Megajournal - a New Standard of Scientific Journals in Science 2.0?

Abstract

Since the megajournal concept was established as a model of a sustainable scientific open access only journal, the scientific public has been polarized. On the one hand, these journals are seen as the future of academic publishing, enabling faster availability of research results, and thus easier communication between researchers, while on the other hand, for a number of authors, this new and non-traditional way of publishing scientific achievements is debatable. In addition to obvious criticism and public controversy, megajournals have been described as a dumping ground for works of untested quality, with good earnings for their publishers, which automatically characterizes them as predatory. Besides the basic characteristics, the paper gives an overview of five influential megajournals, including their bibliometric indicators. The increase in the number of published papers and impact factors in the initial years of publication, indicates that megajournals have been recognized and accepted as a business model. In the last few years, during the analysis of various metrics of published megajournals, a certain stagnation has been noticed, which indicates the hyperproduction of new works in an increasing number of titles.