Megajournal
Mega journal
Peer-reviewed academic open access journal
A mega journal (also mega-journal and megajournal) is a peer-reviewed academic open access journal designed to be much larger than a traditional journal by exercising low selectivity among accepted articles. It was pioneered by PLOS ONE.[1][2] This "very lucrative publishing model"[2] was soon emulated by other publishers.
A mega journal has the following defining characteristics:
- broad coverage of different subject areas;[1][2][3][4][5]
- accepting articles for publication based on whether they are technically sound rather than selecting for perceived importance;[1][2][3][4][5][6] and
- using article processing charges to cover the costs of publishing.[1][3][5]
Other less universal characteristics are
- "an accelerated review and publication process",[2] "fast turnaround time";[6]
- "academic editors",[6] even "a large editorial board of academic editors",[5] (instead of professional editors); and
- value-added services such as reusable graphics and data through Creative Commons licenses.[7]
Mega journals are also online-only, with no printed version, and are fully open access, in contrast to hybrid open access journals.[7] Some "predatory" open access publishers use the mega journal model.[1]
It has been suggested that the academic journal landscape might become dominated by a few mega journals in the future, at least in terms of total number of articles published.[8] Megajournals are also disrupting[clarification needed] the market of article processing charges.[9] Their business model may not motivate reviewers, who donate their time to "influence their field, gain exposure to the most current cutting edge research or list their service to a prestigious journal on their CVs."[10] Finally, they may no longer serve as "fora for the exchange ... among colleagues in a particular field or sub-field", as traditionally happened in scholarly journals.[11] To counter that indiscrimination, PLOS ONE, the prototypical megajournal, has started to "package relevant articles into subject-specific collections."[12]
- PLOS ONE[1][2][3][4][5][6][13][14][15][16][17]
- ACS Omega[18]
- Scientific Reports[2][3][5][6][15][17][19]
- SAGE Open[3][4][5][15][17][19]
- Royal Society Open Science[lower-alpha 1]
- BMJ Open[2][3][5][15][17]
- PeerJ[2][4][5][13][14]
- Medicine (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins journal)[21][22][23][24]
- Biology Open[5][6][17]
- IEEE Access[5][25][lower-alpha 2]
- FEBS Open Bio[5][6]
- AIP Advances[5][17]
- G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics[5][17]
- Open Library of Humanities[lower-alpha 3]
- De Gruyter Open imprint[lower-alpha 4]
- Heliyon (Elsevier)[lower-alpha 5]
- IET The Journal of Engineering[lower-alpha 6]
- Beall, Jeffrey (2013). "Five Predatory Mega-Journals: A Review" (PDF). The Charleston Advisor. 14 (4): 20–25. doi:10.5260/chara.14.4.20.
- Bo-Christer Björk & David Solomon (March 2014). Developing an Effective Market for Open Access Article Processing Charges (PDF) (Report). Wellcome Trust. pp. 69 pages. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-06-02.
- "Wiley". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2014-09-26.
- Claire Creaser (5 May 2014). "The rise of the mega-journal". School of Business and Economics Research Blog. Loughborough University.
- Peter Binfield (19 January 2014). "Novel Scholarly Journal Concepts". In Sönke Bartling; Sascha Friesike (eds.). Opening Science. pp. 155–163. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8_10. ISBN 978-3-319-00025-1.
- Frank Norman (9 July 2012). "Megajournals". Trading Knowledge. Frank Norman.
- Björk, Bo-Christer (2015-05-26). "Have the "mega-journals" reached the limits to growth?". PeerJ. 3: e981. doi:10.7717/peerj.981. PMC 4451030. PMID 26038735.
- Solomon, David J. (2014). "A survey of authors publishing in four megajournals". PeerJ. 2: e365. doi:10.7717/peerj.365. PMC 4006221. PMID 24795855.
- Wellen, R. (2013). "Open Access, Megajournals, and MOOCs: On the Political Economy of Academic Unbundling". SAGE Open. 3 (4): 215824401350727. doi:10.1177/2158244013507271.
- Beall, Jeffrey (2013). "The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access". TripleC. 11 (2): 589–597. doi:10.31269/triplec.v11i2.525. S2CID 142604306.
- MacCallum, C. J. (2011). "Why ONE is More Than 5". PLOS Biology. 9 (12): e1001235. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001235. PMC 3243728.
- Francisco Osorio (5 April 2013). "Open Library of Humanities: mega journals seeing from the south". Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad de Chile.
- Rhodri Jackson and Martin Richardson, "Gold open access: the future of the academic journal?", Chapter 9 in Cope and Phillip (2014), p.223-248.
- Michael Bernstein & Katie Cottingham, Ph.D. (14 December 2015). "American Chemical Society announces ACS Omega, a new open access journal serving global and multidisciplinary chemistry". www.acs.org. ACS.
- Pinfield, Stephen (2016-10-13). "Mega-journals: the future, a stepping stone to it or a leap into the abyss?". Times Higher Education. Archived from the original on May 23, 2023.
- Jeffrey Beall (3 March 2013). "New Term: MOAMJ = Multidisciplinary Open Access Mega Journal". Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the original on 16 July 2014.
- New IEEE Open-Access "Mega Journal" Aims to Boost Technology Innovation "New IEEE Open-Access Mega Journal Aims to Boost Technology Innovation". Archived from the original on 2014-10-06. Retrieved 2014-09-30.
- "Press Release". Open Library of Humanities. Archived from the original on 2014-12-24.
- "De Gruyter Open converts eight subscription journals to Open Access megajournals". De Gruyter Open. September 29, 2014. Archived from the original on 2014-12-24. Retrieved 2014-12-24.
- O'Leary, Mary Beth (4 March 2015). "Introducing Heliyon - Elsevier's new broad scope, open access journal". Elsevier Connect. Archived from the original on Mar 10, 2016.
- "The Journal of Engineering". IET Digital Library. Archived from the original on Oct 2, 2023.
- Bill Cope and Angus Phillips, The Future of the Academic Journal, 2nd ed., Chandos Publishing, Jul 1, 2014, 478 pages.
- Peter Binfield, "Open Access MegaJournals -- Have They Changed Everything?", Creative Commons New Zealand Blog
- Sönke Bartling & Sascha Friesike (Editors), Opening Science: The Evolving Guide on How the Web is Changing Research, Collaboration and Scholarly Publishing, Springer, 2014, ISBN 978-3-319-00025-1, 339 pp.