Citation

Ioannidis JPA, Pezzullo AM, Boccia S. J. Am. Med. Assoc. JAMA 2023; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, American Medical Association)

DOI

10.1001/jama.2023.3212

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Mega-journals, those that publish large numbers of articles per year, are growing rapidly across science and especially in biomedicine. Although 11 Scopus-indexed journals published more than 2000 biomedical full papers (articles or reviews) in 2015 and accounted for 6% of that year's literature, in 2022 there were 55 journals publishing more than 2000 full articles, totaling more than 300 000 articles (almost a quarter of the biomedical literature that year). In 2015, 2 biomedical research journals (PLoS One and Scientific Reports) published more than 3500 full articles. In 2022, there were 26 such prolific journals (Table). The accelerating growth of mega-journals creates both threats and opportunities for biomedical science.

Several criteria have been proposed to define mega-journals, but not all mega-journals fulfill all criteria.1-3 Here, for operational purposes, we define mega-journals as open-access peer-reviewed journals that charge article processing fees and publish more than 2000 full articles in a calendar year. The 2 early-launched mega-journals, PLoS One and Scientific Reports, were also characterized by very broad publishing scope, covering scientific topics in general. Most mega-journals in 2022 seem to have had more focused publishing objectives (eTable in the Supplement). Moreover, issues that cover specialized topics are very popular,4 recruiting tens of thousands of guest editors and attracting hundreds of thousands of authors. Guest editors may vary in competence and level of involvement, which may contribute to a more disorganized, inconsistent author experience from article to article...