From: "Jean-Claude Guédon" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2017 16:16:48 -0500

The 30% profit margin among the major international publishers of scholarly
journals argument is real, and very far from bogus, unlike Mr. J.
Esposito's claim.

The French organization, EPRIST (http://www.eprist.fr/) allows French
leaders in scientific and technical information that work in French public
research institutions, or in non-profits (e.g. Pasteur Institute) to
network and exchange information. In March 2016, it published an assessment
of the financial results coming from 6 large multinational publishers:
http://www.eprist.fr/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/I-IST_16_R%C3%
A9sultatsFinanciers2015EditionScientifique.pdf).

These six publishers represent 38% of the total market:

A simple graphe gives the following results (for year 2015):



Let us make a few calculations:

Elsevier:  36.7%
Springer/Nature: 39.0%
Wolters-Kluwer:  24.2%
Wiley: 45.9%
Thomson-Reuters - now divested of its WoS - then: 31.2%
Informa (owner of Taylor-Francis):  36.8%

Inside the oligopolistic perimeter of international academic publishing
(see Larivière V, Haustein S, Mongeon P (2015) The Oligopoly of Academic
Publishers in the Digital Era. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0127502.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502), only Wolters-Kluwer does not make it to
30% for the year 2015. But then, their tax and business branch can probably
make up for it... Thomson-Reuters was a laggard at 31.2%, which may
partially account for their decision to divest themselves of Web of Science.

Conclusion: more than 30% among major international publishers is bogus?
Figures do not seem to bear out this judgement.

I have used EPRIST as a source only because I happened to have it at hand
(and, perhaps, to refresh J. Esposito's knowledge of French if needed, or
to allow him to test Google Translate). There are many other sources that
converge on the same figures.

Yes, let us have the facts up and straight. I am all for it.

Jean-Claude Guédon



Le jeudi 23 novembre 2017 à 22:35 -0500, LIBLICENSE a écrit :

From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2017 11:03:37 -0500

Just had a chance to get to this. This article is particularly
ill-informed, even by the standard of pieces about OA. The 30% profit
margin argument is bogus and makes inaccurate comparisons to other
industries. The history of ESA is simply wrong. The "proper" use of income
from publications is in fact the norm for professional societies and has
been for decades. The point about the cost of a subscription to a journal
overlooks the most significant trend in scholarly publishing today, namely,
that most materials are purchased in aggregations, not on a stand-alone
basis (and if you can figure out the cost of a journal that is part of an
aggregation, good luck).

Whatever we may think about OA or traditional demand-driven publishing,
can't we at least get the basic facts straight? One would hope that a
discussion of scholarly publishing would not easily be compared to the
fulminations on Fox News and MSNBC.

Joe Esposito


On Sun, Nov 19, 2017 at 9:54 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2017 19:56:38 -0700

Ecological scientists on OA in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

http://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Fallacy-of-Open-Access/
241786?cid=wsinglestory

Their argument is roughly that high-priced journals are unacceptable, but
APCs are also unacceptable, and so they recommend that scholarly societies
take the lead in journal publishing.  An article unlikely to be the last
word on its subject.

Jim O'Donnell
ASU