Open Access Mega Journals: The Case Study of Characteristics and Performance of Eight International Mega Journals

Open access mega journals represent an increasingly important part of the scholarly communications. The current research aims to introduce eight international mega journals and to investigate their performance in a five-year time span (2012-2016). The current study is an applied research in terms of objectives while it is a descriptive study in terms of data analysis and conducted using scientometric indicators. Research population comprised of 195011 articles published in eight mega journals during 2012-2016 and indexed by the Web of Science. Data was collected using three products of the Clarivate Analytics, namely Web of Science, Journal Citation Reports as well as InCites. Data analysis was conducted using Microsoft Excel. Results of the study showed 101% growth in 2016 compared to 2012 with regard to publications in eight studied mega journals. A total of 195011 articles have been published in eight mega journals during 2012-2016. Considering article processing fees of each journal, we can assume that roughly 300 million USD has been charged by eight mega journals. Papers published in mega journals were found to have higher citation impact compared with the average of the Web of Science database. Results revealed that two mega journals, namely PLoS One and Scientific Reports, were accountable for 91.6% of total publications and 96.1% of total citations. The highest share of publications in eight mega journals was found to be in the following research categories: Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Multidisciplinary Sciences, Neurosciences, Oncology and Immunology. Moreover, the US, China, the UK, Germany and Japan had the highest number of publications in eight studied mega journals. Reputable publishers have identified a market demand for publication of scholarly output and are offering their services using open access mega journals. The mega journal market seems likely to keep increasing in the future.