The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era. Larivière, V., Haustein, S., & Mongeon, P. 10(6):e0127502+.
The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era [link]Paper  doi  abstract   bibtex   
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. [Excerpt: General conclusions] Since the creation of scientific journals 350 years ago, large commercial publishing houses have increased their control of the science system. The proportion of the scientific output published in journals under their ownership has risen steadily over the past 40 years, and even more so since the advent of the digital era. The value added, however, has not followed a similar trend. While one could argue that their role of typesetting, printing, and diffusion were central in the print world [20,7], the ease with which these function can be fulfilled – or are no longer necessary – in the electronic world makes one wonder: what do we need publishers for? What is it that they provide that is so essential to the scientific community that we collectively agree to devote an increasingly large proportion of our universities budgets to them? Of course, most journals rely on publishers' systems to handle and review the manuscripts; however, while these systems facilitate the process, it is the researchers as part of the scientific community who perform peer review. Hence, this essential step of quality control is not a value added by the publishers but by the scientific community itself. [\n] Thus, it is up to the scientific community to change the system in a similar fashion and in parallel to the open access and open science movements. And, indeed, the scientific community has started to react to and protest against the exploitative behaviour of the major for-profit publishers. In 2012, the ” Cost of Knowledge” (http://thecostofknowledge.com/) campaign started by Cambridge mathematician and Fields Medalist Timothy Gowers asked researchers to protest against Elsevier's business model through a boycott against its journals by ceasing to submit to, edit and referee them. Started by a blogpost, the boycott was later termed the beginning of an ” Academic Spring” [42,43]. Several university libraries, including large and renowned universities such as the University of California [44] and Harvard [45], stopped negotiations and threatened to boycott major for-profit publishers, while other universities – such as the University of Konstanz – simply cancelled all Elsevier subscriptions as they were neither able nor willing to keep up with their aggressive pricing policy: 30\,% increase over five years [46,47]. [\n] But these are exceptions. Unfortunately, researchers are still dependent on one essentially symbolic function of publishers, which is to allocate academic capital, thereby explaining why the scientific community is so dependent on 'The Most Profitable Obsolete Technology in History' [48]. Young researchers need to publish in prestigious journals to gain tenure, while older researchers need to do the same in order to keep their grants, and, in this environment, publishing in a high impact Elsevier or Springer journal is what 'counts'. In this general context, the negative effect of various bibliometric indicators in the evaluation of individual researchers cannot be understated. The counting of papers indexed by large-scale bibliometric databases – which mainly cover journals published by commercial publishers, as we have seen in this paper – creates a strong incentive for researchers to publish in these journals, and thus reinforces the control of commercial publishers on the scientific community.
@article{lariviereOligopolyAcademicPublishers2015,
  title = {The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era},
  author = {Larivière, Vincent and Haustein, Stefanie and Mongeon, Philippe},
  date = {2015-06},
  journaltitle = {PLOS ONE},
  volume = {10},
  pages = {e0127502+},
  issn = {1932-6203},
  doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0127502},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502},
  abstract = {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.

[Excerpt: General conclusions]

Since the creation of scientific journals 350 years ago, large commercial publishing houses have increased their control of the science system. The proportion of the scientific output published in journals under their ownership has risen steadily over the past 40 years, and even more so since the advent of the digital era. The value added, however, has not followed a similar trend. While one could argue that their role of typesetting, printing, and diffusion were central in the print world [20,7], the ease with which these function can be fulfilled -- or are no longer necessary -- in the electronic world makes one wonder: what do we need publishers for? What is it that they provide that is so essential to the scientific community that we collectively agree to devote an increasingly large proportion of our universities budgets to them? Of course, most journals rely on publishers' systems to handle and review the manuscripts; however, while these systems facilitate the process, it is the researchers as part of the scientific community who perform peer review. Hence, this essential step of quality control is not a value added by the publishers but by the scientific community itself.

[\textbackslash n] Thus, it is up to the scientific community to change the system in a similar fashion and in parallel to the open access and open science movements. And, indeed, the scientific community has started to react to and protest against the exploitative behaviour of the major for-profit publishers. In 2012, the ” Cost of Knowledge” (http://thecostofknowledge.com/) campaign started by Cambridge mathematician and Fields Medalist Timothy Gowers asked researchers to protest against Elsevier's business model through a boycott against its journals by ceasing to submit to, edit and referee them. Started by a blogpost, the boycott was later termed the beginning of an ” Academic Spring” [42,43]. Several university libraries, including large and renowned universities such as the University of California [44] and Harvard [45], stopped negotiations and threatened to boycott major for-profit publishers, while other universities -- such as the University of Konstanz -- simply cancelled all Elsevier subscriptions as they were neither able nor willing to keep up with their aggressive pricing policy: 30\,\% increase over five years [46,47].

[\textbackslash n] But these are exceptions. Unfortunately, researchers are still dependent on one essentially symbolic function of publishers, which is to allocate academic capital, thereby explaining why the scientific community is so dependent on 'The Most Profitable Obsolete Technology in History' [48]. Young researchers need to publish in prestigious journals to gain tenure, while older researchers need to do the same in order to keep their grants, and, in this environment, publishing in a high impact Elsevier or Springer journal is what 'counts'. In this general context, the negative effect of various bibliometric indicators in the evaluation of individual researchers cannot be understated. The counting of papers indexed by large-scale bibliometric databases -- which mainly cover journals published by commercial publishers, as we have seen in this paper -- creates a strong incentive for researchers to publish in these journals, and thus reinforces the control of commercial publishers on the scientific community.},
  keywords = {*imported-from-citeulike-INRMM,~INRMM-MiD:c-13683583,~to-add-doi-URL,featured-publication,feedback,publication-bias,publish-or-perish,research-metrics,science-ethics,scientific-communication},
  number = {6}
}
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