Stockholm University Press is an intrinsic part of the research infrastructure at Stockholm University, just like our home, the University Library. The approach is to provide relevant publishing services for peer-reviewed and open publications with a non-profit model. We want to encourage researchers to publish open books and journals while we help them stick to best practices and uphold academic rigour.
by Samuel Moore
Today’s Scholarly Kitchen blog post is an attempt by David Crotty — the blog’s editor — to quantify the increasing consolidation of the academic publishing industry. Crotty concludes:
Overall, the market has significantly consolidated since 2000 — when the top 5 publishers held 39% of the market of articles to 2022 where they control 61% of it. Looking at larger sets of publishers makes the consolidation even more extreme, as the top 10 largest publishers went from 47% of the market in 2000 to 75% in 2023, and the top 20 largest publishers from 54% to controlling 83% of the corpus.
It’s helpful to have more data on the increasing power that a small number of academic publishers hold. Crotty charts this consolidation from the year 2000 onwards, from the concentration brought about by the effects of the Big Deal to the present day where 5 publishers now control 61% of the article output, brought about by the dominant business models for open access based on greater volume and technological scale. The author’s finger is pointed at Coalition S for instigating a ‘rapid state of change’ that allows author-pays open access to flourish.
I’m no fan of open access policies, Plan S especially, and I’m sure that policy interventions play a part in the consolidation at play. There are of course many ways of achieving open access without recourse to author fees, transformative agreements, or technologies that remove human expertise in place of automation and scale. But while there is nothing natural or necessary about the relationship between open access and consolidation, there is a much stronger connection between commercialisation and consolidation. The recent history of academic publishing has been of marketisation and, hence, consolidation.
I always bristle when I read that open access is to blame for the problems with the publishing market, not simply because open access does not have to be a market-based activity (and is better when it isn’t) but more because the explanation is so shallow. It is a position that usually takes as its starting point that the natural and proper way for academic publishing to be organised is as a commercial activity and any intervention that works against this is to blame for the deleterious effects of commercialisation. Publishing is and always is a business (possibly a reflection of the constituents that the Scholarly Kitchen represents), despite the fact that it is exactly the commercial nature of publishing that is the problem.
[…]
“A key trend, obvious to any publishing consultant or acquisitions editor buried in a seemingly endless (and seemingly rising) stream of independent journals seeking a partnership with a larger publisher, is the ongoing and ever-increasing market consolidation that has been accelerated by the move to open access (OA). We all know this to be true, but where is the data?…
Overall, the market has significantly consolidated since 2000 — when the top 5 publishers held 39% of the market of articles to 2022 where they control 61% of it. Looking at larger sets of publishers makes the consolidation even more extreme, as the top 10 largest publishers went from 47% of the market in 2000 to 75% in 2023, and the top 20 largest publishers from 54% to controlling 83% of the corpus….”
“Driven by the same “duty of care for the good functioning of the science system” that inspired Plan S, the funders forming cOAlition S are now exploring a new vision for scholarly communication; a vision that holds the promise of being more effective, affordable, and equitable, ultimately benefiting society as a whole.
Our vision is a community-based scholarly communication system fit for open science in the 21st, that empowers scholars to share the full range of their research outputs and to participate in new quality control mechanisms and evaluation standards for these outputs….
To address these and other shortcomings, the new proposal is anchored in two key concepts that extend Plan S:
1. Authors, not third-party suppliers, decide when and what to publish.
In such a ‘scholar-led’ publishing system, third-party suppliers can still offer and charge for services that facilitate peer review, publication and preservation. However, they will not block scholars from sharing their work at any stage during the research and dissemination process.
2. The scholarly record includes the full range of outputs created during the research cycle, and not just the final journal-accepted version.
By making early article versions and peer review feedback critical elements of the scholarly record, a future scholarly communication system can capture research ‘in the act’. Shining a light on how research progresses towards increasingly trustworthy knowledge creation offers opportunities for reviewing and filtering scholarly outputs for the purposes of curation and research assessment….”
“Libraries around the world were forced to shut their doors in the spring of 2020 during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Temple University Libraries was no exception. While the Philadelphia institution’s physical buildings were closed, librarians got creative about how to remain open to students, faculty and staff.
It was all about getting users connected with digital material. Library staff worked together to develop a simple new service—they added a “Get Help Finding a Digital Copy” button to their library catalog. When searching for resources in the library catalog, users can click on the button to request assistance finding a physical item in digital form, which creates a help ticket for library staff to field.
Within the first week of the button launch in April 2020, there were about 350 requests. Since then, the requests have surpassed 9,000….”
“A large portion of Swedish research is published with immediate open access. However, the output of the major, traditional publishers is still dominated by expensive hybrid journals with a substantial percentage of paywalled articles.
Fully open access publishers present an important alternative to the traditional publishers. These four funders have now agreed, as a first step, to jointly cover publishing costs with open access publishers during 2024 and 2025.
The goal is for as many publishers as possible to be included in this initiative, which will be implemented gradually over the coming years. Negotiations have begun during the fall, and an important part of these agreemens is that all researchers affiliated with any of the organisations participating in the Bibsam Consortium will be covered. In line with the conclusions of the EU’s Council of Ministers, stating that the costs of scholarly publishing should not burden either readers or authors, with this initiative, the funders contribute to promoting an open access publishing system.”
Abstract: Objective: Previous research has shown that the number of open access documents in the world is increasing. Although the speed of this phenomenon is worthy of attention, some supporters of science want this process to be faster. One of the important challenges of open access for the country is to cover its relatively high costs, and along with that, due to sanctions, it is also important to predict the methods of paying these costs. Anticipating the necessary arrangements in this field, including credit provision, policy making and cultural building, requires knowledge of the speed of progress of free access in the world. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the trend of open access development worldwide and its impact on Iran’s international scientific standing and to provide solutions in this field.
Methodology: This research is an applied and survey-based study, conducted with a bibliometric approach. The study population consists of the data on 23 years of golden open access obtained from Clarivate and Incites.
Findings: The trend towards open access publishing is expected to continue in the most prestigious journals worldwide in the next 10 to 13 years. However, the growth rate of this trend is not uniform across all fields. The findings indicate that over the past five years, Iran ranks fifth among the countries with the lowest percentage of open access documents. This is happening while the share of open access documents is increasing rapidly in most countries. Also, major publishers are rapidly increasing their share of open access documents. Additionally, while journals with higher impact factors tend to publish more open access documents, the proportion of open access documents in journals with different citation degrees is relatively consistent.
Conclusion: The future of open access will be affected by the approach of financial sponsors in science, publishers and universities and research centers, but sooner or later a large part of the articles will be published as open access, an issue that will affect the future of the country’s scientific position, especially with regard to financial dimensions. It will have a significant impact. The development of international scientific interactions, the development of interactions with financial sponsors of international science, policy-making, cultural creation and funding are the solutions facing this phenomenon. The formation of a consortium to pay the cost of processing articles as a unit at the country level and the formation of a consortium that includes both the subscription of databases and the payment of the cost of processing articles are among the solutions that increase the possibility of bargaining with publishers. Adding the country’s science and technology funds to this consortium will increase the possibility of bargaining again.
The Open Institutional Publishing Association (OIPA) was founded to connect and encourage open access publishing within the UK. Our mission is to create a new source of support and advocacy for established and emerging university presses and institutionally-affiliated publishing operations striving for open access.
“The research funders Swedish Research Council, Forte, Formas, and Vinnova have made a strategic decision on a funding model to support publication with publishers that exclusively publish fully open access journals.
A large portion of Swedish research is published with immediate open access. However, the output of the major, traditional publishers is still dominated by expensive hybrid journals with a substantial percentage of paywalled articles.
Fully open access publishers present an important alternative to the traditional publishers. These four funders have now agreed, as a first step, to jointly cover publishing costs with open access publishers during 2024 and 2025.
The goal is for as many publishers as possible to be included in this initiative, which will be implemented gradually over the coming years. Negotiations have begun during the fall, and an important part of these agreemens is that all researchers affiliated with any of the organisations participating in the Bibsam Consortium will be covered. In line with the conclusions of the EU’s Council of Ministers, stating that the costs of scholarly publishing should not burden either readers or authors, with this initiative, the funders contribute to promoting an open access publishing system….”
The registration form for the event. No additional information.
“ACS Publications will hold series of virtual events in celebration of International Open Access Week, October 23-29, 2023.”
“Elsevier, a global leader in scientific publishing and information analytics, today announced that it is piloting Geographical Pricing for Open Access (GPOA) across 142 of its Gold Open Access journals to make open access article publishing charges (APCs) more affordable for authors in low- and middle-income countries.
The GPOA model, a publishing industry first, is set to take effect from January 2024. As part of the pilot, Elsevier will structure its article publishing charges for this subset of journals based on countries’ local economic conditions and average income. By tailoring pricing structures according to Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, a transparent and well-established measure used by many international organisations including Research4Life, Elsevier aims to reduce financial barriers that have traditionally hindered researchers and institutions from low and middle-income countries from publishing the latest research in Gold Open Access journals. Elsevier’s approach to GPOA and country banding based on GNI are outlined on our website. A full list of the journals taking part in this novel pilot can be found here. Elsevier will continue to waive APCs for authors in the lowest economic band and already provides affordable access to over 100,000 peer-reviewed resources for institutions in 120 low- and middle-income countries through Research4Life….”
“De Gruyter welcomes Peter J. Potter as new Vice President for De Gruyter’s service business and Executive Director of eBound. Peter J. Potter’s extensive experience and expertise in scholarly publishing and digital technologies make him an invaluable addition to the Boston team. Throughout his career, Peter has pioneered in embracing digital technologies in scholarly publishing and co-founded one of the earliest university-based centers for digital scholarly publishing. He launched Virginia Tech Publishing, a university publisher catering to the specific needs of the local campus community. Peter’s leadership in national and international efforts, such as TOME (Toward An Open Monograph Ecosystem), has further solidified his position as a leader in integrating scholarly book publishing into the broader information infrastructure. In his new role as Vice President, Peter will consolidate De Gruyter’s publishing services offer to academic institutions, societies, and publishers through its imprints Ubiquity and Sciendo as well as its Publisher Partner Program. As Executive Director of eBound, Peter will oversee the strategic development and operations of De Gruyter’s not-for-profit foundation launched in 2022 and aimed at supporting mission-driven scholarly monograph publishing….”
“If the description of Library Partnership (LP) Certification in our 2021 article intrigued you, you’ll be happy to know we’ve kept busy the past two years. Thanks to dedicated and thoughtful volunteers, LP Certification has grown and changed. This update tells you what we’re currently working on and provides a summary of the work done since fall of 2021.
First and foremost, LP Certification is now called Library Partnership (LP) Rating.undefined The goals and purposes remain the same.
As a quick reminder, LP Rating has three goals.
Provide information about journal publishers’ alignment with select library values to improve librarians’ funding decisions.
Improve clarity in librarians’ discussions about openness and publisher practices.
Give librarians and publishers a way to communicate and collaborate around these values….
LP Rating uses the LP Rubric to evaluate a journal publisher’s practices. The rubric underwent extensive work with members of the 2022-2023 LP Advisory Council (LPAC).undefined During June and July of 2023, a new group of librarians and publishers took another deep dive into the rubric and our associated files, seeing it all with fresh eyes. The feedback from this group of reviewersundefined has been incorporated into the LP Rubric and related documentation. We are indebted to both LPAC members and the reviewers for their hard work. Because of their input, the LP Rubric Beta version is now available….
LP Rating Values
Community. We want to work with:
Organizations that are transparent, cooperative, and collaborative in their business practices
Organizations that are strong partners; or, organizations that, over time, adopt practices better aligned with library values
Access. We seek:
Immediate open access to articles
Equitable access for readers and authors through reduced barriers and burdens
Affordability for libraries, authors, funders, and others
Rights. We favor:
Author retention of rights/permissions to their own work
Explicit permissions to readers to reuse and build on the work
Authors being given a choice of standard open licenses, or a publisher applying these by default
Recognizing diverse needs across disciplines
Discoverability and Accessibility. We prefer:
Open and indexable full-text and metadata
Diligent compliance with relevant accessibility standards
Participation in initiatives focused on interoperability
Preservation. We want partners to:
Deposit content into established and open federal, disciplinary, or institutional repositories
Participate in standard industry preservation efforts…”
“To mark International Open Access Week 2023, the University of Pennsylvania Press and the Penn Libraries host a panel discussion to provide a primer on open access.”