Scientific Publication Network Evolving

Over time, and with increasing complexity, scale-free network architecture becomes increasingly democratic in structure. We are seeing that in the declining influence of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals in the world. Increasing specialization results, too, in greater complexity -- and greater specialization means more people are reading their specialist journals rather than generalist, multi-disciplinary journals. This hardly means the prestigious journals are on the way out. We just see a flattening of the heterarchy is all.