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

[Velterop <velterop@gmail.com>]

In a world in which researchers rely more and more on search and 
'literature networking' (by which I mean citations and 'related 
articles' offered by various services, such as for instance 
PubMed), it seems to me that browsing takes a back seat. To the 
extent that it does happen, it's not likely to be confined to 
single journals. To an author, the notion of a journal may still 
have value, to the reader the significance of a journal is 
quickly vanishing and articles are regarded as being in one big 
pool from which they can be retrieved. In that pool the journal 
is merely one of the 'labels' attached to the article. Chopping 
up the body of articles into journals may soon be regarded not as 
a benefit or convenience, but as an irritation, as unwelcome 
fragmentation.

PLoS One is implicitly challenging both the conventional notion 
of a journal (though they still call it a journal - and it's 
probably one of the few real 'journals' in that they publish 
literally daily, which is what 'journal' means) and the idea of 
journals confining themselves to a well-circumscribed topic (with 
few exceptions). Their model is shaping the future, and their 
success - including copycats such as Nature's Science Reports 
(clever title in view of their competition with Science) - is 
testimony to that.

Jan Velterop

On 26/01/2011 03:31, Sally Morris wrote:
> 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-journal.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