This blog has highlighted the exploitation of taxpayers, university libraries' budgets and academics by the academic publishing industry. The basic argument is that, under the guise of being an academic-led cottage industry, the global publi-business giants have profit levels higher than Google or Amazon largely because their raw product is free (paid for by taxpayers, funding bodies - often charitable - and universities). They can rely on an unpaid academic labour force of hundreds of thousands to sustain their reputation through peer reviewing that product. These "legitimate" publi-businesses are predatory publishers in the sense that they predate both on academia and on each other - see the account of Springer Nature below. In recent years have been joined by sham publishers, for whom peer review, quality control and doing any actual publishing are not significant, but the vast profits to be made certainly are.
I was, for example, last week asked to "peer review" an article titled "Phylomitogenomic analyses on collembolan higher taxa with enhanced taxon sampling and discussion on method selection". These days I don't even open the 6 or 7 emailed requests to do a peer review that I get each week - it's just too much work to try to find the rare truly open access journal among the exploitative and the just-plain-rubbish. I did open that one as an exception because its subject line in an email sent to me, a Prof. of Higher Education, was so laughable.
So has anything changed since I started this blog? Only that it seems to have become harder to get access to frank annual reports from these publishers. I think they now know it's best not to be too public about their ridiculous profit level and exploitation from journals. RELX, the parent company of Elsevier, is one of the easier ones to access. 52% of its revenue comes from subscriptions - the proportion of revenues from electronic products having grown from 20% in 2000 to 74% in 2018. It publishes nearly one fifth of all academic articles across the world (nearly half a million articles in 2,500 journals). This side of the business had revenues of over £2.5bn (yes, billion) for the year ending December 2018, after years of steady growth. The adjusted operating profit was £942 million, which at 37% is low for a global publi-business big player (70% is more usual). Perhaps that's why RELX is more transparent than the others.
John Wiley meanwhile made 73% of its revenue from journal subscriptions in 2019, publishing 1,700 academic journals. Some of these are 'open access' in the sense that Wiley makes an Author Publishing Charge (APC) - they are author-funded (which usually means the author's university). Revenue was $1,800 million, with gross profit margin of 69.2%, slightly down on the previous year's 70.4%. Poor Wiley....
Informa (which includes Taylor and Francis) meanwhile continues to grow its revenue steadily: now at nearly £2.5 billion (yes, billion) with an adjusted operating profit of £732.1 million for 2018. Academic publishing generally contributed £533 million to the revenue in 2018 (p.168). Academic book publishing is far less profitable than journals.
Pearson reports revenues of £4.1 billion (yes, billion) with an adjusted operating profit of £546 million for 2018. Bigger income but lower profitability than Informa. Must try harder.......
As for Springer Nature, their annual report seems to have turned into an instrument of propaganda, even more so than Pearson's. It has 2,900 journals in its stable. It claims "our authors are at the heart of everything we do" - which is probably true - they give Springer Nature its raw material for free, and work for them for nothing. Springer says it "engages with" a network of more than 700,000 peer reviewers ("Responsible Business Report" 2019, p 15). Wow - that's a lot of free labour! Interestingly, levels of revenue and profit are not mentioned in this 'report' but we know from past more open reports that profit levels in the academic journal publishing side are very healthy, even by publi-business standards.
But longitudinal comparisons in reporting are difficult because things change so quickly as big publishers predate on small ones. Competition authorities permitted the merger into what is now know as Springer Nature of the following publishers: Nature Publishing Group; Palgrave Macmillan; Macmillan Education and Springer Science+Business Media. This prime example of the global monopolisation of the publishing business came into existence in 2015. Its turnover was reported as 1.5 billion euros (yes, billion). There are fewer and fewer big beasts in academic publishing. Revenue, profits and power are more and more concentrated.
I was, for example, last week asked to "peer review" an article titled "Phylomitogenomic analyses on collembolan higher taxa with enhanced taxon sampling and discussion on method selection". These days I don't even open the 6 or 7 emailed requests to do a peer review that I get each week - it's just too much work to try to find the rare truly open access journal among the exploitative and the just-plain-rubbish. I did open that one as an exception because its subject line in an email sent to me, a Prof. of Higher Education, was so laughable.
So has anything changed since I started this blog? Only that it seems to have become harder to get access to frank annual reports from these publishers. I think they now know it's best not to be too public about their ridiculous profit level and exploitation from journals. RELX, the parent company of Elsevier, is one of the easier ones to access. 52% of its revenue comes from subscriptions - the proportion of revenues from electronic products having grown from 20% in 2000 to 74% in 2018. It publishes nearly one fifth of all academic articles across the world (nearly half a million articles in 2,500 journals). This side of the business had revenues of over £2.5bn (yes, billion) for the year ending December 2018, after years of steady growth. The adjusted operating profit was £942 million, which at 37% is low for a global publi-business big player (70% is more usual). Perhaps that's why RELX is more transparent than the others.
John Wiley meanwhile made 73% of its revenue from journal subscriptions in 2019, publishing 1,700 academic journals. Some of these are 'open access' in the sense that Wiley makes an Author Publishing Charge (APC) - they are author-funded (which usually means the author's university). Revenue was $1,800 million, with gross profit margin of 69.2%, slightly down on the previous year's 70.4%. Poor Wiley....
Informa (which includes Taylor and Francis) meanwhile continues to grow its revenue steadily: now at nearly £2.5 billion (yes, billion) with an adjusted operating profit of £732.1 million for 2018. Academic publishing generally contributed £533 million to the revenue in 2018 (p.168). Academic book publishing is far less profitable than journals.
Pearson reports revenues of £4.1 billion (yes, billion) with an adjusted operating profit of £546 million for 2018. Bigger income but lower profitability than Informa. Must try harder.......
As for Springer Nature, their annual report seems to have turned into an instrument of propaganda, even more so than Pearson's. It has 2,900 journals in its stable. It claims "our authors are at the heart of everything we do" - which is probably true - they give Springer Nature its raw material for free, and work for them for nothing. Springer says it "engages with" a network of more than 700,000 peer reviewers ("Responsible Business Report" 2019, p 15). Wow - that's a lot of free labour! Interestingly, levels of revenue and profit are not mentioned in this 'report' but we know from past more open reports that profit levels in the academic journal publishing side are very healthy, even by publi-business standards.
But longitudinal comparisons in reporting are difficult because things change so quickly as big publishers predate on small ones. Competition authorities permitted the merger into what is now know as Springer Nature of the following publishers: Nature Publishing Group; Palgrave Macmillan; Macmillan Education and Springer Science+Business Media. This prime example of the global monopolisation of the publishing business came into existence in 2015. Its turnover was reported as 1.5 billion euros (yes, billion). There are fewer and fewer big beasts in academic publishing. Revenue, profits and power are more and more concentrated.