The diverse niches of megajournals: Specialism within generalism

Over the past decade, megajournals have expanded in popularity and established a legitimate niche in academic publishing. Leveraging advantages of digital publishing, megajournals are characterized by large publication volume, broad interdisciplinary scope, and peer review filters that select primarily on scientific soundness as opposed to novelty or originality. These publishing innovations are complementary and/or competitive vis-à-vis traditional journals. We analyze how megajournals (PLOS ONE, Scientific Reports) are represented in different fields relative to prominent generalist journals (Nature, PNAS, Science) and ‘quasi-megajournals’ (Nature Communications, PeerJ). Our results show that both megajournals and prominent traditional journals have distinctive niches, despite the similar interdisciplinary scopes of such journals. These niches – defined by publishing volume and disciplinary diversity – are dynamic and varied over the relatively brief histories of the analyzed megajournals. Although the life sciences are the predominant contributor to megajournals, there is variation in the disciplinary composition of different megajournals. The growth trajectories and disciplinary composition of generalist journals – including megajournals – reflect changing knowledge dissemination and reward structures in science.