The Shrinking Mega-Journal:
"The open-access mega-journal’s output, measured by how many articles it publishes a year, last year fell to 22,054 -- its lowest since 2012 and down about 30 percent since its peak in 2013. Last year brought the most precipitous drop yet. PLOS ONE published 6,052 fewer articles in 2016 than it did the year before -- a drop of about 22 percent.
The decline was first reported by Phil Davis, a consultant who specializes in scholarly publishing, in a blog post this morning.
Joerg Heber, who became PLOS ONE’s new editor in chief in September, addressed the decline in a blog post last month. Reflecting on the journal’s first 10 years, he noted that many other publishers are now using similar models for their own publications."
