Paper details
„Megajournals“ – A New Perspective Conception for Open Access Publications
Author
Jaroslav Šilhánek, Institute of Chemical Technology Prague, Czech Republic
Documents to download
Full text Foto přednášejícího / Picture Presentation
Abstract
Conception of Open Access publication policy is now generally accepted but practical and widely recognized editorial policy is still looked for. Exceptionally strong incentive came from recent development of publishing policy set for in beginning of OA initiative by non-profit institution/publishing house Public Library of Science publishing series of highly respected authors paid OA journals under the name PLoS. One of them, PLoS One, has shown during last 3–4 years very impressive grown in number of published papers (in 2013 year almost 30.000 papers), unparalleled to any scientific journal in history. This has been medialized under the term Mega Journals, even abbreviation MOAMJ = Multidisciplinary Open Access Mega Journal is getting used, and aroused exceptionally strong attention in scientific publishing industry. The reason is that there are a couple of fundamental changes and innovation in editorial practices some of them being taboo in scientific world. It is e.g. problems of so called „peer-reviews“ where PLoS One journal claims to have about 5000 registered reviewers being not anonymous, willingness to publish papers from very wide scientific disciplines, short way from submission of paper to publication and some others. Many renowned publishing houses announced start of new journals based on PLoS One or similar conception. The aim of this lecture is a detailed description of the main features of Mega Journals conceptions and on their evaluation both from positive and negative sides.
Author's professional CV
After graduation from the Prague Institute of Chemical Technology he obtained his PhD in organic technology from the same institution in 1968. Starting carrier as an organic chemist mostly in areas of pesticides and organic sulphur compounds chemistry he has been steadily engaged in the fields of chemical information and particularly in its electronic forms. He wrote a couple of teaching text on this subject and he is lecturing courses on Chemical Informatics on the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague. He has about 70 papers, patents and review papers in local and international journals and gave a couple of plenary lectures on Online Meeting in London (1997, 1999) as well as at the largest chemical congress Achema in Frankfurt am Main on the subject of management of chemical information and searching problems. He is also author of a couple of projects on promotion of widespread access to the most important chemical databases for all chemical or natural science faculties in the Czech Republic.
