The dramatic growth of PLoS One: soon-to-be world's largest journal

From: Heather Morrison <heatherm_at_ELN.BC.CA>
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 22:55:01 -0700

PLoS One is projected to publish about 4,300 articles in 2009, making
it the world's third largest journal (and already the world's largest
non-physics journal). In 2010, PLoS One is anticipated to publish
8,000 articles, which would make it the world's largest scholarly
journal, by far.

Data

"In 2007, the journal published 1,231 articles; in 2008 it published
2,722 articles. At current rates of growth, the journal is on track
to publish over 4,300 articles in 2009 and assuming this growth
continues at the same rate, in 2010 PLoS ONE could be publishing
around 1% of all the articles listed in PubMed for that year (PubMed
lists 803,00 published articles for 2008)". [i.e. 8,000 journals].
Peter Binfield, PLoS One: background, future development, and article-
level metrics, ELPUB 2009.
http://conferences.aepic.it/elpub2009/

One of the world's other really large journals - the American
Physical Society's Physical Review D - is on the list of journals
100% convertible to the SCOAP3 Open Access Consortium. So it is
entirely possible that TWO of the world's dozen largest journals will
be fully open access within the next year or so.

Thanks to Dana Roth on the American Scientist Open Access Forum for
article counts for 2008.

Details and a growth chart can be found at:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/07/dramatic-growth-of-plos-
one-soon-to-be.html

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, and
does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic Library
Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
Author, Scholarly Communication for Librarians, Chandos Publishing 2009
http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/en/book.aspx?
bookID=1864&ChandosTitle=1

The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
Received on Tue Jul 07 2009 - 11:01:43 BST

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