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].”

“On the publisher’s side, average first-copy costs of journal papers are estimated to range between 20 and 40 US dollars per page, depending on rejection rates [37]; [17], which neither explains open access publication fees as high as 5,000 $US (e.”

“All these factors explain the different and often irrational big deals made between publishers and subscribers, with university libraries subscribing to a publisher’s entire set or large bundle of journals regardless of their specific needs [41].”

“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…”

“However, although the digital format improved access, searchability and navigation within and between journal articles, the form of the scholarly journal was not changed by the digital revolution [16,19].”

“After coexisting alongside correspondence, monographs and treaties—which often took several years to be published—they became, at the beginning of the 19 century, the fastest and most convenient way of disseminating new research results [5– 7] and their number grew exponentially [1,8].”

“As stated by Mackenzie Owen [21], while some authors saw the Web as a potential solution to the serials’ crisis—decreasing library budgets facing large and constant annual increases of journal subscription rates [22,23]—most authors hypothesized that it would actually make the situation worse [24] or, at least, not pr…”

“In addition, the Ingelfinger law, initiated by the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine in 1969, prohibits authors from submitting their manuscript to more than one journal [38].”

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

“As stated by Mackenzie Owen [21], while some authors saw the Web as a potential solution to the serials’ crisis—decreasing library budgets facing large and constant annual increases of journal subscription rates [22,23]—most authors hypothesized that it would actually make the situation worse [24] or, at least, not pr…”

“As stated by Mackenzie Owen [21], while some authors saw the Web as a potential solution to the serials’ crisis—decreasing library budgets facing large and constant annual increases of journal subscription rates [22,23]—most authors hypothesized that it would actually make the situation worse [24] or, at least, not pr…”

“As stated by Mackenzie Owen [21], while some authors saw the Web as a potential solution to the serials’ crisis—decreasing library budgets facing large and constant annual increases of journal subscription rates [22,23]—most authors hypothesized that it would actually make the situation worse [24] or, at least, not pr…”

“López-Illescas et al. (2008) compared oncological journals coverage in WoS and Scopus and found that Scopus covered a larger number of titles.”