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
http://www.nitle.org | tel. 703-597-6948 | fax 512 819-7684
iChat: [log in to unmask] | skype: jnskolja | twitter: @skja76


> On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 6:04 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > From: "B.G. Sloan" <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 12:16:53 -0700
> >
> > Some of you may be interested in this article from U.S. News & World Report:
> >
> > Owens, Simon. Is the Academic Publishing Industry on the Verge of Disruption?
> >
> > "As Harvard balks at subscription cost and others take a page from its
> > book, open access publishers get a fresh look."
> >
> > Full text at: http://bit.ly/Ofn7kH
> >
> > Bernie Sloan