.

  18. https://retractionwatch.com/2018/03/20/over-a-dozen-board-members-resigned-after-a-journal-refused-to-retract-a-paper-today-its-retracted/.

  19. https://forbetterscience.com/?s=Frontiers.

  20. http://www.translationalethics.com/2017/06/02/recapping-the-recent-plagiarism-scandal/.

  21. https://www.protocols.io/groups/protocolsio/news/megajournals-megamyths (“The past decade has conclusively established that this model is welcome, needed, and sustainable. Just look at the explosion in the number of articles published in megajournals”; “Megajournals do not do peer review (or, they do “peer review light”). That’s a malicious myth which seems to have been intentionally spread by several authors of the publisher-funded Scholarly Kitchen. See “How a sustained misinformation campaign by Scholarly Kitchen attacked PLOS ONE’s rigorous peer review.””).

  22. https://www.scienceroot.com/#science.

  23. https://www.plos.org/article-level-metrics.

  24. https://web.hypothes.is/.

  25. https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/81d42f7d/elife-enhances-open-annotation-with-hypothesis-to-promote-scientific-discussion-online.

  26. http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/8/3/e019700.responses.

  27. One could argue that the review process F1000Research implements does not meet the threshold of PPPR, since pre-publication peer review is absent [51].

  28. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/03/27/how-rigorous-is-the-post-publication-review-process-at-f1000-research/.

  29. https://f1000research.com/faqs.

  30. https://peerj.com/preprints-search/.

  31. The term “published” should, sensu lato, indicate the release of information into the public, and in that sense, F1000Research represents and uses the term accurately, as do preprint servers; many other publishers incorrectly associate “published” with having been peer reviewed.

  32. https://www.cshl.edu/plos-cshl-enter-agreement-enable-preprint-posting-biorxiv/.

  33. STM 2018 report states, on page 136: “Several dedicated studies looking at levels of OA in the years 2014–2016 have also returned figures for OA content in the region of 30%, while others report substantially higher figures, in excess of 50% in some cases (see Table 1)”.

  34. Economic profit is defined as revenue minus all costs including the opportunity cost of the shareholders’ investment into the firm. Hence, positive economic profits means the firms are making above-normal profits.

  35. According to the 2015 STM report by Ware and Mabe, the global cost of peer review is estimated at £1.9 billion annually. This translated to an estimate of £1200 per paper [22] or US$1656 (April 30, 2018 exchange rate: 1 £GB = 1.38 US$; https://www.xe.com/). Houghton et al. [15] estimated a higher true cost of peer review at £1400 per paper or US$1932 (April 30, 2018 exchange rate). These hidden costs are not far from the average APC being charged by OAMJs. These are full costs and include reviewers’ time.

  36. Christensen [12] coined the term “innovative disruptions” as events that cause turmoil in an established market causing profound and permanent changes in the structure. Examples include Google, Apple, Uber and AirBnB. For innovative disruptions see: http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/.

  37. Assuming a 6.7% continued growth starting from 2.4 million articles published in 2013.

  38. This number might be a large underestimate of the real number of academics that publish. According to ResearchGate, an academic social networking site, there are currently in excess of 15 million academics: https://www.researchgate.net/about.

  39. We assume that there are also publishing entities that will publish anything for a zero APC without peer review or with weak peer review, with the sole objective of increasing their volume of published literature and profile. Such publishers take a slice of the orphan papers, depriving other legitimate publishers from collecting potential APCs. Such unscholarly players thus also represent a financial threat.

  40. However, Solomon does not examine how many papers the other journals published that were previously rejected by yet other journals and hence one cannot argue that OAMJs publish lower quality work because there is no control group against which quality can be compared.

  41. “PLOS ONE’s instructions for authors indicates the publisher will help in transferring manuscripts from one PLOS journal to another but encourage authors to carefully consider which PLOS journal would be most appropriate for their manuscript before submission.” (p. 6).

  42. http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=19900191708&tip=sid&clean=0.

  43. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/03/09/peerj-waives-apc-pivots/.

  44. https://www.cell.com/iscience/home.

  45. According to Christensen, disruptive innovation “describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.” See: http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/.

  46. https://www.journals.elsevier.com/scientific-african/.

  47. https://osf.io/preprints/africarxiv?platform=hootsuite.

  48. https://ucl.scienceopen.com/.

  49. https://ucl-about.scienceopen.com/article-processing-charges/.

  50. https://sites.jamanetwork.com/jamanetworkopen/index.html.

  51. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/pages/instructions-for-authors.

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All authors are co-corresponding authors. All authors contributed equally to the intellectual discussion underlying this paper, literature exploration, writing, reviews and editing, and accept equal responsibility for the content and analyses therein.

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  1. Kagawa-ken, Japan

    Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva

  2. Department of Economics, Thompson Rivers University, 805 TRU Way, Kamloops, BC, V2C 0C8, Canada

    Panagiotis Tsigaris

  3. Faculty of Dentistry, Jordan University of Science and Technology, P. O. Box 3030, Irbid, 22110, Jordan

    Aceil Al-Khatib

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Teixeira da Silva, J.A., Tsigaris, P. & Al-Khatib, A. Open Access Mega-Journals: Quality, Economics and Post-publication Peer Review Infrastructure. Pub Res Q 35, 418–435 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-019-09654-8

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