The document discusses innovations in academic journal publishing, focusing on mega-journals that accept a wide range of articles based on scientific rigor without focusing on novelty or impact. It highlights the emergence and success of various journals like PLOS ONE and Scientific Reports, detailing their publication metrics and fees. Additionally, it addresses issues like predatory publishing, the importance of ethical review, and the need for transparency in the peer review process.

1. Megajournals and other
innovations in academic
journal publishing
Hooman Momen
Coordinator
WHO Press

2. Statistics about scientific journals
 Over 10,000 journal publishers
 Publishing more than 25,000 journals
 1.5 million articles per year
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3. Mega-Journals
 Aims to publish any article that meets the test of scientific
rigour.
– Technically sound in method and conclusions
– Peer review
 Eschews any measure of importance or impact in its
editorial and peer review process.
– no need for conceptual advance, novelty or impact
– negative results are accepted
– results with a narrow community of interest.
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4. PLOS ONE
 Launched in December 2006
 In 2007 published 1,231 articles
 Today largest journal in the World
– published over 60,000 articles
 In 2012
–
–
–
–
–
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23,464 articles published
60,000 reviewers from 154 countries
4000 articles from Chinese authors
Over 2% of content in Pubmed
>30,000 articles in 2013
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5. PLOS ONE criteria for publication
 The study presents the results of primary scientific research.
 Results reported have not been published elsewhere.
 Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a
high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail.
 Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are
supported by the data.
 The article is presented in an intelligible fashion and is written in
standard English.
 The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of
experimentation and research integrity.
 The article adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines and
community standards for data availability.
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6. 6|
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7. PLOS ONE Impact factor
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8. Scientific Reports
 Published by Nature Publishing Group
 Publishes in all areas of the natural sciences
 Impact factor 2.93, Acceptance rate 55%
 fee USD 1,350.
 Launched in 2011 (over 2500 papers published)
– Currently over 200 papers per month
 Cascades articles from other Nature journals.
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9. (Mega) - journals
 AIP Advances (AIP) Impact factor 1.35, fee USD 1,350
 BMJ Open (BMJ) Impact Factor 1.58, fee UKL 1,500
 Open Biology (Royal Society), fee USD 0
 Cell Reports (Cell Press) fee USD 5000
 Biology Open ( Company of Biologists) fee USD 1,350
 Springer Plus (Springer) fee USD 1135
 Sage Open (Sage) fee USD 99
 F1000 Research (Faculty of 1000) fee USD 1000
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10. eLife
 Funders taking responsibility for publishing:
– Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Max Planck Society, Wellcome
Trust
– Publication costs are research costs
 Current publishing system – particularly the top tier journals –
not working in the best interest of researchers
 No fees, published about 300 articles
 Driving innovation in the way research is communicated
– publish outstanding science under an open-access license
– create an editorial process that is decisive, fair and efficient
– Fully utilize digital media in the presentation of new research
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11. PeerJ
 An Open Access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal.
– Launched in 2013
 Operates a 'Lifetime Membership' model.
– 3 Membership tiers, each conferring different rights.
– Starting at USD 99.00
 Encourages Open Peer-Review
– authors given the option to post the full peer-review history of
their submission alongside their published article
 157 articles published in 2013 (Sept)
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12. PLOS Currents
 PLOS Currents is an innovative, online publication
channel, peer-reviewed; citable; publicly archived in
PubMed.
 A single, integrated direct-authoring and publishing
platform - complete control over the formatting and
appearance of Author published work.
 Streamlined peer review process
 Submission reviewed in a matter of days and published
immediately after editorial acceptance
 Uses Annotum (WordPress) platform
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13. Hindawi Publishing
 Publishing company based in Cairo, Egypt.
 In 2012, published more than 22,000 articles with total
revenue of about $13m.
 This is about $600 per published article.
 results for the first half of 2012 show revenues of $6.3m
with a net profit of $3.3m.
 Profit margin of 52%. Much better than Elsevier (36%
profit margin on revenue).
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14. Profit margins
 Elsevier: £724m on revenue of £2b — 36%
 Springer‘s Science+Business Media: £294m on revenue
of £866m — 33.9%
 John Wiley & Sons: $106m on revenue of $253m —
42%
 Academic division of Informa plc: £47m on revenue of
£145m — 32.4%
 Apple’s best ever reported profit margin was 24%. Exxon
makes 6.5%.
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15. Chinese authors
 According to SCI
– In 2011, authors of 9.5% of scientific papers indexed in SCI.
– More than a million papers published in last decade.
 Salaries, grants and promotions tied to publication in SCI
journals
 Nearly 20% of papers published in PLOS One in 2012
– More than 4 million USD in revenue from Chinese authors
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16. Who's afraid of Peer Review
 Spoof paper concocted by Science journalist, J. Bohannon
– mundane scientific paper, with grave errors that a competent peer
reviewer could easily identify as flawed and unpublishable.
 304 versions submitted to different OA journals /publishers
 Over 50% of journals accepted
 Among publishers accepting paper: Elsevier, Wolters
Kluwer, Sage
 Among publishers rejecting paper: PloS, Hindawi
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17. Beall's List of Predatory Publishers
 Provision of funding to meet OA costs has encouraged
growth of new OA journals
 Last year's list included 23 publishers
 and this year's has over 225,
 evidence of the rapid growth in the number of predatory
journals and publishers.
 http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
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18. What authors need to look for
 Serious reviewers? feedback from a qualified journal editor?
 Good copyediting? Self-archiving rights?
 Effective distribution and active promotion of the journal?
 A definite/known/knowable target audience?
 Print-on-demand or print issue options?
 Clear and attractive publication contracts?
 Suitably-measured/meaningful impact factors? Indexed journals?
 Active link referencing? Supplementary data storage?
 Reader feedback management?
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19. SciELO
 The database contains journals from over 15 different
countries in free and universal access, full-text format.
 1.069 Journals
 30.190 journal issues
 444.056 articles
 Nearly 10,000,000 citations
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20. Article-Level Metrics
 Citations
– ISI, Scopus, Google Scholar, PubMed Central, CrossRef
 Article usage
– Page views, downloads
 Media and blog coverage about the article
 Social tools
– Social bookmarks e.g. Connotea, Twitter, Facebook etc.
 Reader evaluation
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