Christos Petrou, Guest Author

Christos Petrou is founder and Chief Analyst at Scholarly Intelligence. Christos is a former analyst of the Web of Science Group at Clarivate and the Open Access portfolio at Springer Nature. A geneticist by training, he previously worked in agriculture and as a consultant for Kearney, and he holds an MBA from INSEAD.

Articles by Christos Petrou

Guest Post — How the Growth of Chinese Research Is Bringing Western Publishing to Breaking Point

Christos Petrou examines the rapid growth in publication volume coming from China, and how that is impacting the publishing industry.

Guest Post — Reading the Leaves of Publishing Speed: The Cases of Hindawi, Frontiers, and PLOS

The analysis of operational data is complex, dull, and unrewarding. It is also necessary. Three case studies of major journals and portfolios explain why.

Guest Post – Making Sense of Retractions and Tackling Research Misconduct

Christos Petrou presents evidence suggesting that growth in retractions has not been universal across regions and subject areas, and it is primarily driven by the industrial-scale activity of papermills (rather than the activity of individual researchers) and the growth of research from China.

Guest Post – Publishing Fast or Slow: How Speed Varies for Similar Journals

Christos Petrou looks at the factors that go into determining a journal’s turnaround times, and how we can help authors make better-informed choices.

Guest Post — Reputation and Publication Volume at MDPI and Frontiers

Compared to their peak levels, publication volume has declined at MDPI by 27% and at Frontiers by 36%. What’s behind these declines, and how do they reflect the inherent risk in the APC open access model and different approaches to reputation management?

Guest Post – Of Special Issues and Journal Purges

Christos Petrou takes a look at the Guest Editor model for publishing and its recent impact on Hindawi and MDPI, as Clarivate has delisted some of their journals.

Guest Post – Publishing Fast and Slow: A Review of Publishing Speed in the Last Decade

Christos Petrou analyzes changes in the speed of publication of research articles over the last ten years.

Guest Post – Quantifying the Impact of the OSTP Policy

The new US policy on access to research publications suggests an acceleration in the shift toward open access. Christos Petrou examines what that would look like in different fields and for different journals.

Guest Post – An Early Look at the Impact of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Journals Warning List

At the end of 2020, the Chinese Academy of Sciences issued their first “Early Warning List of International Journals”. Christos Petrou takes a look at the early impacts this list has had on the journals and publishers named.

Guest Post – Scientific Output in the Year of COVID, An Update

An update and a correction for an earlier post on research publication growth in 2020.

Guest Post – Scientific output in the year of COVID — Please See Update

Christos Petrou looks at the impact on publication volumes, and what that might mean for next year.

Guest Post – MDPI’s Remarkable Growth

Despite controversies, MDPI has flourished and are now the 5th largest scholarly publisher in the market. Christos Petrou offers an analysis of their enormous levels of growth.

Guest Post – The Megajournal Lifecycle

Christos Petrou looks at megajournal performance and the resulting business implications.

Guest Post – Quantifying the Impact of the New Chinese Policy

Christos Petrou analyzes the potential publishing impacts of new Chinese policies on research assessment.

The Scholarly Kitchen

Christos Petrou