Elite journals are losing their position of privilege

Elite journals are losing their position of privilege

The digital age has brought forth many changes to scholarly publishing [w]e now read papers, not journals. We used to read papers physically bound with other papers [..] within a journal, but now we just read papers, downloaded individually, and independently of the journal.

In addition, journals have become easier to produce. A physical medium is no longer necessary, so the production, transportation, dissemination and availability of papers have drastically increased.

The former weakened the connection between papers and their respective journals; papers now are more likely to stand on their own. The latter allowed the creation of a vast number of new journals that, in principle, could easily compete at par with long-established journals [..].

[W]e examined Nature, Science Cell, Lancet [.. and many other sources]. We identified the 1% and 5% most cited papers in every year in the past 40 years, and determined the percentage of these papers being published by each of these elite journals. In all cases, except for JAMA and the Lancet, the proportion of top papers published by elite journals has been declining since the late-eighties.

---

Oooh yeah… The third wave is a-comin!