“Factors that Influence Pricing

Many of the drivers that have influenced the scholarly information marketplace over the past several years remain in place (for example, library budget challenges, Open Access (OA), government mandates, country economic conditions, new assessment and evaluation tools, and alternative distribution networks). Some forces, such as organized piracy, are still a threatening disruption, but the impact to date is difficult to measure. In Europe, OA gained traction this past year with increased demand in OA publications, the negotiation of large Publish and Read as well as Read and Publish transactions and the launch of Plan S, which requires scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants to be published in compliant OA journals or platforms. Plan S is shifting subscription dollars away from libraries and the “reading” or consumption component of information publishing and toward the “publishing” or production side of publishing. In Asia, the Chinese government still asserts influence over academia and its related institutions, including how Chinese authors expose their scholarship to the world, especially as it relates to policies governing OA. This impacts access to core content within and from the country. Population contraction around the world also affects the serials marketplace. For example, South Korea now has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, which means fewer future university students, resulting in the closure or combining of Korean universities and decreased sales for publishers of academic content. The same population contraction trend has also been seen in Europe and is forecasted to eventually emerge in the U.S….”