Open-access mega-journals and the future of scholarly communication

开放获取大型期刊和学术交流的未来

• 批准号: AH/M010643/1
• 负责人: Stephen Pinfield
• 金额: $ 53.53万
• 依托单位: University of Sheffield
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2015 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FM010643%2F1
• 关键词: Open; access; mega; journals; future

Open-access 'mega-journals' are an emerging publishing trend which has the potential to reshape the way researchers share their findings, remoulding the academic publishing market and radically changing the nature and reach of scholarship. This project will investigate the influence of mega-journals in the academic community and beyond.Mega-journals publish only online (they have no paper equivalent), and make their articles available on the open web (rather than just to subscribers). Typically, they support this by charging pre-publication article-processing charges (rather than post-publication subscriptions). These features are true of a growing group of open-access (OA) journals. What distinguishes mega-journals is their innovative approach to scope and quality. Their scope is unprecedentedly wide: PLOS ONE and Nature Scientific Reports, two major mega-journals, publish articles across the entire fields of science and medicine. Their approach to quality is based on an assessment of 'technical soundness', ignoring traditionally-valued criteria such as 'importance' and 'interest'. Crucially, these are addressed after publication through sophisticated machine-generated metrics on article use and citation. Thus mega-journals completely reverse the trend of increasing specialisation in scholarly publishing over the last 40 years by creating massive openly-available databases of multi-disciplinary research content. Mega-journals are now beginning to make a real impact. PLOS ONE, founded in 2006, was the first journal of its type and is now the world's largest academic journal, publishing 31,500 articles in 2013. Following its success, other established publishers, including Nature, have launched titles. New publishers are also entering the market, encouraged by the potential for major economies of scale and recognising the disruptive potential of mega-journals in challenging the market dominance of conventionally-published specialised journals. Understanding how mega-journals are developing and their main characteristics are key aims of this project.The potential influence of mega-journals on scholarship itself is also significant and will be a particular focus for this project. Mega-journals ostensibly deemphasise the role of 'gatekeepers' such as academic editors, editorial board members and peer reviewers who traditionally make judgements about a paper's disciplinary 'importance' and community 'interest'. This perhaps has implications for disciplinary identities and connections. Mega-journals seem to have the potential to enhance the ability of scholarly publications to move across boundaries - disciplinary boundaries and also those between academia and the rest of society. The extent to which mega-journals promote interdisciplinary working and the ways in which they can encourage use of scholarly content beyond academia are therefore important areas of enquiry. Another question for the project is the extent to which they contribute to an increasing trend of metrics-driven assessment of research rather than peer assessment, and the relationship this has on research funding and management.This project will examine these and related issues asking in particular, 'What is the significance of the emergence of mega-journals both within and beyond the academic research community?' Using a variety of research methods, it will assemble both quantitative and qualitative data to answer this question. The research will include quantitative studies of the characteristics of mega-journals (for example, using bibliometric methods), interviews with major stakeholders in the publishing industry, focus groups and interviews involving scholars and research managers representing different disciplinary and professional communities, and an international survey of researchers. Assembling all of this evidence will allow the research team to draw conclusions of interest to researchers, publishers, research managers and policymakers.

开放获取的“巨型期刊”是一种新兴的出版趋势，它有可能重塑研究人员分享研究成果的方式，重塑学术出版市场，并从根本上改变学术的性质和覆盖范围。这个项目将调查巨型期刊在学术界和国外的影响。巨型期刊只在网上发表(它们没有同等的纸质出版物)，并在开放的网络上提供它们的文章(而不仅仅是订阅者)。通常，他们通过收取发布前的文章处理费用(而不是发布后的订阅)来支持这一点。这些特点适用于越来越多的开放获取(OA)期刊。巨型期刊的不同之处在于它们在范围和质量上的创新方法。它们的范围空前广泛：《公共科学图书馆·综合》和《自然科学报告》这两大巨型期刊发表了涉及整个科学和医学领域的文章。他们对质量的态度是基于对“技术稳健性”的评估，忽视了“重要性”和“兴趣”等传统上看重的标准。至关重要的是，这些问题在发表后通过复杂的机器生成的文章使用和引用指标得到解决。因此，巨型期刊通过创建多学科研究内容的大规模开放数据库，完全扭转了过去40年来学术出版日益专业化的趋势。巨型期刊现在开始产生真正的影响。成立于2006年的《公共科学图书馆·综合》是第一份同类期刊，现在是世界上最大的学术期刊，2013年发表了3.15万篇论文。在它取得成功后，包括《自然》在内的其他老牌出版商也推出了图书。新的出版商也在进入这一市场，他们受到主要规模经济潜力的鼓舞，并认识到巨型期刊在挑战传统出版的专业期刊的市场主导地位方面的颠覆性潜力。了解巨型期刊是如何发展的以及它们的主要特点是这个项目的主要目标。巨型期刊对学术本身的潜在影响也是重要的，并将是这个项目的一个特别关注的焦点。大型期刊表面上淡化了学术编辑、编辑委员会成员和同行评审员等“看门人”的作用，他们传统上会对一篇论文的学科“重要性”和社区“兴趣”做出判断。这可能会对学科身份和联系产生影响。巨型期刊似乎有潜力增强学术出版物跨越学科界限以及学术界和社会其他部门之间的界限的能力。因此，巨型期刊在多大程度上促进跨学科工作，以及它们如何鼓励使用学术界以外的学术内容，都是重要的研究领域。该项目的另一个问题是，它们在多大程度上促进了对研究的衡量标准驱动的评估而不是同行评估的日益增长的趋势，以及这对研究资金和管理的关系。该项目将研究这些问题和相关问题，特别是提出：在学术研究界内外出现巨型期刊的意义是什么？它将运用多种研究方法，收集定量和定性的数据来回答这个问题。研究将包括对大型期刊特点的定量研究(例如，使用文献计量学方法)、与出版业主要利益攸关方的访谈、焦点小组以及代表不同学科和专业群体的学者和研究管理人员的访谈，以及对研究人员的国际调查。收集所有这些证据将使研究团队能够得出研究人员、出版商、研究经理和政策制定者感兴趣的结论。

项目成果

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

开放获取大型期刊作者的动机、理解和经验：大规模调查的结果。

• DOI: 10.1002/asi.24154
• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology
• 影响因子: 3.5
• 作者: Wakeling S

'No comment'? A study of commenting on PLOS articles

• DOI: 10.1177/0165551518819965
• 发表时间: 2020-02-01
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SCIENCE
• 影响因子: 2.4
• 作者: Wakeling，Simon;Willett，Peter;Medina Perea，Itzelle
• 通讯作者: Medina Perea，Itzelle

Open-Access Mega-Journals: A Bibliometric Profile.

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0165359
• 发表时间: 2016
• 期刊: PloS one
• 影响因子: 3.7
• 作者: Wakeling S;Willett P;Creaser C;Fry J;Pinfield S;Spezi V
• 通讯作者: Spezi V

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

开放获取大型期刊：出版商的观点（第 1 部分：动机）

• DOI: 10.1002/leap.1117
• 发表时间: 2017
• 期刊: Learned Publishing
• 影响因子: 2.8
• 作者: Wakeling S

"Let the community decide"? The vision and reality of soundness-only peer review in open-access mega-journals

• DOI: 10.1108/jd-06-2017-0092
• 发表时间: 2018-01
• 期刊: J. Documentation
• 作者: Valérie Spezi;S. Wakeling;S. Pinfield;J. Fry;Claire Creaser;P. Willett