From: Dan Strempel <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2012 18:06:10 -0400

Chocolate is way more popular than STM publishing :-)

In all seriousness, the total size of the Journal market in 2011
including all languages was $11.3 billion. English is still most of
that.

When you start to breakdown publishers' revenue and consider book
publishing, online services (not related to journal content) and other
revenue streams, you'd be hard pressed to say the journal market is much
larger than that.  There's just not that much revenue to support a
higher figure.

Best,

Dan Strempel
Senior Analyst
Business & Professional Group

Simba
Information
203.325.8193 ext. 4003 t
203.325.8915 f
[log in to unmask]
www.simbainformation.com
www.professionalcontentreport.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Sally Morris <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:36:58 +0100

There are no accurate estimates for the global value of the total
scholarly journals market (believe me, I've looked!).  In 2010 Simba
estimated the market for English-language journals in STM (the largest
sector) at $8.147bn.  This is pretty small in the overall scheme of
things - in the same year the market for chocolate and confectionery in
the UK alone was approx $7.72bn, according to KeyNote!

Sally Morris
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
Email:  [log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:23:00 -0700

This is all very helpful.  And it supports the view that no number about
publishing can be taken at face value.

Now for another number:  Where in the world does that $19 billion figure
for worldwide STM journal sales come from?  That's a huge number.  What
could possibly be in there?  Add up the journals businesses at Wiley,
Elsevier, Springer, T&F--and throw in Kluwer, Sage, ACS, and some
others, and you don't get near that figure, or near 50% of that figure.

Joe Esposito


On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 2:54 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> From: Sean Andrews <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:23:17 -0500
>
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:41 PM, Joe Esposito wrote:
>
> > From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 20:33:00 -0700
> >
> > Nothing new in this article for members of this list, but rather
> > surprising for its length.
> >
> > Can anyone untangle the numbers?  Harvard's journals budget looks
incredibly low.
>
> The $3.75 million is just a subset of the subscriptions (coming from
> "certain publishers") which they claim have risen especially high in
> recent years.  I can't figure the difference between "current serials"
> and "electronic serials" in the NCES database - and Harvard only has
> one year of numbers for e-serials (2010: $8.5 million) -  but
> according to the most recent numbers,  "Current Serials (which are for

> 2010, the year cited as the baseline, so not as much help) rose
> sharply and suddenly.  On the other hand, it appears they were getting

> a good bit more for their money overall. Middle number here is
> "Current serials" expenditures; bottom number is "current serials
> held"
>
> 2000 - $8,533,502 - 190,528
>
> 2002 - $9,735,872 - 106,869
>
> 2004 - $10,497,758 - 100,009
>
> 2006 - $9,911.521 - 98,988
>
> 2008 - $9,248,115 - 110,628
>
> 2010 - $15, 233,300 - 157854
>
> So certainly these were cheaper in 2000, but since then both the price

> and the number of serials has held steady, till 2010 when they bought
> about 40% more and paid about 60% more.  Again, this is for the period

> immediately preceding the baseline.  Not sure of the overall budget
> today.
>
> > Also, 50% of all journals are published by a small number of
> > commercial
publishers?  50% of the dollars, perhaps, but 50% of the titles?
>
> No you are right: it is likely dollars. It is a misreading of the
> source (handily linked and open access), which states that:
>
> > Worldwide, the scientific, technical, and medical (STM) segment of
> > the academic journal publishing industry generates a little more
> > than $19 billion in revenue, with the top ten publishers accounting
> > for approximately 43% of that revenue, according to a recent market
> > research report referenced by Library Journal
>
> It appears that both this and the LJ stat are specific to the STM
> field.  Though in that field, the article goes on to claim that,
> "Three giants dominate: Reed Elsevier, Springer and Wiley.  Estimates
> indicate that these three account for approximately 42% of all journal

> articles published."  But the citation for this is a report issued in
> 2002 by Morgan Stanley (i.e. now 10 years ago) on Reed's profitability

> and, so far as I can tell, it makes little mention of Springer.  So
> not sure where they got that number.
>
> Sean Johnson Andrews
> [log in to unmask]
> Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies Columbia College, Chicago
> 2011-2013 ACLS Public Fellow
> Program Officer
> The National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education