PLOS ONE Output Falls Following Impact Factor Decline

[Al Henderson]

If "the scientific journal system is probably not financially feasible anymore," it is because universities chose to decimate library spending. Beginning around 1970, they began to shift the financial burden of what Vennevar Bush called "conserving the knowledge" from universities to individual readers. Open Access has shifted it further -- to authors.

The decision to promote financial inputs for research, which creates journal articles, while demoting support for the output may have enhanced university profitability. But it fails to serve the basic goals of research.

The drop in PLOS ONE impact factor ratings probably has many causes, but it seems to me authors seeking readers may have found better results from being published in more specialized, well-targeted media. I wonder how many PLOS ONE articles were first rejected by editors elsewhere.

Best wishes,

Albert Henderson
former editor, Publishing Research Quarterly

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen J Bensman <notsjb at LSU.EDU>
To: SIGMETRICS <SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU>
Sent: Thu, Jul 3, 2014 8:59 am
Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] PLOS ONE Output Falls Following Impact Factor Decline



I understand that it costs $3500 to have an article published in PLOS ONE.  
Times have been tough economically in the world, and this may have something to 
do with the drop in submissions and publication.  You can post on arXiv for 
nothing, and Google will get you there.  Google Scholar metrics show high 
retrieval rates  from certain subject categories in arXiv.  This is the time not 
of the open access journal but the open access institutional repository.  The 
scientific journal system is probably not financially feasible anymore, given 
high cancellation rates by academic libraries, and the open access institutional 
repository will probably replace it.. 


Stephen J Bensman, Ph.D.
LSU Libraries
Lousiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
USA
   

-----Original Message-----
From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] 
On Behalf Of Paul Colin Gloster
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2014 4:51 AM
To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] PLOS ONE Output Falls Following Impact Factor Decline



Philip Davis sent:
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"Can the recent drop in February PLOS ONE publication figures be explained by|
|a decline in their Impact Factor last June?                                  |
|                                                                             |
|see:                                                                         |
|PLOS ONE Output Falls Following Impact Factor Decline                        |
| http://wp.me/pcvbl-9sV"                                                     |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Hari M. Gupta, José R. Campanha, and Rosana A. G. Pesce, "Power-Law 
Distributions for the Citation Index of Scientific Publications and Scientists", 
"Brazilian Journal of Physics", vol. 35, no. 4A, December, 2005
claimed:
"[. . .]
Table I: Citations of the 20 most cited physicists from January 1981 to June 
1997 [. . .] Table II: Citations of the 20 most cited chemists from January 1981 
to June 1997 [. . .] [. . .] It is interesting to note that only two of them 
(P.W. Anderson, and K. A. Muller, at the 13th and 17th places, respectively), 
out of the 20 most cited physicists, and six (J. A. Pople, R. R. Ernst, J. M. 
Lehn, R. E. Smalley, E.
J. Corey, and K. Tanaka, at the 2nd, 4th, 10th, 12th, 16th, and 20th places, 
respectively), out of the 20 most cited chemists, are Nobel laureates.
[. . .]"

 
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