The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era

Abstract

The consolidation of the scientific publishing industry has been the topic of much debate within and outside the scientific community, especially in relation to major publishers' high profit margins. However, the share of scientific output published in the journals of these major publishers, as well as its evolution over time and across various disciplines, has not yet been analyzed. This paper provides such analysis, based on 45 million documents indexed in the Web of Science over the period 1973-2013. It shows that in both natural and medical sciences (NMS) and social sciences and humanities (SSH), Reed-Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis increased their share of the published output, especially since the advent of the digital era (mid-1990s). Combined, the top five most prolific publishers account for more than 50% of all papers published in 2013. Disciplines of the social sciences have the highest level of concentration (70% of papers from the top five publishers), while the humanities have remained relatively independent (20% from top five publishers). NMS disciplines are in between, mainly because of the strength of their scientific societies, such as the ACS in chemistry or APS in physics. The paper also examines the migration of journals between small and big publishing houses and explores the effect of publisher change on citation impact. It concludes with a discussion on the economics of scholarly publishing.

Fig 1. Percentage of Natural and Medical Sciences (left panel) and Social Sciences and Humanities (right panel) papers published by the top 5 publishers, 1973–2013.

Fig 2. Number of journals changing from small to big publishers, and big to small publishers per year of change in the Natural and Medical Sciences and Social Sciences & Humanities.

Fig 3. Percentage of papers published by the five major publishers, by discipline in the Natural and Medical Sciences, 1973–2013.

Fig 4. Percentage of papers published by the five major publishers, by discipline of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1973–2013.

Fig 5. Percentage of papers published by the five major publishers in Physics, 1973–2013.

Fig 6. Evolution of the mean relative citation impact of papers, by distance to publisher change, 1995–1998 and 2001–2004.

Fig 7. Operating profits (million USD) and profit margin of Reed-Elsevier as a whole (A) and of its Scientific, Technical & Medical division (B), 1991–2013.

Compilation by the authors based on the annual reports of Reed-Elsevier. (http://www.reedelsevier.com/investorcentre/pages/home.aspx) Numbers for the Scientific, Technical & Medical division were only available in GBP; conversion to USD was performed using historical conversion rates from http://www.oanda.com.