Previously, there was a hierarchy among publishers and journals for given research field.
The order/ranking was mostly defined by prestige and impact factor, a metric showing how many times on average other researchers cite the paper in the journal.
Then there came open access online journals. Traditional publishers also started using online open access format, with or without extra fee.
Now it is almost December, 2018. We have many more scientific journals with similar names. Many of them are new and online. They keep sending out solicitation for us to join the editorial board and do some work for them, so that their publication system stays alive.
Although the sense of "major" and "minor" journals is maintained among researchers specialized for the particular field, for lay people who do not know about the journals' prestige and rankings, the landscape of scientific publication has become quite confusing.
In such a messy era for scientific publication, publishers are also paying attention to improve their metrics.
There is a cycle: "Improved impact factor -> more prestige -> better attention from researchers -> attract better quality papers -> improved metrics -> Improved impact factor....."
They want to get this win-win cycle going.
As such, there are increasing amounts of efforts both on publishers' and researchers' sides for improving the visibility of their paper and the metrics.
Publishers began to get serious about improving metrics, by helping out researchers and their papers to get more attention.
One of such efforts is to send out "News and Views"-type follow up article. I got one, too.
So here it is.
