The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era

“Scholarly publications themselves can be considered information goods with high fixed and low variable costs [35,36].”

“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.”

“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…”

“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]).”

“During the 20 century they consolidated their position as the main media for diffusing research [6], especially in the natural and medical sciences [9].”

“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].”

“This scenario is reasonably common – by 2015, 70% of all social science publications indexed in Web of Science were published by the so-called ‘Big Five’ publishers: Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Wiley-Blackwell, and Sage (Larivière et al., 2015).”

“This finding supports Larivière et al.’s (2015: 13) statement that “young researchers need to publish in prestig-ious journals to gain tenure, while older researchers need to do the same in order to keep their grants.””

“While commercial publishers have steadily increased their share of the scientific publishing market, particularly in the digital era (Larivière et al. 2015), they are not the only option.”

“This breakdown provides valuable insights into the dissemination patterns of research fi ndings across di ff erent formats, highlighting the prevalence of articles as the primary medium for sharing original research contributions, as Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon (2015) emphasised.”

“…articles (authors write “for” reputation, not money) (Merton, 1973b), and the five big publishers dominating the global science publication market (Larivière et al., 2015), despite the move to less costly desk-top publishing (Van Noorden, 2013), charge ever higher prices and achieve profits of up…”

“As the print-journal market consolidated into an oligopolistic structure (see Larivière et al., 2015), OA journals emerged as alternatives in academic publishing.”

“Often, openness and inclusion have been enabled along gender, class, age, religion, ethnicity, education, ability, and geographic lines—and with them a set of material and symbolic barriers that intersect with colonialist and racialist frameworks that still underpin histories and cultural heritage, and limit participa…”

“Larivière et al. (2015) found that Elsevier, WileyBlackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis were able to increase their share of published output since the 1990s.”

“A reasonable assumption is that, given the peculiar type of competition and the rigid demand elasticity, they are close to a monopolistic level of price (Rose-Wiles 2011; Larivière et al. 2015).”

“The selection of “top journals” was based on the IDEAS ranking of journals so that for each major publisher (see Larivière et al. 2015), a journal that was among the highest ranking according to IDEAS/RePEc ( Research Papers in Economics ) Aggregate Rankings for Journals was chosen.”

“At present, scientific publishing is a staggeringly profitable business (Larivière et al., 2015).”

“Technology advances have accelerated the consolidation of the sector (Larivière et al., 2015).”

“increasingly concentrated in terms of influence (Larivière et al., 2015).”

“In fact, the largest and more prolific publishers of journals are now concentrated in an oligopoly (Larivière, Haustein, & Mongeon, 2015).”

“Some journals have remained independently-run by scholarly communities, while some commercial publication houses have slowly enveloped most journals (Larivière et al., 2015).”

“Revela una visión condescendiente del intercambio científico que se traduce en el control de la ciencia en manos de los países ricos y disminuye el Sur Global como un mero observador pasivo sin control más allá de los acuerdos comerciales globales entre gobiernos ricos y los pocos grandes editores comerciales oligopól…”

“Vincent Larivière of the University of Montréal and his fellow researchers called this handful of publishers the “oligopoly”— the power is concentrated in the hands of just a few highly profitable commercial publishers.(3) By 2013, over 50% of scholarly articles were being published by one of five big publishers—one o…”

“Research by Larivière et al. (2015) reports that B the top five most prolific publishers account for more than 50 % of all papers published in 2013.”

“As Larivière et al. (2015) pointed out “The proportion of scientific output published in journals under their ownership [large commercial publishing houses] has risen steadily over the past 40 years, and even more so since the advent of the digital era”.”

“Prior to OA reforms, the acquisition of a vast number of journals by a handful of commercial publishers created monopolies that enabled publishers to charge exorbitant reader fees, driving up private profit margins with public money (Larivière, Haustein and Mongeon 2015; Buranyi 2017).”

“As a multi-billion dollar industry, academic publishing holds some of the highest profit margins in the world, with certain large publishers reporting profit margins upwards of 30–40% annually (Larivière et al., 2015).”

“Giants such as Elsevier, SAGE, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley have controlled a significant portion of academic journal publishing by acquiring smaller publishers since the dawn of the digital age (Larivière et al. 2015).”

“Similarly, studies by Butler et al. (2022) and Larivière et al. (2015) revealed the dominance of academic publishers such as Sage, Reed-Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley-Blackwell.”

“Interestingly, the same publishers were recognized in the research on the oligopoly of publishers of peer-reviewed journals (Larivière, Haustein, & Mongeon, 2015).”

“…the digital era, this model has resulted in constant profit and revenue lift for the publishing industry giants, aggressively fighting for their market shares, while benefiting from the increasing competition for academic tenure, funding and reputation (Larivière et al., 2015; Van Noorden, 2013).”

“%) of the participants used references from reputable publishers, for example, Tailor and Francis, Springer, Sage, Wiley, or Elsevier. http://ijlter.org/index.php/ijlter These five publishers are a popular reference for academics in writing journals (Gadd et al., 2018; Larivière et al., 2015).”

“After a wave of concentration in the research publishing industry [11], the large publishers are now developing strategies to survive and thrive in the age of ‘open science’.”

“Global influence and market dominance show that these publishers represent a significant proportion of global scholarly output (Larivière et al., 2015).”

“Since the 1970s, the five largest for-profit publishers have steadily increased their market share, accounting for more than half of all papers by 2013 [20].”

“The recognition of journal reputation as a determinant of quality assurance reflects the intricate dynamics involved in evaluating research output, where diverse disciplinary norms come into play (Larivière et al., 2015).”

“:3) ere et al., 2015).”

“The scientific communication “ game ” now involves not only scientific institutions but also, and perhaps above all, oligopolistic for-profit firms (Larivière et al., 2015).”

“In recent decades, some learned societies have collaborated with commercial entities in their transition to digital publishing (Larivière et al., 2015).”

“…addition to learned associations (see below), it is my conviction that mission-driven organizations like Sage will continue to have a future in scienti fi c publishing, even if the academic community succeeds in curbing the high pro fi t margins of major academic publishers (Larivière et al., 2015).”

“…fi c communication remains under the control of central countries, as well as large technological oligopolies and the scienti fi c publishing market (Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon 2015), based on international copyright laws and a system of prestige over the circulation of knowledge…”

“Unfortunately, due to the oligopolistic nature of academic publishing (Larivière et al., 2015), the increasing cost of publishing and knowledge dissemination has become a barrier for Chinese scholars to access international literature, although much literature were contributed by their colleagues.”

“Estas empresas hacen parte de las seis editoriales dominantes en el mercado editorial mundial, las cuales manejan alrededor del 60% de las revistas incluidas en esos índices (Larivière et al., 2015; Shapiro, 2013).”

“Larivière et al. (2015) demonstrated the oligopolistic nature of commercial academic publishing and its exploitative nature.”

“This result, at first glance, appears to be in conflict with the existing literature of Larivière et al. (2015), who, however, focus on academic journals in general rather than on OA publishing.”

“В 2013 г. корпорации Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blakwell, Taylor & Francis, SAGE Publications опубликовали более половины всех рецен- 96 Геофизический журнал № 3, Т. 42, 2020 зируемых научных статей [Lariviere et al., 2015].”

“with the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and the Journal des Sçavans publishing the first scientific journals meant for dissemination.(5,6) However, with this scientific surge, advocated from governments, especially in England and America, booming economies in the postwar years,”