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Transitioning from a conventional to a ‘mega’ journal: a bibliometric case study of the journal Medicine
journal contribution
posted on 2017-05-10, 08:16 authored by Simon Wakeling, Peter Willett, Claire Creaser, Jenny FryJenny Fry, Stephen Pinfield, Valerie SpeziOpen-Access Mega-Journals (OAMJs) are a relatively new and increasingly important publishing phenomenon. The journal Medicine is in the unique position of having transitioned in 2014 from being a ‘traditional’ highly-selective journal to the OAMJ model. This study compares the bibliometric profile of the journal Medicine before and after its transition to the OAMJ model. Three standard modes of bibliometric analysis are employed, based on data from Web of Science: journal output volume, author characteristics, and citation analysis. The journal’s article output is seen to have grown hugely since its conversion to an OAMJ, a rise driven in large part by authors from China. Articles published since 2015 have fewer citations, and are cited by lower impact journals than articles published before the OAMJ transition. The adoption of the OAMJ model has completely changed the bibliometric profile of the journal, raising questions about the impact of OAMJ peer-review practices. In many respects, the post-2014 version of Medicine is best viewed as a new journal rather than a continuation of the original title.
Funding
This research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK (grant number AH/M010643/1).
History
School
- Business and Economics
Department
- Business
Published in
PublicationsVolume
5Issue
2Citation
WAKELING, S. ... et al, 2017. Transitioning from a conventional to a ‘mega’ journal: a bibliometric case study of the journal Medicine. Publications, 5 (2), 7.Publisher
MDPI AG © The AuthorsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/Acceptance date
2017-03-29Publication date
2017-04-06Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by MDPI under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ISSN
2304-6775Publisher version
Language
- en