A mega journal (also mega-journal and megajournal) is a peer-reviewedacademicopen access journal designed to be much larger than a traditional journal by exercising low selectivity among accepted articles. It was pioneered by PLOS ONE.[1][2] This "very lucrative publishing model"[2] was soon emulated by other publishers.
It has been suggested that the academic journal landscape might become dominated by a few mega journals in the future, at least in terms of total number of articles published.[8]
Mega journals shift the publishing industry's funding standard from the subscription-based model common to traditional closed access publications to article processing charges.[9]
Their business model may not motivate reviewers, who donate their time to "influence their field, gain exposure to the most current cutting edge research or list their service to a prestigious journal on their CVs."[10]
Finally, they may no longer serve as "fora for the exchange ... among colleagues in a particular field or sub-field", as traditionally happened in scholarly journals.[11] To counter that indiscrimination, PLOS ONE, the prototypical megajournal, has started to "package relevant articles into subject-specific collections."[12]
^Hayahiko Ozono, Okayama University, Participants' Report on The 5th SPARC Japan Seminar 2011. "Burgeoning Open Access MegaJournals". National Institute of Informatics. [1]
^ ab"Beyond open access for academic publishers", 15 May 2014, Publishing Technology PLC [2]
^ abcdDagmar Sitek & Roland Bertelmann, "Open Access: A State of the Art", 2 March 2014, Springer, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8_9 [3]
^James MacGregor, Kevin Stranack & John Willinsky, "The Public Knowledge Project: Open Source Tools for Open Access to Scholarly Communication", 2 March 2014, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8_11 [4]
^ abcdefgRhodri Jackson and Martin Richardson, "Gold open access: the future of the academic journal?", Chapter 9 in Cope and Phillip (2014), p.223-248.
^ abPeter Binfield, "PLoS ONE and the Rise of the Open Access MegaJournal", The 5th SPARC Japan Seminar 2011, National Institute of Informatics, The 5th SPARC Japan Seminar 2011 February 29, 2012 [5][6]
^Transitioning from a Conventional to a ‘Mega’ Journal: A Bibliometric Case Study of the Journal Medicine, Publications 2017, 5(2), 7; doi:10.3390/publications5020007 [7]
^Open-access mega-journals: The future of scholarly communication or academic dumping ground? A review [8]