Open access megajournals: The publisher perspective (Part 1: Motivations)

Wakeling, Simon; Spezi, Valerie C.L.; Fry, Jenny; Creaser, Claire; Pinfield, Stephen; Willett, Peter

doi:10.1002/leap.1117

Cited by 20 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The results presented in this paper, when combined with those discussed in paper one (Wakeling et al , 2017), reveal a complex and sometimes contradictory picture of megajournal publishing. While the various factors influencing decisions to launch megajournals and affecting the operations of the titles themselves can be presented individually, it is also clear that they are, in many cases, firmly interlinked.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

“…A detailed description of the method can be found in paper one (Wakeling et al , 2017). Results are based on a series of 31 interviews, with senior individuals involved in publishing and editorial operations at 16 major publishers, 10 of which operate megajournals.…”

Section: Summary Of Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This paper represents the second article reporting the results of a major investigation of publisher perspectives on open access megajournals (OAMJs). Part of a wider study of the megajournal phenomenon (see http://www.oamj.org), and based on interviews with publishers and editors, paper one (Wakeling et al , 2017) presented results relating to the definition and defining characteristics of a ‘megajournal’, finding that the four criteria identified by Björk () – large size, broad scope, an open access (OA) publishing model, and a peer review process assessing only the technical soundness of the work – were all commonly mentioned. There were, however, competing views about the relative importance of these criteria, particularly a split between those viewing OAMJs’ peer review process as their defining characteristic and those believing megajournals were defined primarily by their size.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Open access megajournals: The publisher perspective (Part 2: Operational realities)

et al. 2017

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This paper is the second of two Learned Publishing articles in which we report the results of a series of interviews, with senior publishers and editors exploring open access megajournals (OAMJs). Megajournals (of which PLoS One is the best known example) represent a relatively new approach to scholarly communication and can be characterized as large, broad-scope, open access journals, which take an innovative approach to peer review, basing acceptance decisions solely on the technical or scientific soundness of the article. Based on interviews with 31 publishers and editors, this paper reports the perceived cultural, operational, and technical challenges associated with launching, growing, and maintaining a megajournal. We find that overcoming these challenges while delivering the societal benefits associated with OAMJs is seen to require significant investment in people and systems, as well as an ongoing commitment to the model.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

Section: Summary Of Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Open access megajournals: The publisher perspective (Part 2: Operational realities)

et al. 2017

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“…The variation in responses we observed across different mega‐journals relating to all of our research questions supplements our earlier findings indicating that there is no such thing as a “typical” mega‐journal (Wakeling et al, ). Mega‐journals have different breadths of scope, geographic distributions of authors, levels of perceived prestige and reputation, citation distributions, motivations underpinning their launch, operating models, editorial structures, and methods of implementing soundness‐only peer review (Spezi et al, ; Wakeling et al, , ; Wakeling, Spezi, Creaser, et al, ). To this list we can now add apparently quite different communities of authors, with variations in the factors motivating submission to the mega‐journal, and different levels of awareness of OAMJ characteristics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Wakeling

Creaser

Pinfield

et al. 2019

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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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.

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“…As of writing this in March 2018 alternative ways of communicating and collaborating science are still very much fringe alternatives compared to the traditional publishing model, which most of the new open access-only publishers also are adhering to. The rise of megajournals (Wakeling et al 2017a;Wakeling et al 2017b) and recently, the development of a preprint culture in research areas where it would have been unthinkable just a couple of years ago are changes that are perhaps the most substantial 10 . Much of the reason for this inertia, despite the technical possibilities available, is blamed on the existing evaluation and reward systems for researchers, systems that often strongly favor publishing in established, prestigious journals, with high impact factors, and thus are a powerful force in conserving the existing system.…”

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confidence: 99%