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
-----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
|
