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