Rise of the Rest: The Growing Impact of Non-Elite Journals

In this paper, we examine the evolution of the impact of non-elite journals. We attempt to answer two questions. First, what fraction of the top-cited articles are published in non-elite journals and how has this changed over time. Second, what fraction of the total citations are to non-elite journals and how has this changed over time. To answer these questions, we studied citations to articles published in 1995-2013. We computed the 10 most-cited journals and the 1000 most-cited articles each year for all the 261 subject categories included in Scholar Metrics. We considered the 10 most-cited journals in a category as the elite journals for the category and all other journals in the category as non-elite. There are two main conclusions from our study. First, the fraction of highly-cited articles published in non-elite journals increased steadily over 1995-2013. While the elite journals still publish a substantial fraction of high-impact articles, many more authors of well-regarded papers in a diverse array of research fields are choosing other venues. Our analysis indicates that the number of top-1000 papers published in non-elite journals for the representative subject category went from 149 in 1995 to 245 in 2013, a growth of 64%. Looking at broad research areas, 4 out of 9 broad areas saw at least one-third of the top-cited articles published in non-elite journals in 2013. All broad areas of research saw a growth in the fraction of top-cited articles published in non-elite journals over 1995-2013. For 6 out of 9 broad areas, the fraction of top-cited papers published in non-elite journals for the representative subject category grew by 45% or more. Second, now that finding and reading relevant articles in non-elite journals is about as easy as finding and reading articles in elite journals, researchers are increasingly building on and citing work published everywhere. Considering citations to all articles, the percentage of citations to articles in non-elite journals went from 27% of all citations in 1995 to 47% in 2013. Six out of nine broad areas had at least 50% of total citations going to articles published in non-elite journals in 2013.