RE: PLoS ONE: now the world's largest journal?

["Sally Morris" <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>]

Conventional wisdom has it that above a certain size, a journal 
becomes unusable for its readers.  Obviously this is true in the 
print world, and presumably browsing PLoS One is impossible - but 
does that matter in the digital age, or not?  I'd be very 
interested in people's views

Sally Morris
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
Sent: 25 January 2011 06:16
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: PLoS ONE: now the world's largest journal?

With 6,749 articles published in 2010, it appears that the open access
journal PLoS ONE is now the world's largest journal. For details and a chart
illustrating PLoS ONE growth, see:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2011/01/plos-one-now-worlds-largest-jour
nal.html

This represents 50% growth for PLoS ONE over 2009.

This growth rate in articles is similar at Hindawi Publishing, which
reported a 40% increase in article submissions in 2010, passing the
milestone of 3,000 articles in one month in December:
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5715.html

These and other growth rates of open access initiatives are in marked
contrast with the overall rate of scholarly literature growth, which has
been reported to be fairly steady at 3 - 3.5% per year for the last few
decades.

If Liblicense readers have any information on the number of articles
published by other really large journals in this range, please let me know.

Heather Morrison, MLIS