The DOI matches its Crossref record; 36 of the 66 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
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.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“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
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Information rules - a strategic guide to the network economy
Shapiro, C., & Varian, H. (1999) · The Journal of Economic Education · doi:10.2307/1183273 · Cited by 5,225 · cited 1×
“Scholarly publications themselves can be considered information goods with high fixed and low variable costs [35,36].”
BackgroundStirling, D. (2003) · SGMD · doi:10.1145/776985.776997 · Cited by 1,563
Zuckerman, H., & Merton, R. (1971) · Minerva · doi:10.1007/bf01553188 · Cited by 789
Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet
Borgman, C. L. (2007) · doi:10.7551/mitpress/7434.001.0001 · Cited by 512
Archambault, É., Vignola-Gagné, É., Côté, G., Larivière, V., & Gingrasb, Y. (2006) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-006-0115-z · Cited by 507 · cited 1×
“Moreover, these disciplines make a much more important use of books [9] and generally rely on local journals [29], all of which are factors that make it much less interesting for big publishers to buy journals or found new ones in the arts and humanities.”
BackgroundSelf-citationWhat you didn't know that you needed to know.
Holtermann, M. K. (2017) · Tidsskrift for Den Norske Laegeforening · doi:10.4045/tidsskr.17.0540 · Cited by 492 · cited 2×
“4 billion US dollars in 2011 [31], the majority of which were generated by a few publishing houses, the scientific journal publishing market faces oligopolistic conditions, where big players such as Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Wiley-Blackwell and Wolters Kluwer determine annually increasing subscription rate…”
BackgroundTragic Loss or Good Riddance? The Impending Demise of Traditional Scholary Journals
Odlyzko, A. (1996) · Journal of universal computer science (Online) · doi:10.3217/jucs-000-00-0003 · Cited by 303 · cited 1×
“Indeed, many authors have discussed the various transformations of the scholarly communication landscape brought by the digital era (see, among others, Borgman [14–15]; Kling and Callahan [16]; Tenopir & King [17]; Odlyzko [18]).”
BackgroundLarivière, V., Archambault, É., Gingras, Y., & Vignola-Gagné, É. (2006) · J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. · doi:10.1002/asi.20349 · Cited by 294 · cited 2×
“During the 20 century they consolidated their position as the main media for diffusing research [6], especially in the natural and medical sciences [9].”
BackgroundSelf-citationCalvert, P. (2001) · doi:10.1108/oir.2001.25.3.214.2 · Cited by 215
Larivière, V., Archambault, É., & Gingras, Y. (2008) · J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. · doi:10.1002/asi.20744 · Cited by 188 · cited 1×
“Also, the transition from print to electronic—a strong argument for journals to convert to commercial publishers—has happened at a much slower pace in those disciplines as the use for recent scientific information is less pressing [28].”
BackgroundSelf-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
30 of the 66 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.
Research works printed but not linked: 3
- AJ Meadows, 1979, The Scientific Journal
- BI Mierzejewska, 2008, Doctoral dissertation, University of St. Gallen, Graduate School of Business Administration, Economics, Law and Social Sciences
- M Ware, 2012, An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Items 201–300 of 897
Considering Non-Open Access Publication Charges in the "Total Cost of Publication"
Gray, A. (2015) · Publ. · doi:10.3390/publications3040248 · Cited by 14
The Transformation of the Scientific Paper: From Knowledge to Accounting Unit
Gingras, Y. (2020) · Gaming the Metrics · doi:10.7551/mitpress/11087.003.0004 · Cited by 14
“…on the stock exchange, engendered in the mid- 1990s what has been called a “crisis in scholarly publishing” due to the mounting price of journal subscription for academic libraries (Thatcher, 1995; Tenopir and King, 1997; McGuigan and Russell, 2008; Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon, 2015).”
BackgroundDeterminants of article processing charges for hybrid and gold open access journals
Asai, S. (2022) · Information Discovery and Delivery · doi:10.1108/idd-09-2021-0098 · Cited by 13
Accelerated Peer Review and Paper Processing Models in Academic Publishing
da Silva, J. A. T., & Yamada, Y. (2022) · Publishing Research Quarterly · doi:10.1007/s12109-022-09891-4 · Cited by 19
“In such a situation, the scholarly publishing enterprise that is based on free labor might not be equitable or fair, and can result in formidable profits for some for-profit publishers [9].”
BackgroundMaking Open Development Inclusive: Lessons from IDRC Research
Hunter, A. (2021) · Canadian Journal of Communication · doi:10.22230/cjc.2021v46n2a4053 · Cited by 13
Preprints in Chemistry: An Exploratory Analysis of Differences with Journal Articles
Pagliaro, M. (2020) · Publ. · doi:10.22541/au.160513403.32560058/v1 · Cited by 13
“Publishing their research work in the the most oligopolistic sector of the highly profitable scientific publishing industry [8], chemistry scholars were recently found to be those publishing with the lowest frequency in open access (OA) journals.”
BackgroundMoore, S. A. (2020) · J. Documentation · doi:10.1108/jd-06-2020-0090 · Cited by 13
Unbundling practice: the unbundling of big deal journal packages as an information practice
Ivanov, A., Johnson, C. A., & Cassady, S. (2020) · J. Documentation · doi:10.1108/jd-09-2019-0187 · Cited by 13
James, J. (2020) · J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. · doi:10.1002/asi.24351 · Cited by 13
The future of academic publishing: disruption, opportunity and a new ecosystem
Barbour, V. (2019) · Medical Journal of Australia · doi:10.5694/mja2.50265 · Cited by 13
de Oliveira, T. M. (2019) · Perspectivas em Ciência da Informação · doi:10.1590/1981-5344/3520 · Cited by 22
OPERAS: bringing the long tail of Social Sciences and Humanities into Open Science
Giglia, E. (2018) · Septentrio Conference Series · doi:10.4403/jlis.it-12523 · Cited by 13
Scholarly work in the Internet age: Co-evolving technologies, institutions and workflows
Orlandi, L. B., Ricciardi, F., Rossignoli, C., & Marco, M. D. (2018) · Journal of Innovation & Knowledge · doi:10.1016/j.jik.2017.11.001 · Cited by 20
da Silva, J. A. T., Katavić, V., Dobránszki, J., Al-Khatib, A., & Bornemann-Cimenti, H. (2019) · KOME · doi:10.17646/kome.75698.87 · Cited by 13
“(Larivière et al., 2015), are continuously publishing a large amount of ethical regulations, guidelines and sets of ethical limitations for global academia.”
BackgroundPiron, F. (2017) · doi:10.17613/c78xh-qc217 · Cited by 13
Nutzung der Schattenbibliothek Sci-Hub in Deutschland
Strecker, D. (2019) · Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin · doi:10.18452/21409 · Cited by 13
Bello, J., Stephen, S., Adetoro, P., & Mogaji, I. (2024) · Benchmarking : An International Journal · doi:10.1108/bij-02-2024-0090 · Cited by 12
Rodenburg, K. S., Rowan, M. J., Nixon, A., & Hughes, J. C. (2022) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su14159598 · Cited by 19
Oligopólios e publicação científica: a busca por impacto na América Latina
Neubert, P. D. S., & Rodrigues, R. (2021) · Transinformação · doi:10.1590/2318-0889202133e200069 · Cited by 12
Self-help for learned journals: Scientific societies and the commerce of publishing in the 1950s
Fyfe, A. (2021) · Historia scientiarum · doi:10.1177/0073275321999901 · Cited by 12
The Scholarly Knowledge Ecosystem: Challenges and Opportunities for the Field of Information
Altman, M., & Cohen, P. N. (2022) · Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics · doi:10.3389/frma.2021.751553 · Cited by 27
“When the academy delegates governance of the scholarly knowledge ecosystem to economic markets, scholarly communication tends toward economic concentration driven by the profit motives of monopolistic actors (e.g., large publishers) and centered within the global north (Larivière et al., 2015).”
BackgroundReassembling Scholarly Communications
Eve, M., & Gray, J. (2020) · doi:10.7551/mitpress/11885.001.0001 · Cited by 12
Branding Spin-Off Scholarly Journals: Transmuting Symbolic Capital into Economic Capital
Khelfaoui, M., & Gingras, Y. (2020) · Journal of Scholarly Publishing · doi:10.3138/jsp.52.1.01 · Cited by 12
Szadkowski, K. (2016) · Teorie vědy / Theory of Science · doi:10.46938/tv.2016.334 · Cited by 12
Streetlight effect in PubPeer comments: are Open Access publications more scrutinized?
Maddi, A., Monneau, E., Guaspare-Cartron, C., Gargiulo, F., & Dubois, M. (2024) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-024-05053-9 · Cited by 11
“This pattern is indicative of a highly centralized landscape, where a limited number of publishing entities wield substantial control over the dissemination of academic knowledge (Larivière et al., 2015; Roy & Yami, 2006).”
Changes in scientific publishing and possible impact on authors’ choice of journals
Seeber, M. (2024) · ChemTexts · doi:10.1007/s40828-024-00190-3 · Cited by 13
“As a result, a major wave of mergers and acquisitions has occurred since the mid-1990s, which in 10 years led to an oligopoly of the big five, controlling over 50% of the market [4].”
Acknowledgments in Scientific Papers
da Silva, J. A. T., Tsigaris, P., & Vuong, Q. (2023) · Publishing Research Quarterly · doi:10.1007/s12109-023-09955-z · Cited by 10
The Price of Publishing: An Investigation of the Open Access Landscape in Plastic Surgery
Yesantharao, P., Long, C., Sacks, J., Lee, G. K., & Nazerali, R. (2022) · Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery · doi:10.1097/prs.0000000000009016 · Cited by 11
“(%) 8 (6) 39 (20) 122 (57) 183 (14) <0.”
Expanding Nature: Product line and brand extensions of a scientific journal
Khelfaoui, M., & Gingras, Y. (2021) · Learned Publishing · doi:10.1002/leap.1422 · Cited by 11
Whose voice matters in the teaching and learning of IPE? Implications for policy and policy making
Cochrane, L., & Oloruntoba, S. O. (2021) · Policy and Society · doi:10.1080/14494035.2021.1975220 · Cited by 12
The evolution and revision of big deals: a review from the perspective of libraries
Rodríguez-Bravo, B., Fernández-Ramos, A., De-la-Mano, M., & Vianello-Osti, M. (2021) · El Profesional de la Informacion · doi:10.3145/epi.2021.jul.15 · Cited by 11
Disturbance of questionable publishing to academia
You, T., Park, J., Lee, J. Y., Yun, J., & Jung, W. (2022) · Journal of Informetrics · doi:10.1016/j.joi.2022.101294 · Cited by 9
“Occasionally, it unavoidably cites papers published in the most reputed journals [28, 43].”
BackgroundCortés, J. D. (2021) · Journal of information science · doi:10.1177/01655515211043707 · Cited by 11
“Most non-OA group publishers are associated with the academic publishing oligopoly, such as Elsevier or Taylor & Francis [14].”
BackgroundOpen Bioeconomy - A Bibliometric Study on the Accessibility of Articles in the Field of Bioeconomy
Duquenne, M., Prost, H., Schöpfel, J., & Dumeignil, F. (2020) · Publ. · doi:10.3390/publications8040055 · Cited by 11
“7%), confirming in this particular, emerging field of research the global oligopoly of academic publishers [30].”
BackgroundPseudo or perish: problematizing the ‘predatory’ in global health publishing
Allman, D. (2019) · Critical Public Health · doi:10.1080/09581596.2019.1606417 · Cited by 11
“This can result in profit margins of between 30% and 40%, comparable to the world’s most profitable pharmaceutical and financial companies (Larivière et al., 2015).”
BackgroundAn overview of Open Access publishing in palaeontology
Tennant, J., & Lomax, D. (2019) · Palaeontologia Electronica · doi:10.26879/968 · Cited by 11
Austrian Transition to Open Access (AT2OA)
Bauer, B., Capellaro, C., Ferus, A., Fessler, G., Granat, R., Hölbling, L., Kaier, C., Koren-Wilhelmer, F., Kromp, B., Seissl, M., et al. (2018) · BIBLIOTHEK Forschung und Praxis · doi:10.1515/bfp-2018-0062 · Cited by 11
Ghamandi, D. S. (2018) · Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication · doi:10.7710/2162-3309.2223 · Cited by 11
“Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon (2015) provide a startling depiction of a consolidated scientific journal publishing industry that is dominated by a powerful oligopoly.2 This academic publishing oligopoly, consisting of five transnational corporations, produced more than 50% of all articles in…”
BackgroundInfluentialSubtle radical moves in scientific publishing
Kallio, K. (2017) · doi:10.11143/fennia.63678 · Cited by 11
The Drain of Scientific Publishing
Beigel, F., Brockington, D., Crosetto, P., Derrick, G., Fyfe, A., Barreiro, P. G., Hanson, M. A., Haustein, S., Larivière, V., Noe, C., et al. (2025) · arXiv.org · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2511.04820 · Cited by 10
“In the past few decades, through mergers and acquisitions, an oligopoly emerged ( 4 ).”
Self-citationPallares, C., Cuartas, G. V., Uribe-Tirado, A., Restrepo, D., Ochoa, J., & Suárez, M. (2022) · Revista Española de Documentación Científica · doi:10.3989/redc.2022.4.1931 · Cited by 10
Cortés-Sánchez, J. D. (2021) · Latin American Business Review · doi:10.1080/10978526.2021.1930551 · Cited by 9
“…American association (e.g., American Psychological Association, Academy of Management, American Marketing Association) or one of the few publishers associated with the oligopoly of academic publishers (i.e., Reed-Elsevier, WileyBlackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis; Larivi ere et al., 2015).”
BackgroundConceptualizing, Financing and Infrastructuring: Perspectives on Open Access in and from Africa
Okune, A., Adebowale, S., Gray, E., Mumo, A., & Oniang'o, R. (2021) · doi:10.1111/dech.12632 · Cited by 10
Forecast of the Development of Russian Scientific Journals: The Publishers
Moskaleva, O., & Akoev, M. (2020) · Scholarly Research and Information · doi:10.24108/2658-3143-2020-3-2-3-131-154 · Cited by 10
“В целом за рубежом большая часть научной периодики издается коммерческими издательствами — более половины англоязычных статей из общего количества индексируемых ежегодно в WoS и Scopus, публикуется в журналах пяти крупнейших издательств (Reed-Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis) [1].”
The growth of open access publishing in geochemistry
Pourret, O., Irawan, D. E., Tennant, J., Hursthouse, A., & van Hullebusch, É. V. (2020) · Results in Geochemistry · doi:10.1016/j.ringeo.2020.100001 · Cited by 10
“During the last two decades, journal publishing has significantly changed, with the earlier dominance by learned societies being largely replaced by several big commercial publishers (i.e. Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley) [11, 12].”
BackgroundLocating a Multifaceted and Stratified Disciplinary ‘Core’
Turton, H. L. (2020) · All Azimuth A journal of foreign policy and peace · doi:10.20991/allazimuth.716725 · Cited by 10
The publications of Brazilian authors: access, distribution and publishers
Rodrigues, R., Neubert, P. D. S., & Araújo, B. K. (2020) · doi:10.19132/1808-5245262.13-31 · Cited by 10
The Art of Scientific Performance.
Seppelt, R., Beckmann, M., Václavík, T., & Volk, M. (2018) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2018.08.003 · Cited by 10
Editorial: Em Defesa das Publicações em Português
Rossoni, L. (2018) · Revista Eletrônica de Ciência Administrativa · doi:10.21529/recadm.2018ed3 · Cited by 10
Baldwin, J., & Pinfield, S. (2018) · Publ. · doi:10.3390/publications6030031 · Cited by 10
“It has been argued that, due to the oligopolistic position of large publishers [65], the market has “evolved into one in which the publisher tries to price its subscriptions according to each client’s ability and willingness to pay, not according to average marginal cost for the publisher” [13] (p.”
BackgroundGatekeepers of Reward: a Pilot Study on the Ethics of Editing and Competing Evaluations of Value
Shaw, D., & Penders, B. (2018) · Journal of Academic Ethics · doi:10.1007/s10805-018-9305-6 · Cited by 10
“Already in 2013, only a handful of companies were responsible for the production of roughly half of all research papers (Larivière et al. 2015).”
BackgroundAcademic Publishing and its Digital Binds: Beyond the Paywall towards Ethical Executions of Code
Swist, T., & Magee, L. (2018) · doi:10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1793240 · Cited by 10
Duic, M., Konjevod, B., & Grzunov, L. (2017) · International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics · doi:10.23919/mipro.2017.7973535 · Cited by 10
688, 112 Statistical Results: Content Mining Psychology Articles for Statistical Test Results
Hartgerink, C. (2016) · International Conference on Data Technologies and Applications · doi:10.3390/data1030014 · Cited by 10
The value of statistical tools to detect data fabrication
Hartgerink, C. H. J., Wicherts, J. M., & van Assen, M. A. L. M. (2016) · Research Ideas and Outcomes · doi:10.3897/rio.2.e8860 · Cited by 12
“In order to ensure cross-publisher applicability of the software, we investigate the validity for five publishers, who publish the majority of the social science literature (Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor Francis, Sage, Springer; Larivière et al. 2015).”
MethodÖzekenci, E., Onat, K. T., & Pamucar, D. (2026) · Management Science Advances · doi:10.31181/msa31202645 · Cited by 9
“Academic publishers are considered important actors in the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge, increasing the visibility of research outputs and shaping the institutional structure of scientific communication [47].”
Yudhoyono, A. H., Sukoco, B. M., Maharani, I., Putra, I. K., & Suhariadi, F. (2025) · Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market and Complexity · doi:10.1016/j.joitmc.2025.100505 · Cited by 9
Copyright and Open Access to Scientific Publishing
Esteve, A. (2024) · IIC - International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law · doi:10.1007/s40319-024-01479-z · Cited by 9
PLOS-LLM: Can and should AI enable a new paradigm of scientific knowledge sharing?
Hughes, R., & van Heerden, A. (2024) · PLOS Digital Health · doi:10.1371/journal.pdig.0000501 · Cited by 9
The socio-economic value of scientific publications: The case of Earth Observation satellites
Morretta, V., Vurchio, D., & Carrazza, S. (2022) · Technological forecasting & social change · doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121730 · Cited by 9
Strategies to Increase the Number of Open Access Journals: The Cases of Elsevier and Springer Nature
Asai, S. (2022) · Journal of Scholarly Publishing · doi:10.3138/jsp.53.2.02 · Cited by 9
Scholarly book publishers as publicity agents for SSH titles on Twitter
Wang, Y.-J., & Zuccala, A. A. (2021) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-021-03947-6 · Cited by 9
Perry, G., & McGlone, M. (2021) · New Zealand Journal of Ecology · doi:10.20417/nzjecol.45.12 · Cited by 9
“In making this shift, the Royal Society was simply following an international trend of increasing dominance of academic publication by a smaller number of publishers (e.g. the Ecological Society of America journals have partnered with Wiley since 2016; Larivière et al. 2015).”
BackgroundMandatory disclosure of financial interests of journals and editors
Dal-Ré, R., Bouter, L., Moher, D., & Marušić, A. (2020) · British medical journal · doi:10.1136/bmj.m2872 · Cited by 9
Higher education publication and institutional and national diversity
Fitzgerald, S. R., & Jiang, Z.-H. (2020) · Higher Education Research & Development · doi:10.1080/07294360.2019.1699031 · Cited by 9
An Autonomist Marxist Perspective on Productive and Un-productive Academic Labour
Szadkowski, K. (2019) · tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society · doi:10.31269/triplec.v17i1.1076 · Cited by 9
“measuring and comparing the academic labour described above enables permanent enforcement of the channelling of publication efforts in the journals that belong to a small group of academic oligopolistic capitalist publishers (Larivière et al. 2015).”
BackgroundInfluentialThe elusive gold mine? The finer details of Creative Commons licences – and why they really matter
Mallalieu, R. (2019) · Insights: The UKSG Journal · doi:10.1629/uksg.448 · Cited by 9
Understanding Open Knowledge in China: A Chinese Approach to Openness?
Montgomery, L., & Ren, X. (2018) · doi:10.5334/csci.106 · Cited by 9
Anderson, G. (2017) · International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education · doi:10.1080/09518398.2017.1312600 · Cited by 9
“(third paragraph) According to Lariviere et al. (2015) 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 ….Combined, the top five most prolific…”
BackgroundO impacto de (não) ter impacto: Para uma sociologia crítica das publicações científicas
de Haro, F. D. (2017) · doi:10.4000/rccs.6659 · Cited by 9
Vann, K. (2017) · doi:10.17351/ests2017.113 · Cited by 9
“…to the emergent deficits created for public-sector academic communities, the publishing explosion contributes to increases in “operating margin,” “surplus value,” or “profit” for commercial publishers (see Himmelweit 1983 [1995]; see also Larivière et al. 2015, on which more directly below).”
BackgroundInfluentialBeyond the Oligopoly: Scholarly Journal Publishing Landscapes in Latin America and Europe
Kulczycki, E., Alonso-Gamboa, J. O., Beigel, F., Digiampietri, L., Laakso, M., Pölönen, J., Taşkın, Z., & Cuartas, G. V. (2026) · Journal of Data and Information Science · doi:10.1515/jdis-2025-0440 · Cited by 8
“The landmark study by Larivière et al. (2015), based on 45 million WoS records, showed that by 2013 fi ve fi rms, Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, and Sage, controlled more than half of global output covered by WoS, with the highest concentration in the social sciences.”
Online delivery platforms: Disparities in food access in U.S. metro areas
Ha, J. (2025) · Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment · doi:10.1016/j.trd.2025.104749 · Cited by 8
Mapping the publisher types and collaborations behind Web of Science indexed journals
Taşkın, Z., Pölönen, J., Kulczycki, E., & Laakso, M. (2025) · Quantitative Science Studies · doi:10.31235/osf.io/8skzg · Cited by 8
“One of the most comprehensive studies on publisher-level changes in the scholarly journal landscape is Larivière et al. (2015), a longitudinal analysis of publisher data in WoS from 1973 to 2013.”
InfluentialThe business of transformative agreements
Steinberg, R. (2025) · The journal of academic librarianship · doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2025.103020 · Cited by 8
Galli, C., Moretti, C., & Calciolari, E. (2024) · Learned Publishing · doi:10.1002/leap.1648 · Cited by 9
“This has been made possible also by the thousands of academic journals that have sprouted online attracted by the lower entry costs of e-publishing (Larivière et al., 2015).”
van Bellen, S., & Céspedes, L. (2024) · Canadian journal of information and library science · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.05942 · Cited by 8
“…they may be considered opposing “international” journals, which may attract international authorships and readerships, present universal research topics, and often be associated with the Natural and Health Sciences (Gingras, 2014) and multinational, commercial publishers (Larivière et al., 2015).”
BackgroundZhang, X.-J. (2024) · J. Informetrics · doi:10.2139/ssrn.4728257 · Cited by 8
Sasvári, P., & Lendvai, G. F. (2024) · Social Sciences · doi:10.3390/socsci13100537 · Cited by 10
Knowledge equity as social justice in academic publishing and why it matters for accounting research
Andrew, J., Baker, M., Cooper, C., & Gendron, Y. (2024) · Meditari Accountancy Research · doi:10.1108/medar-06-2024-2522 · Cited by 8
Monitoring Open Science as transformative change: Towards a systemic framework
Rafols, I., Meijer, I., & Molas-Gallart, J. (2024) · F1000Research · doi:10.12688/f1000research.148290.1 · Cited by 8
“…change, but the incumbent actors (the large publishing corporations) preserve their interests and dominant position by using existing path dependency to shape the OS transformation towards those trajectories that favour them (Larivière et al., 2015; Stirling, 2019).”
BackgroundPublishing Embargoes and Versions of Preprints: Impact on the Dissemination of Information
da Silva, J. A. T., Huang, C., & Nazarovets, M. (2024) · Open Information Science · doi:10.1515/opis-2024-0002 · Cited by 8
Pampel, H. (2023) · Publ. · doi:10.3390/publications11030044 · Cited by 8
“The (1) monopolization of journal publishing [19], the (2) high profits of commercial publishers [20], (3) their data-tracking activities [21], and the (4) growing criticism of the APC business model [22–24] are currently shaping the discourse about the future of OA.”
BackgroundGlobal visibility of publications through Digital Object Identifiers
Turki, H., Fraumann, G., Taieb, M. A. H., & Aouicha, M. B. (2023) · Frontiers Res. Metrics Anal. · doi:10.3389/frma.2023.1207980 · Cited by 8
“This imbalance is due to a number of factors, including the long history of publishing houses in developed countries (Larivière et al., 2015; Posada and Chen, 2018), and the large market for scholarly publishing available in these countries (Posada and Chen, 2018).”
BackgroundResultStavrova, E. (2022) · Business Ethics and Leadership · doi:10.21272/bel.6(4).92-99.2022 · Cited by 8
Plan S: An economist's perspective
Armstrong, M. (2021) · Managerial and Decision Economics · doi:10.1002/mde.3440 · Cited by 8
Lepofsky, D., Heckelsmiller, C., Fernández-Llamazares, Á., & Wall, J. (2021) · Journal of Ethnobiology · doi:10.2993/0278-0771-41.2.122 · Cited by 8
de Rosnay, M. D. (2021) · Publishing, the Internet and the Commons · doi:10.16997/wpcc.913 · Cited by 8
Public Goods and the Commons: Opposites or Complements?
de Jongh, M. (2020) · doi:10.1177/0090591720979916 · Cited by 8
‘Requires proofing by a native speaker’ – colonization and scholarship
Costello, E. (2020) · doi:10.1629/uksg.502 · Cited by 8
The FWF’s Open Access Policy over the last 15 Years – Developments and Outlook
Rieck, K. (2019) · Mitteilungen der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare · doi:10.31263/voebm.v72i2.2837 · Cited by 8
Guillemaud, T., Facon, B., & Bourguet, D. (2019) · ELPUB 2019 23d International Conference on Electronic Publishing · doi:10.4000/proceedings.elpub.2019.23 · Cited by 8
“The development of electronic tools for managing the evaluation and publication of manuscripts and the dematerialization of objects could have decreased costs, but subscription costs and fees have continued to increase in recent years (Larivière et al. 2015; Vajou 2016).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialMartinovich, V. (2019) · Información, Cultura y Sociedad · doi:10.34096/ics.i40.5540 · Cited by 8
Johnson, C. A., & Cassady, S. (2018) · Collection and Curation · doi:10.1108/cc-05-2018-0013 · Cited by 8
Los desafíos que enfrentan las prácticas de ciencia abierta
Fressoli, M., & Arza, V. (2018) · Teknokultura Revista de Cultura Digital y Movimientos Sociales · doi:10.5209/tekn.60616 · Cited by 34
Racz, A., & Marković, S. (2018) · Nova prisutnost · doi:10.31192/np.16.2.10 · Cited by 8
Preprint for the humanities – fiction or a real possibility?
Laporte, S. (2016) · doi:10.4467/2543702xshs.17.014.7715 · Cited by 8
“The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era.”
BackgroundInfluentialThe Impact of Disruptive and Sustaining Digital Technologies on Scholarly Journals
Greco, A. N. (2016) · doi:10.3138/jsp.48.1.17 · Cited by 8
Creative Commons Licenses: Empowering Open Access
Margoni, T., & Peters, D. M. (2016) · doi:10.2139/ssrn.2746044 · Cited by 8
Vertical Integration in Academic Publishing
Chen, G., Posada, A., & Chan, L. (2019) · Connecting the Knowledge Commons — From Projects to Sustainable Infrastructure · doi:10.4000/books.oep.9068 · Cited by 8
Metadata
- 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 › Library and Information Sciences › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › 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
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
