The dramatic growth of PLoS One: soon-to-be world's largest journal

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

PLoS One is projected to publish about 4,300 articles in 2009, 
making it the world's third largest journal (and already the 
world's largest non-physics journal).  In 2010, PLoS One is 
anticipated to publish 8,000 articles, which would make it the 
world's largest scholarly journal, by far.

Data

"In 2007, the journal published 1,231 articles; in 2008 it 
published 2,722 articles. At current rates of growth, the journal 
is on track to publish over 4,300 articles in 2009 and assuming 
this growth continues at the same rate, in 2010 PLoS ONE could be 
publishing around 1% of all the articles listed in PubMed for 
that year (PubMed lists 803,00 published articles for 2008)". 
[i.e. 8,000 journals]. Peter Binfield, PLoS One: background, 
future development, and article- level metrics, ELPUB 2009. 
http://conferences.aepic.it/elpub2009/

One of the world's other really large journals - the American 
Physical Society's Physical Review D - is on the list of journals 
100% convertible to the SCOAP3 Open Access Consortium.  So it is 
entirely possible that TWO of the world's dozen largest journals 
will be fully open access within the next year or so.

Thanks to Dana Roth on the American Scientist Open Access Forum 
for article counts for 2008.

Details and a growth chart can be found at: 
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/07/dramatic-growth-of-plos-one-soon-to-be.html

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, 
and does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic 
Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
Author, Scholarly Communication for Librarians, Chandos Publishing 2009