Introduction
The landscape of academic publishing has changed markedly in recent years. Studies have shown that less prestigious journals now publish an increased share of “high impact” papers, others suggest that growth in the numbers of articles published have put a strain on the publishing system, and in some fields the journal article’s growth may have come at the expense of the book as the primary means of knowledge dissemination. Here, we take a brief look at the remarkable growth in the number of both journals and articles published by scholars at Ph.D. granting institutions since 2014. Our preliminary findings suggest that the rise of new, often open-access journals, likely have contributed to this expansion. Through this small and narrowly focused exploration of the trends and shifts in publishing patterns, we aim to provide insights into the evolving dynamics of scholarly communication and its implications for researchers, institutions, and the broader academic community.
In how many “new” journals did authors at American Ph.D. granting universities publish since 2014?
We define a “new” journal as a venue in which scholars at US institutions did not author any articles in 2014, but in which they published 50 or more articles in 2023. This includes journals that did not exist prior to 2014 (e.g., Science Advances), but also journals that simply published no articles from our sample of authors in 2014, but later did publish articles by authors from US institutions. We found that authors in our sample published in 1,871 individual journals in 2014, compared to 2,246 journals in 2023 – a ~20% increase in the number of journals in 10 years (375 new journals).
Fig 1. Growth in the number of scholarly journals in which scholars at US Ph.D. granting universities published articles between 2014 and 2023. Growth is expressed as a percent of the number of journals in 2014.
Journals with large numbers of articles published in 2023 that had no articles in 2014 include new publications that are generally Open Access (OA), such as Innovation in Aging (est. 2017), Science Advances (est. 2015), JAMA Network Open (est. 2018), and Current Developments in Nutrition (est. 2017). Other newly established OA titles are also on the list of additions between 2014 and 2024, including eleven journals with the word “Frontiers” in the title, PNAS Nexus, and Journal of Clinical and Translational Science. Overall, we conclude that relatively recently established OA journals constitute a large portion of the 375 journals in which American scholars published articles in 2023 that did not appear on bibliographies in 2014.
Supplementary detail: in 2021, we published a peer-reviewed research article on Open Access publishing patterns observed in our data. A description of that study and a link to the published article are available here.
Additionally, we found that scholars at US Ph.D. granting institutions published 334,084 unique articles in 2014 (unique here meaning an individual article regardless of how many coauthors; if two or more authors contributed to the same article, it would count as only one unique article). In 2023, this number had increased to 375,667 unique articles – an increase of 12.4%. The increase in the number of articles published relative to the number of new journals (+20%) over the decade we sampled suggests that the rate at which new journals have appeared has outpaced the rate at which journal articles are being produced, at least among the American scholars in our sample. Taken together, this suggests that some journals may be losing “market share” as new OA journals see greater rates of journal articles published.
Are any journals losing or gaining “market share”?
Of the journals that were actively publishing articles authored by our sample of scholars in 2014, 991 grew the number of articles they published by 2023, 864 published fewer articles in 2023, and 16 journals published exactly the same number of articles by our sample of authors in 2023 as in 2014. Among the journals with the largest decrease in articles published was PLoS ONE, which published more than 7,000 fewer articles by authors in our sample between 2014 and 2023 (this decline in articles published has been documented elsewhere). Other journals that saw a sharp reduction in the number of articles published include Applied Physics Letters and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, both of which were mentioned in a 2018 story in Nature News. The inclusion of several high-profile journals among the ranks of those whose output declined is consistent with the global changes identified by Nature Index, including a relatively steep decline in papers published by authors at US institutions.
The journal with the largest increase in the number of articles published between 2014 and 2023 is Cureus, a relatively new OA journal, which published more than 2,700 additional articles by US authors in 2023 compared to 2014. Two other journals saw growth of more than 2,000 articles authored by our sample in this timeframe: Alzheimer’s and Dementia Journal (which transitioned to an OA model in early 2024) and the Nature Portfolio OA mega-journal Scientific Reports (in contrast, the journal Nature remained relatively steady, publishing 47 fewer articles by our sample of authors in 2023 than in 2014).
Conclusions and future directions
Our brief study highlights the significant growth in the number of journals and articles published by scholars at American Ph.D. granting universities over the past decade. The increase in new, often open-access journals has played a crucial role in this expansion. This growth has also led to some established journals losing "market share" (i.e., publishing fewer articles per year). Looking ahead, future research may focus on the long-term impact of this shift on the quality and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Additionally, exploring the factors driving the success of new journals and the challenges faced by traditional journals will provide valuable insights for the academic publishing industry. Continued monitoring of publishing trends and their implications for researchers, institutions, and funding bodies is essential to ensure a balanced and sustainable scholarly communication ecosystem.
