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