Abstract

This research provides a quantitative analysis on research articles published in PLoS ONE, a multidisciplinary open access journal, by authors affiliated with Korean institutions. Korean authors published more than 6,500 research ariticles in the mega journal between 2006 and 2019. Korea is ranked the top 11th place in terms of article publishing in the journal. Most articles by Korean authors are concentrated in the biomedical fields. In recent years, the overall production of PLoS ONE has decreased as authors migrated to competing mega journals such as Scientific Reports and BMJ Open. The change might have been affected in part by the delay in the review period and the dropping impact factor score. The open access share of the Korean PLoS ONE authors of more than 10 articles hovers around 30%. However, there is a significant variation among researchers reaching up to 50% discrepancies. Among altmetrics provided by PLoS ONE, the saves are highly correlated with the views and the citations. On the contrary, the shares show low correlation with other use metrics. A follow up, survey questionnarie based research involving researchers who have published in PLoS ONE is planned in order to investigate author motivation and experience in the review process.