From: Sally Morris <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 22:47:38 +0100

Fred, don't read too much into the comparisons - I (and, I'd guess, Michael)
were simply making the point that, in the overall scheme of things, it's
small...

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Frederick Friend <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 10:03:28 +0100

I am not convinced by the comparison between the STM publishing industry and
the chocolate or Christmas pudding industries. Chocolate or Christmas
puddings individuals choose to buy or not to buy out of the money in  their
own pockets. STM journals are paid for by all taxpayers without any say in
whether they are purchased or not and without any say in the price that is
paid. Admittedly the same argument applies to other even larger elements of
public expenditure - such as defence equipment - but defence against
aggression is a higher priority for taxpayers  than the purchase of journals
for which there is a potentially viable and cheaper substitute in
institutional or subject repositories.

Also if I were a publisher I would be wary of using the argument that STM
publishing is not a really big expenditure from the public purse.
In an era of financial stringency it is generally the smaller items in
governments' budgets that are at greater risk of being axed, especially if
they are not perceived to be as essential as the big items like health or
defence.

Fred Friend
http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Mabe <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2012 12:38:45 +0200

I think the confusion about the size of the STM segment arises from a
misreading of Outsell and other data. The Outsell data for all STM is close
to the US$19b quoted in the thread below (US$20b in recent reports). This
includes not just journals but databases, secondary publishing, medical data
and geodata (which is huge). When Mark Ware and I have tried to disentangle
this for our figures in the STM Report
(http://www.stm-assoc.org/2009_10_13_MWC_STM_Report.pdf )- new edition due
in October - we estimated the contributions to overall sales of journals to
be about US$8b in 2008 which would be roughly US$9b at the moment, allowing
for sales growth.

Sally's observation about the size of the UK chocolate market is one I have
also made; we all think the STM journal sector is huge but it is tiny
compared to the consumer market, even for quite specialised things. The
total value of all UK journal subscriptions in one year is also equal to the
annual sales value for Christmas puddings.

Best, Michael

Michael A Mabe
Chief Executive Officer
International Association of STM Publishers Prama House, 267 Banbury Road
OXFORD, OX2 7HT, UK
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Web:   www.stm-assoc.org