Motivations, understandings, and experiences of open‐access mega‐journal authors: Results of a large‐scale survey

Abstract

Open‐access mega‐journals (OAMJs) are characterized by their large scale, wide scope, open‐access (OA) business model, and “soundness‐only” peer review. The last of these controversially discounts the novelty, significance, and relevance of submitted articles and assesses only their “soundness.” This article reports the results of an international survey of authors (n = 11,883), comparing the responses of OAMJ authors with those of other OA and subscription journals, and drawing comparisons between different OAMJs. Strikingly, OAMJ authors showed a low understanding of soundness‐only peer review: two‐thirds believed OAMJs took into account novelty, significance, and relevance, although there were marked geographical variations. Author satisfaction with OAMJs, however, was high, with more than 80% of OAMJ authors saying they would publish again in the same journal, although there were variations by title, and levels were slightly lower than subscription journals (over 90%). Their reasons for choosing to publish in OAMJs included a wide variety of factors, not significantly different from reasons given by authors of other journals, with the most important including the quality of the journal and quality of peer review. About half of OAMJ articles had been submitted elsewhere before submission to the OAMJ with some evidence of a “cascade” of articles between journals from the same publisher.

The changed – and changing – landscape of serials publishing: Review of the literature on emerging models

“…In any case, with all the doubts that persist over the model, author satisfaction with publishing in mega‐journals was nevertheless found to be very high (Spezi et al ., ). This may be traceable to the low understanding found of its soundness‐only peer review, which was seen as considering in the process novelty, significance, and relevance, too (Wakeling, Creaser, et al ., ). Interestingly, this is not as far removed from reality as it may seem: as mega‐journal editors testify, criteria beyond technical or scientific soundness do in fact influence editorial decisions (Spezi et al ., ).…”

“…Most notably perhaps, it is the speedier and relatively frictionless route to publication that mega‐journals offer, the result of their high acceptance rate and methodology‐focused peer review, along with their lower APCs and typically high impact factor (IF), that appeal to authors. The latter is seen as especially important in countries – China is a case in point – where national policies incentivize authors, often with financial rewards, to publish in high IF journals (Jackson & Richardson, ; Wakeling, Creaser, et al ., ).…”

“…The literature (Björk, ; Johnson et al ., ; Spezi et al ., ; Wakeling, Creaser, et al ., ; Wakeling, Spezi, et al ., ) converges on the notion that the mega‐journal combines four major characteristics: Large‐scale publishing compared with most conventional journals, although in point of fact, as Björk () finds, not all mega‐journals are ‘big’ – 19 mega‐journals published 58,000 articles in 2017, two thirds of which in only two journals, PLOS ONE and Scientific Reports ; Wider in scope, covering several disciplinary areas or a single large discipline such as medicine or physics; OA, typically financed by (lower) pre‐publication article processing charges (APCs); Approach to quality assessment limits peer review to technical or scientific ‘soundness’ only, rather than more subjective criteria of impact, significance, or relevance. Thus, it ignores considerations of originality or significance in the hope that post‐publication ratings will perform a quality‐filtering function (Cope & Kalantzis, ). …”

The diverse niches of megajournals: Specialism within generalism

“…Björk and Catani () identified 6,913 articles published in megajournals in 2010, which increased to 45,656 in 2015. Megajournals are generally defined by the following characteristics: large publishing volume, evaluation criteria based mostly on scientific soundness, coverage of multiple subject areas, and full open access funded via Article Processing Charges (APCs) (Domnina, ; Wakeling et al, ). Acceptance rates in megajournals generally range from 50–70% (Björk, ).…”

“…Björk () argued that while megajournals are not necessarily revolutionary in academic publishing, they are now well established as a legitimate option for scientists to disseminate their work. Authors choose to publish in megajournals for a variety of reasons (Spezi, Wakeling, Pinfield, Stephen, Creaser, et al, ; Wakeling et al, ) and tend to be pleased with their experiences, suggesting the long‐term viability of the megajournal niche in contemporary science (Solomon, ). Since scholars and professional reward structures differ between disciplines (Merton, ; Whitley, ), megajournals may vary in professional and scientific appeal to different scholars and fields.…”