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The diverse niches of megajournals: Specialism within generalism

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  • Kyle Siler
  • Vincent Larivière
  • Cassidy R. Sugimoto

Abstract

Over the past decade, megajournals have expanded in popularity and established a legitimate niche in academic publishing. Leveraging advantages of digital publishing, megajournals are characterized by large publication volume, broad interdisciplinary scope, and peer‐review filters that select primarily for scientific soundness as opposed to novelty or originality. These publishing innovations are complementary and competitive vis‐à‐vis traditional journals. We analyze how megajournals (PLOS One, Scientific Reports) are represented in different fields relative to prominent generalist journals (Nature, PNAS, Science) and “quasi‐megajournals” (Nature Communications, PeerJ). Our results show that both megajournals and prominent traditional journals have distinctive niches, despite the similar interdisciplinary scopes of such journals. These niches—defined by publishing volume and disciplinary diversity—are dynamic and varied over the relatively brief histories of the analyzed megajournals. Although the life sciences are the predominant contributor to megajournals, there is variation in the disciplinary composition of different megajournals. The growth trajectories and disciplinary composition of generalist journals—including megajournals—reflect changing knowledge dissemination and reward structures in science.

Suggested Citation

  • Kyle Siler & Vincent Larivière & Cassidy R. Sugimoto, 2020. "The diverse niches of megajournals: Specialism within generalism," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(7), pages 800-816, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:71:y:2020:i:7:p:800-816
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.24299
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    4. Sugimoto, Cassidy R. & Larivière, Vincent & Ni, Chaoqun & Cronin, Blaise, 2013. "Journal acceptance rates: A cross-disciplinary analysis of variability and relationships with journal measures," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 897-906.
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    Cited by:

    1. Liyue Chen & Jielan Ding & Vincent Larivière, 2022. "Measuring the citation context of national self‐references," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(5), pages 671-686, May.
    2. Kyle Siler, 2020. "Demarcating spectrums of predatory publishing: Economic and institutional sources of academic legitimacy," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(11), pages 1386-1401, November.
    3. György Csomós & Jenő Zsolt Farkas, 2023. "Understanding the increasing market share of the academic publisher “Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute” in the publication output of Central and Eastern European countries: a case study o," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 803-824, January.

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