scholarly journals Evolution of the scholarly mega-journal, 2006–2017

PeerJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e4357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo-Christer Björk
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Longitudinal Studies ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Electronic Publishing ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Scholarly Journal ◽  
Journal Publishing ◽  
Market Shares ◽  
Publishing Services

Mega-journals are a new kind of scholarly journal made possible by electronic publishing. They are open access (OA) and funded by charges, which authors pay for the publishing services. What distinguishes mega-journals from other OA journals is, in particular, a peer review focusing only on scientific trustworthiness. The journals can easily publish thousands of articles per year and there is no need to filter articles due to restricted slots in the publishing schedule. This study updates some earlier longitudinal studies of the evolution of mega-journals and their publication volumes. After very rapid growth in 2010–2013, the increase in overall article volumes has slowed down. Mega-journals are also increasingly dependent for sustained growth on Chinese authors, who now contribute 25% of all articles in such journals. There has also been an internal shift in market shares. PLOS ONE, which totally dominated mega-journal publishing in the early years, currently publishes around one-third of all articles. Scientific Reports has grown rapidly since 2014 and is now the biggest journal.

First steps for a library publisher

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Somaly Kim Wu ◽  
Heather McCullough
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Electronic Publishing ◽  
Academic Library ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Journal Publishing ◽  
Digital Scholarship ◽  
Publishing Services ◽  
Communication Policies ◽  
The University

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to presents the very recent development of e-journal publishing services at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte. In 2011, the J. Murrey Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte created a new unit in the library, the Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL), which partners with faculty and graduate students in the use of digital and networked research tools to create, disseminate and store new knowledge. E-journal publishing and hosting are among the suite of services offered by the DSL, and we currently publish three journals (https://journals.uncc.edu/). Design/methodology/approach – This report provides an overview of the context of our library’s decision to begin publishing journals, including a discussion of our university’s becoming more research-intensive, our university system mandating increased efficiencies and sharing research with the state citizens, and the library’s own goals of raising awareness of and supporting open access. Also outlined are the technical and procedural choices made, important activities undertaken to develop, define and publicize the new services, campus response to the service and next steps. Findings – This report provides detailed accounting of how a large academic library implemented an electronic publishing service to support open access scholarship. Important activities such as marketing communication, policies development and technical/procedural activities are defined and results described. The report provides observation and lessons learned for academic libraries in development and support of electronic journals. Originality/value – Library as the publisher is a new concept. This report will be of interest to many libraries who are considering offering publishing services and to libraries that currently offer publishing services.

Peer Review in Scholarly Journal Publishing

2020 ◽  
pp. 127-158
Author(s):  
Jason Roberts ◽  
Kristen Overstreet ◽  
Rachel Hendrick ◽  
Jennifer Mahar
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Scholarly Journal ◽  
Journal Publishing

scholarly journals New approaches to peer review in the age of online, open-access publishing

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie J Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Electronic Publishing ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Funding Agencies ◽  
Scientific Results ◽  
Peer Community

“Electronic publishing” can mean a variety of things, but for the dissemination of scientific results, there are two major categories: 1) materials that have not gone through peer-review, such as community-database entries, presentations from conferences, and manuscripts posted on preprint servers; and 2) materials that have gone through peer-review and are subsequently posted online. In the latter case, the process of peer-review is usually managed by a body of editors associated with a journal. If a manuscript is published by such a journal, the reader can be assured that it went through the peer-review process successfully. In the last decade or so, journals have started to abandon printed issues of peer-reviewed articles and are now publishing exclusively online; there have also been a proliferation of new online-only journals. Concurrently, there has been a shift towards open-access publishing, which, while making scientific studies more broadly available, has also transferred the financial burden from the reader or subscriber to the authors and funding agencies. Lastly, there has been a shift in how manuscripts on preprint servers are viewed, and it is increasingly common in many scientific fields for authors to post a finalized manuscript to a preprint server prior to submission to a journal. This talk will describe the “Peer Community In” (PCI) Project, which is a non-profit organization that was established in response to these major shifts in scientific publishing. The PCI Project is comprised of communities of researchers working in different fields (including paleontology), who peer review and recommend research articles publicly available on preprint servers. The goal is to promote rigorous scientific study by providing an alternative to traditional avenues for peer-reviewed publishing.

scholarly journals Liberation through Cooperation: How Library Publishing Can Save Scholarly Journals from Neoliberalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave S. Ghamandi
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Publishing Industry ◽  
Scholarly Journal ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
Scholarly Journals ◽  
Journal Publishing ◽  
Article Processing Charges ◽  
Systems Of Domination ◽  
Fair Deal

This commentary examines political and economic aspects of open access (OA) and scholarly journal publishing. Through a discourse of critique, neoliberalism is analyzed as an ideology causing many problems in the scholarly journal publishing industry, including the serials crisis. Two major efforts in the open access movement that promote an increase in OA funded by article-processing charges (APC) —the Open Access 2020 (OA2020) and Pay It Forward (PIF) initiatives—are critiqued as neoliberal frameworks that would perpetuate existing systems of domination and exploitation. In a discourse of possibility, ways of building a post-neoliberal system of journal publishing using new tactics and strategies, merging theory and praxis, and grounding in solidarity and cooperation are presented. This includes organizing journal publishing democratically using cooperatives, which could decommodify knowledge and provide greater open access. The article concludes with a vision for a New Fair Deal, which would revolutionize the system of scholarly journal publishing by transitioning journals to library publishing cooperatives.

scholarly journals New approaches to peer review in the age of online, open-access publishing

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie J Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Electronic Publishing ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Funding Agencies ◽  
Scientific Results ◽  
Peer Community

“Electronic publishing” can mean a variety of things, but for the dissemination of scientific results, there are two major categories: 1) materials that have not gone through peer-review, such as community-database entries, presentations from conferences, and manuscripts posted on preprint servers; and 2) materials that have gone through peer-review and are subsequently posted online. In the latter case, the process of peer-review is usually managed by a body of editors associated with a journal. If a manuscript is published by such a journal, the reader can be assured that it went through the peer-review process successfully. In the last decade or so, journals have started to abandon printed issues of peer-reviewed articles and are now publishing exclusively online; there have also been a proliferation of new online-only journals. Concurrently, there has been a shift towards open-access publishing, which, while making scientific studies more broadly available, has also transferred the financial burden from the reader or subscriber to the authors and funding agencies. Lastly, there has been a shift in how manuscripts on preprint servers are viewed, and it is increasingly common in many scientific fields for authors to post a finalized manuscript to a preprint server prior to submission to a journal. This talk will describe the “Peer Community In” (PCI) Project, which is a non-profit organization that was established in response to these major shifts in scientific publishing. The PCI Project is comprised of communities of researchers working in different fields (including paleontology), who peer review and recommend research articles publicly available on preprint servers. The goal is to promote rigorous scientific study by providing an alternative to traditional avenues for peer-reviewed publishing.

scholarly journals Message from the Grassroots

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Camille Nous
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Scholarly Journal ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
Journal Publishing ◽  
Use Of Knowledge

Librarians have responded to the decades-long “serials crisis” with a common narrative and a range of responses that have failed to challenge the ideology and structures that caused it. Using Walter Rodney’s theory of a guerilla intellectual, we critically examine the dominant understanding of this so-called crisis and emphasize the role that capital plays within it. The imperial nature of scholarly journal publishing and some of its many contradictions are discussed. “Transformative” agreements receive special attention as a hyper-capitalist manifestation of these contradictions at the heart of commercial publishing.The politics of refusal are one response to the commercialism, prestige, and power imbalances that drive the academic publishing system. Highlighting the differences between refusal and reform, this paper explores the protagonistic role that librarians can play in a protracted struggle within and beyond the confines of our profession. Select open access efforts are identified at the end as examples of different forms of refusal. This paper is intended to move beyond the traditional discourse of laying blame solely at the feet of the academic publishing oligopoly and also expounds on the bourgeois academy’s use of knowledge production for capital accumulation.

scholarly journals The Costs and Benefits of "Open Access" Scholarship

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Altbach
Keyword(s):  
Quality Control ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Scholarly Journal ◽  
Peer Review System ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Review System ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The World

The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences recently joined the “open access” movement, urging its professors to post their research on an open access Harvard Web site. This movement may well ensure that scholars prominent in the world of knowledge remain a dominant force, while recognition of the work of others may prove to be more difficult. Traditional scholarly journal uses a means of selection, the peer-review system, which has served as the quality control, though this system also is imperfect. Open access, while it seems like an easy panacea, has problems that deserve careful consideration.

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