"PLoS ONE and the Rise of the Open Access Mega Journal" by Peter Binfield

A presentation made by Peter Binfield, of Public Library of Science (PLoS), to the Society of Scholarly Publishing (SSP) meeting, June 1st 2011. Describing the model behind the journal PLoS ONE, some indications of the success of that model, and predicting the development of a new type of journal model for academic publishing - the Open Access Mega Journal.

1. www.plos.org
PLoS ONE and the rise of the
Open Access Mega Journal
Committed to making the world’s
scientific and medical literature
a public resource
Peter Binfield, Publisher PLoS, [email protected]

2. www.plos.org
Who are the Public Library of
Science?
•Eight years old and the largest not-for-
profit Open Access publisher
•The publisher of 7 Open Access journals
including PLoS ONE
•Staffed by professional publishers from
the likes of Nature, BMJ, Springer etc
•Based in San Francisco, and Cambridge
UK
•Self Sustaining since late 2010

3. www.plos.org
•Establish high quality journals
–put PLoS and open access on the map
•Build a more extensive OA publishing
operation
–an open access home for every paper
•Make the literature more useful
–to scientists and the public
–accelerate science
The Public Library of Science
– our publishing strategy

4. www.plos.org
PLoS Biology
October, 2003
PLoS Medicine
October, 2004
PLoS Community Journals
June-September, 2005 October, 2007
PLoS ONE
December,
2006

5. www.plos.org
•Objective Editorial criteria
–Scientifically rigorous
–Ethical
–Properly reported
–Conclusions supported by the data
•Editors and reviewers do not ask subjective
questions such as:
–How important is the work?
–Which is the relevant audience?
•Everything that deserves to be published, will
be published
–Therefore the journal is not artificially limited in size
•Online tools are then used to evaluate, sort &
filter the content after publication, not before
PLoS ONE’s Key Innovation –
The editorial process

7. www.plos.org

8. www.plos.org
•Scalability
–each submission ‘pays for itself’
–the journal itself benefits from ‘economies of scale’
(e.g. it only peer reviews papers once; it presents
all content in a single online environment)
•Inclusive scope
–all of science and medicine
•Encouraging discussion and debate
–on PLoS ONE: Commenting, Rating and Annotation
–elsewhere: Editorial Board discussion forum;
EveryONE blog; Twitter; FriendFeed; Facebook
What else is different?

9. www.plos.org
The ‘Open Access Mega Journal'
First, some statistics. There are:
• Approx 10,000 publishers
• Publishing approx 25,000 journals
• Which publish approx 1.5 million
articles per year (almost 1 million of
which appear in PubMed)
• In an industry which historically
changes very slowly

10. www.plos.org
The ‘Open Access Mega Journal'
can be defined as:
2.Very very large
–Publishing thousands of articles per year
–and benefiting from economies of scale
3.Open Access
–Because no one will pay a subscription fee for a
journal that large (and growing that fast)
–and using an OA Business Model where each
article pays for its own costs
4.(Preferably) without any ‘artificial’
constraints on its ability to grow
–For example, a desire to only publish ‘high impact;
papers

11. Publications by PLoS ONE per quarter
since launch

12. www.plos.org
Publications by PLoS ONE per quarter
since launch
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
Q1 20 07 Q2 20 07 Q3 20 07 Q4 20 07 Q1 20 08 Q2 20 08 Q3 20 08 Q4 20 08 Q1 20 09 Q2 20 09 Q3 20 09 Q4 20 09 Q1 20 10 Q2 20 10 Q3 20 10 Q4 20 10 Q1 20 11 Q2 20 11
Publications by PLoS ONE per quarter
since launch

13. Publications by PLoS ONE per quarter
since launch
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
Q1 20 07 Q2 20 07 Q3 20 07 Q4 20 07 Q1 20 08 Q2 20 08 Q3 20 08 Q4 20 08 Q1 20 09 Q2 20 09 Q3 20 09 Q4 20 09 Q1 20 10 Q2 20 10 Q3 20 10 Q4 20 10 Q1 20 11 Q2 20 11
Publications by PLoS ONE per quarter
since launch

14. www.plos.org
0.52%4,3106,7342009
0.7%6,78413,5672010
~1.5%*>12,000*>22,000*2011
0.34%2,7234,4012008
0.16%1,2312,4972007
% of Annual
PubMed
Annual
Publications
Annual
Submissions
Year
*Projections for 2011
•By publication volume, PLoS ONE was the largest journal in
the world in 2010, and will be the largest by a factor of 2-3
in 2011
PLoS ONE – statistics

15. www.plos.org
“Open Access Mega Journals”
– One Name, Two Flavours
•‘Clones’ of PLoS ONE (not selective)
–SAGE Open
–BMJ Open
–Scientific Reports (Nature)
–AIP Advances (Am Inst Physics)
–G3 (Genetics Soc of America)
–Biology Open (Company of Biologists)
•‘Pseudo-Clones’ of PLoS ONE (probably selective)
–Physical Review X (Am Physical Society)
–Open Biology (Royal Society)
–Cell Reports (Elsevier, Cell Press)

16. www.plos.org
The Conclusions…
•The ‘full’ PLoS ONE model is wildly
successful
–On current trends, PLoS ONE will be publishing
3% of the STM literature in 2012
•Major publishers are rapidly launching PLoS
ONE clones
•Some others have held back from the full
PLoS ONE model, but have still launched ‘OA
MegaJournals’
–For various reasons, it remains to be seen if this
model will be as successful
•Rumour has it that many others are in the
works…

17. www.plos.org
The Conclusions…
•I believe we have entered the era of the OA
mega journal
–Such journals can choose to be selective, or not
–From early trends, they will mostly form around
large disciplines and attempt to ‘own’ entire fields
of science
–They will grow rapidly!
•The opportunity to launch new OA mega
journals is now
–Some basic modeling predicts that in 2016,
almost 50% of the STM literature could be
published in approx 100 OA mega journals…

18. www.plos.org
The Consequences…
•Content will rapidly concentrate into a small
number of very large titles
•Filtering based solely on Journal name will
disappear and will be replaced with new
metrics
•The content currently being published in the
universe of 25,000 journals will presumably
start to dry up
•There are many open questions…

19. www.plos.org
Peter Binfield
Publisher, PLoS ONE and the
Community Journals
http://www.plos.org
email: [email protected]
twitter: @p_binfield