The oligopoly of academic publishers in the digital era
Open accessAbstract
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.
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The four selected publishers represent a significant proportion of global scholarly output.
“Global influence and market dominance show that these publishers represent a significant proportion of global scholarly output (Larivière et al., 2015).”
From Use of artificial intelligence tools in the publishing process: expectations from publishers through author guidelines (2026) · cites this paper as Larivière et al., 2015
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Self-citationThe misalignment of incentives in academic publishing and implications for journal reform
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Engels, T. C. E., Starčič, A. I., Kulczycki, E., Pölönen, J., & Sivertsen, G. (2018) · Aslib Journal of Information Management · doi:10.1108/ajim-05-2018-0127 · Cited by 55 · see citing works
Looking into Pandora's Box: The Content of Sci-Hub and its UsagePreprint
Greshake, B. (2017) · bioRxiv · doi:10.1101/124495 · Cited by 55 · see citing works
Anjum, G., & Aziz, M. (2024) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1368663 · Cited by 53 · see citing works
“…accessibility to scholarly publications, particularly accentuated by subscription-based models, presents a significant barrier to the dissemination and utilization of scientific knowledge, disproportionately impacting researchers in the Global South (Chan and Costa, 2005; Larivière et al., 2015).”
BackgroundSitumeang, R., Mazancová, J., & Roubík, H. (2022) · Energies · doi:10.3390/en15145105 · Cited by 53 · see citing works
O ecossistema da Ciência Aberta
da Silva, F. C. C., & da Silveira, L. (2019) · Transinformação · doi:10.1590/2318-0889201931e190001 · Cited by 53
Zhu, M.-J., & Cole, J. (2022) · Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling · doi:10.1021/acs.jcim.1c01198 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
Decentralizing science: Towards an interoperable open peer review ecosystem using blockchain
Tenorio-Fornés, A., Tirador, E. P., Sánchez‐Ruiz, A. A., & Hassan, S. (2021) · Information Processing & Management · doi:10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102724 · Cited by 55 · see citing works
And the credit goes to … - Ghost and honorary authorship among social scientists
Pruschak, G., & Hopp, C. (2022) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0267312 · Cited by 84 · see citing works
Guédon, J., Consulting, U., Kramer, B., Laakso, M., Schmidt, B., Šimukovič, E., Hansen, J., Kiley, R., Kitson, A., van der Stelt, W., et al. (2019) · doi:10.2777/836532 · Cited by 50
Research trends, themes, and insights on artificial neural networks for smart cities towards SDG-11
Jain, A., Gue, I. H. V., & Jain, P. (2023) · Journal of Cleaner Production · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.137300 · Cited by 60 · see citing works
Toward an inclusive agenda of Open Science for Communication Research: a Latin American approach
de Oliveira, T. D., Marques, F. P. J., Leão, A. V., de Albuquerque, A. L. T., Prado, J., Grohmann, R., Clinio, A., Cogo, D., & Guazina, L. (2021) · Journal of Communications · doi:10.31235/osf.io/awykg · Cited by 47
Expert systems in oil palm precision agriculture: A decade systematic review
Tan, X. J., Cheor, W. L., Yeo, K. S., & Leow, W. Z. (2022) · Journal of King Saud University - Computer and Information Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.jksuci.2022.02.006 · Cited by 50 · see citing works
“…an oligopoly relationship in publications and the iden-tified trend is aligned with a previous finding involved analysis of 4 decades (i.e., 1973–2013) of publishing trend where Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, and Springer are amongst the top publishers in various topics (Larivière et al., 2015).”
The political economy of academic publishing: On the commodification of a public good
Puehringer, S., Rath, J., & Griesebner, T. (2021) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0253226 · Cited by 46 · see citing works
“In a similar vein, very high market concentrations have also been reported on the EU level [14, 26] as well as for different academic disciplines [16, 30].”
BackgroundOpen access publishers: The new players
Rodrigues, R., Abadal, E., & de Araújo, B. K. H. (2020) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0233432 · Cited by 44 · see citing works
“108) [19] conclude that “the role of universities and research councils cannot be over-emphasized, as they are at the heart of the research evaluation system and decide what has value.”
BackgroundInfluentialOn the use of blockchain-based mechanisms to tackle academic misconduct
Mohan, V. (2019) · Research Policy · doi:10.1016/j.respol.2019.103805 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
Market Power of Publishers in Setting Article Processing Charges for Open Access Journals
Asai, S. (2020) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-020-03402-y · Cited by 41 · see citing works
Prestige or Perish: Publishing Decisions in Academic Archaeology
Beck, J., Gjesfjeld, E., & Chrisomalis, S. (2021) · American Antiquity · doi:10.1017/aaq.2021.64 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
Hartgerink, C., & van Zelst, M. (2018) · Publ. · doi:10.3390/publications6020021 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
“Furthermore, scholarly communication has become highly 38 centralized, where over 50% of all papers are published by as little as five publishers (over 39 70% for social sciences) [2].”
BackgroundLawson, S., Gray, J., & Mauri, M. (2015) · doi:10.16995/olh.72 · Cited by 39
The transformation of the academic publishing market: multiple perspectives on innovation
Ponte, D., Mierzejewska, B. I., & Klein, S. (2017) · Electronic Markets · doi:10.1007/s12525-017-0250-9 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
Innovating editorial practices: academic publishers at work
Horbach, S., & Halffman, W. (2020) · Research Integrity and Peer Review · doi:10.1186/s41073-020-00097-w · Cited by 37 · see citing works
Perverse incentives and the political economy of South African academic journal publishing
Tomaselli, K. (2018) · South African Journal of Science · doi:10.17159/sajs.2018/4341 · Cited by 37
“The taxpayer pays multiply: (1) taxpayers sponsor the work done by academics, whose universities then, (2) pay to access it in publication form, and who also (3) underwrite the DHET publication incentive.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialThe oligopoly of open access publishing
Shu, F., & Larivière, V. (2023) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-023-04876-2 · Cited by 36
“Scholarly publishing is one of the most profitable businesses (Larivière et al., 2015), and the market share of this industry can also be measured in terms of sales or revenues.”
Self-citationPlan S in Latin America: A Precautionary Note
Debat, H., & Babini, D. (2019) · Scholarly and Research Communication · doi:10.22230/src.2020v11n1a347 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
Innovation in Latin America through the lens of bibliometrics: crammed and fading away
Cortés-Sánchez, J. D. (2018) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-019-03201-0 · Cited by 36
The Chinese scientific publication system: Specific features, specific challenges
Wang, J., Halffman, W., & Zwart, H. A. E. (2020) · Learned Publishing · doi:10.1002/leap.1326 · Cited by 43 · see citing works
An Inadvertent Concurrent Replication
Lemons, C. J., King, S. A., Davidson, K. A., Berryessa, T. L., Gajjar, S. A., & Sacks, L. H. (2016) · Remedial and Special Education · doi:10.1177/0741932516631116 · Cited by 43 · see citing works
“Instead, science pursues “an infinite, yet attainable aim: that of ever discovering new, deeper, and more general problems, and of subjecting our ever tentative answers to ever renewed and more rigorous tests” (Popper, 1959, p. 281). Considering the importance of replication in scientific inquiry, Makel and Plucker (2…”
BackgroundUniversities in a knowledge economy or ecology? Policy, contestation and abjection
Wright, S. (2016) · doi:10.1080/19460171.2016.1142457 · Cited by 35
“Scientific journal publishing generated a total revenue of $9.4 billion in 2011 and the top five publishers accounted for more than 50% of all papers published in 2013 (Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon 2015).”
BackgroundInfluentialOpen access at the national level: A comprehensive analysis of publications by Finnish researchers
Pölönen, J., Laakso, M., Guns, R., Kulczycki, E., & Sivertsen, G. (2020) · Quantitative Science Studies · doi:10.1162/qss_a_00084 · Cited by 34 · see citing works
“Most attention in the national and international OA policies is focused on the large international commercial publishers—Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, Sage, and ACS—that according to recent analyses covermore than half of the international journal publishing indexed inWoS (Larivière et…”
BackgroundResultInfluentialKarmakar, M., Banshal, S. K., & Singh, V. K. (2020) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-020-03574-7 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
Comparing human and AI expertise in the academic peer review process: towards a hybrid approach
Farber, S. (2025) · Higher Education Research & Development · doi:10.1080/07294360.2024.2445575 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
“Furthermore, as the academic publishing landscape continues to evolve, with increasing research output and new journals (Larivière et al., 2015), peer review processes potentially may have to consider harnessing AI efficiency to meet the increased demand.”
van Bellen, S., Alperin, J., & Larivière, V. (2024) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0327015 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
“Since the Larivière et al . paper published a decade ago [1], the oligopolistic structure of the scholarly journal ecosystem has been used as a reference framework in many studies [4–8].”
InfluentialSelf-citationThe future of academic publishing
Ahmed, A., Al‐Khatib, A., Boum, Y., Debat, H., Dunkelberg, A. G., Hinchliffe, L. J., Jarrad, F., Mastroianni, A. M., Mineault, P., Pennington, C. R., et al. (2023) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-023-01637-2 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
The Impact of the German 'DEAL' on Competition in the Academic Publishing Market
Haucap, J., Moshgbar, N., & Schmal, W. (2021) · Social Science Research Network · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3815451 · Cited by 32
Free editors and peers: squeezing the lemon dry
da Silva, J. A. T., & Katavić, V. (2016) · Ethics & bioethics · doi:10.1515/ebce-2016-0011 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
“How then did science reach this state where professionals are exploited by the publishing industry using almost 100% pro bono work, leading to record profits year upon year , sometimes in billions of US$ (Larivière, Haustein & Mongeon, 2015)?”
BackgroundThe Role of Publons in the Context of Open Peer Review
da Silva, J. A. T., & Nazarovets, S. (2022) · Publishing research quarterly · doi:10.1007/s12109-022-09914-0 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
“However, there may be an element of exploitation, especially by for-profit publishers, some of which reap massive economic returns from peer-reviewed papers [15].”
BackgroundMills, D. S. (2022) · Oxford Review of Education · doi:10.1080/03054985.2022.2072285 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
“At every stage of research, academics have become increasingly reliant on the tools of what Larivière et al. (2015) call a ‘publishing oligopoly’.”
MethodMills, D., Branford, A., Inouye, K., Robinson, N., & Kingori, P. (2021) · Journal of African Cultural Studies · doi:10.1080/13696815.2020.1864304 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
“Elsevier is one of the most profitable of the five major international academic publishers, with its science division regularly recording annual profit margins of between 30% and 40% (Larivière et al. 2015).”
BackgroundAre publications on zoological taxonomy under attack?
Pinto, Â., Mejdalani, G., Mounce, R., Silveira, L. F., Marinoni, L., & Rafael, J. (2020) · Royal Society Open Science · doi:10.1098/rsos.201617 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
“In a system full of anachronisms, in which traditional journals supported by museums or scientific societies are struggling to survive and the commercialized scientific publishing industry is led by giant publishers such as John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier and Springer Nature, among others, with profit margins higher than…”
BackgroundOpen access to journal articles in oncology: current situation and citation impact
Hua, F., Sun, H.-Y., Walsh, T., Glenny, A., & Worthington, H. (2017) · Annals of Oncology · doi:10.1093/annonc/mdx398 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
“As in previous similar research [12, 21], publishers were divided into three categories: (i) non-commercial (e.”
Cortés-Sánchez, J. D. (2020) · European Research on Management and Business Economics · doi:10.1016/j.iedeen.2019.12.003 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
Policies on artificial intelligence chatbots among academic publishers: a cross-sectional audit
Bhavsar, D., Duffy, L., Jo, H., Lokker, C., Haynes, R. B., Iorio, A., Marušić, A., & Ng, J. Y. (2025) · Research Integrity and Peer Review · doi:10.1186/s41073-025-00158-y · Cited by 39 · see citing works
“While policies surrounding topics such as copyright and plagia-rism have long existed in academic publication, the creation of new policies to parallel societal and technological advances is an ongoing process essential to maintaining publication integrity [1].”
de Oliveira, G. S., & Baggs, E. (2023) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781009303538 · Cited by 47 · see citing works
“This makes academic publishing one of the most profitable businesses in the world (see, e.g., Larivière et al., 2015).”
BackgroundKnöchelmann, M. (2021) · Science & Technology Studies · doi:10.23987/sts.94964 · Cited by 50 · see citing works
“Publishers, especially the oligopoly of large forprofit institutions (Larivière et al., 2015), have been the first to co-opt OA and re-shape its purpose.”
BackgroundIntroduction: The Politics of Open Access — Decolonizing Research or Corporate Capture?
Meagher, K. (2021) · Development and Change · doi:10.1111/dech.12630 · Cited by 30
“…margins of the top corporate publishers have continued to rise even after the shift to OA, reaching between 20% and over 30% per year among some of the top publishers which makes them comparable to Walmart and Amazon (Lariviere et al. 2015; Hiltzik 2019; Posada and Chen 2018; Shu et al. 2018).”
BackgroundInfluentialBrazilian Publication Profiles: Where and How Brazilian authors publish.
McManus, C., Neves, A. A. B., & Maranhão, A. (2020) · Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências · doi:10.1590/0001-3765202020200328 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Breast Imaging: A Scientometric Umbrella Review
Tan, X. J., Cheor, W. L., Lim, L. L., Rahman, K. S. A., & Bakrin, I. H. (2022) · Diagnostics · doi:10.3390/diagnostics12123111 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
Scholarly Communication and the Dilemma of Collective Action: Why Academic Journals Cost Too Much
Wenzler, J. (2017) · College and Research Libraries · doi:10.5860/crl.78.2.183 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
Csomós, G., & Farkas, J. (2022) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-022-04586-1 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
“…Springer Nature, and other major subscription-based publishers such as Wiley and Taylor & Francis have been dominating the global academic publishing market for a long time occupying leading positions among the academic publishers in most countries worldwide (Hagve, 2022; Larivière et al., 2015).”
BackgroundThe oligopoly’s shift to open access publishing
Butler, L.-A., Matthias, L., Simard, M.-A., Mongeon, P., & Haustein, S. (2022) · Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS / Actes du congrès annuel de l'ACSI · doi:10.29173/cais1262 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
“Since the beginning of the digital era, these companies have acquired small publishers and now control the majority of scholarly journal publishing (Larivière et al., 2015), generating profit margins as high as 37% (Aspesi et al., 2019).”
BackgroundResultSelf-citationMoore, S. A. (2020) · J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. · doi:10.1002/asi.24306 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
The ClarivateTM Analytics acquisition of Publons – an evolution or commodification of peer review?
da Silva, J. A. T., & Al-Khatib, A. (2019) · Research Ethics · doi:10.1177/1747016117739941 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
“According to Larivière et al. (2015), five publishers (Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and SAGE Publications) accounted for 50% of all publications in 2013, with annual profit margins for several of these entering the billion US dollars mark.”
BackgroundConcern noted: a descriptive study of editorial expressions of concern in PubMed and PubMed Central
Vaught, M., Jordan, D. C., & Bastian, H. (2017) · Research Integrity and Peer Review · doi:10.1186/s41073-017-0030-2 · Cited by 34 · see citing works
“In addition, the 6 largest publishers (by number of publications) in natural and medical sciences and social sciences and humanities were searched [19].”
Background
- Authors
- Larivière, V., Haustein, S., & Mongeon, P.
- Affiliations
- Université du Québec à Montréal (CA)
- Université de Montréal (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Larivière, Vincent
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2015-06-10
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- e0127502
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4465327
- OpenAlex
- W1655306493
- Cited by
- 1,240
- References
- 66
- Citations by year
- 2026: 104 · 2025: 132 · 2024: 97 · 2023: 115 · 2022: 146 · 2021: 128 · 2020: 125 · 2019: 124 · 2018: 97 · 2017: 90 · 2016: 64 · 2015: 15
- FWCI
- 80.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Lincoln (University of Nebraska) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Papyrus : Institutional Repository (Université de Montréal) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Canada Research Chairs
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Keywords
- scholarly publishing, scientific publishing industry, oligopoly, digital era, journal migration, publisher change, citation impact, humanities and social sciences, Web of Science, Reed Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis
- MeSH terms
- Publishing, Journal Impact Factor
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