[Open-access] [open-science] Data expedition idea - scholarly publishing income

Jenny Molloy jenny.molloy at okfn.org
Thu Dec 5 12:38:58 UTC 2013 

Hi All

Apologies for not following this up for a while. If anyone else is
interested in getting involved and wants to sign up, please do at
http://pad.okfn.org/p/scholarly-publishers-data-expedition

*So far :*

Michelle and Juan have offered to coordinate and Ross and Abby are keen to
take so I think we have enough people to go ahead!

Bjoern - I think at this stage a data expedition would be more finding out
what data we can get and then we can bring the economists on board so if
you would still be happy to help coordinate that would be fantastic!

It may end up being a somewhat futile exercise as we're dealing with
corporations and not public bodies so getting hold of account breakdowns
will be challenging.

As was pointed out to me the other day and I hadn't explicitly mentioned,
scholarly publishing is only a part of the activities of many of the major
publishers so splitting apart profit for journals, academic books and
monographs (let alone teasing those items apart) may simply be impossible
if the companies themselves won't supply us with the data. It would be
informative to see what is out there though and start compiling what we do
know.

*Next steps: *

   - If you would like to help in any capacity please sign up on the pad
   http://pad.okfn.org/p/scholarly-publishers-data-expedition as soon as
   convenient.
   - Coordinators can then introduce themselves to each other in the next
   week or so and get an initial call arranged or at least split off the
   mailing list for in-depth discussion about how to proceed and what we
   should aim to accomplish.
   - Updates will be sent to the main mailing list so don't worry if you
   can't sign up right now but think you might be able to assist in the future.

We can review the sign ups in a week and get started with some more
detailed planning! This idea is still very much open to comments and
criticism and again, if you know any friendly economists or data
journalists who might be keen to get on board do point them in our
direction!

Jenny


On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 4:16 PM, Encremento <info at encremento.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I certainly think this is a suitable topic for exploration. I've added my
> name to http://pad.okfn.org/p/scholarly-publishers-data-expedition to
> carry
> on with the momentum. I can see though that there's only one more
> participant signed up for it at the moment. Just wondering if any people
> that participated in the discussion would like to join too.
>
> To what's been said, I would like to add that OA monographs may also suffer
> from deficient business models. Open Science journals are certainly taking
> the agenda forward in OA, but in the Humanities and certain areas of Social
> Sciences, monographs are far more important than journal articles. For
> example, it wouldn't be uncommon to have books published 20/30 years as key
> readings in undergraduate university modules. These books may have been out
> of print for some time but they can't be released as Open Access either.
>
> Regarding publishing models, it is often overlooked that fees for
> publishing
> Open Access monographs are unaffordable for most research budgets. Palgrave
> can charge up to $17,500 + VAT/taxes http://www.palgrave.com/open/faq.asp
>
> Therefore, if this project goes ahead, it may be interesting to compare
> publishing models for books too.
>
> Best wishes
> Juan
>
>
> Dr. Juan J. Jiménez-Anca
> Lecturer In International Business and Spanish
> Founder of Encremento c.i.c.
>
> School of Languages and Social Sciences
> North Wing NW915
> Aston University
> Aston Triangle
> Birmingham  B4 7ET (UK)
> j.j.jimenez-anca at aston.ac.uk
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: open-access [mailto:open-access-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of
> Heather Morrison
> Sent: 22 November 2013 01:28
> To: Jenny Molloy
> Cc: open-access at lists.okfn.org; Carl Boettiger; open-science
> Subject: Re: [Open-access] [open-science] Data expedition idea - scholarly
> publishing income
>
> hi all,
>
> Study of the dysfunction marketplace that is scholarly communication has
> been around for a while. In brief, the scholarly journal system has
> arguably
> been in a state of crisis for decades. Before the second world war, almost
> all scholarly journals were published by the non-profit sector (scholarly
> and learned publishers, university presses). After the second world war,
> the
> commercial sector became involved, and are now involved in publishing about
> half of scholarly journals (sometimes owned outright, other times published
> on behalf of scholarly societies). The commercial sector itself has been
> characterized by market consolidation, so that today a very small number of
> publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer and Informa.plc under the
> scholar-friendly-sounding brand Taylor & Francis) own a disproprotionate
> share of the market. This market has been the subject of anti-trust
> investigation. Open access advocates should note that these large companies
> are moving into open access. For example, Springer owns BioMedCentral.
> Wolters Kluwer bought Medknow, a large Indian open access publisher.
> Meanwhile, Edgar & Willinsky have observed what they call a renaissance in
> scholar-led publishing. A survey they did of over 900 journals using the
> free, open source software found that these were the largest group involved
> in publishing.
>
> My two next research projects are focused on economics of transition to
> open
> access: one on OA article processing fees, and the other on resource
> requirements to sustain scholar-led scholarly publishing. I would be
> interested in hearing from others working in this area.
>
> Some references:
>
> Morrison, H. (2013). Economics of scholarly communication in transition.
> First Monday, June 2013.
> http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4370
>
> I cover a bit more of the history in chapter 2 and chapter 6 of my
> dissertation - the full final version is available here:
> http://summit.sfu.ca/item/12537
>
> The ARL has been tracking the serials crisis for decades - see for example:
>
> Association of Research Libraries (ARL). (1989). Report of the ARL serials
> prices project: A compilation of reports examining the serials prices
> problem. Washington, DC: The Association of Research Libraries. Retrieved
> August 27, 2011 from http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001527850
>
> The UK's Office of Fair Trade conducted an investigation of the industry in
> 2002 (results inconclusive):
> U.K. Office of Fair Trading. (2002). The market for scientific, medical and
> technical journals No. OFT 396 U.K. Office of Fair Trade. Retrieved
> September 13, 2011 from
> http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/publications/reports/media/
>
> Edgar, B. D., & Willinsky, J. (2010) (In press). A survey of the scholarly
> journals using open journal systems. Scholarly and Research Communication,
> Retrieved August 27, 2011 from http://pkp.sfu.ca/node/2773
>
> best,
>
> Heather Morrison
>
> On 2013-11-21, at 5:42 PM, Jenny Molloy wrote:
>
> > Hi Carl and all
> >
> > [Cc'ing the open-economics and data-driven-journalism lists in the
> > spirit of fostering some cross working group collaboration. Please let
> > me know if this is too off-topic for your lists!]
> >
> > Thanks for your responses, I agree these are all interesting questions
> and
> we definitely seem short of expertise in economics so I have copied in the
> open-economics list where hopefully some economists reside who might be
> able
> to help us in responding to your comments.
> >
> > Does anybody know of someone doing academic work on this already? The
> data
> expedition format lends itself more to an investigative journalism type
> approach, finding what data one can and building a narrative, so my initial
> suggestion was not really around an academic study but I think both
> approaches would be worthwhile.
> >
> > If anyone on the ddj list would be interested (or has a contact who
> would), please do come and join the discussion on the open-science list -
> we
> would love to hear from you.
> >
> > Jenny
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Carl Boettiger <cboettig at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi Jenny,
> >
> > I'm not an economist, but I would definitely be curious to understand how
> an economist interprets these observations (along with a bit more digging
> of
> the type you suggest).
> >
> > My understanding is that an efficient marketplace is supposed to erode
> profit margins (not revenues). A single company can make large profits as
> the result of innovations that put them well ahead of the competition, at
> least for a period of time.  But it seems particularly unusual to see
> sectors in which every major player is making a large profit margin. It
> seems this would suggest to the economist that the marketplace was not
> efficient, and thus not spurring innovation.
> >
> > I'd be curious to hear from a more expert opinion if economists view this
> as evidence of an inefficient market?  If so, how it has come about
> (nondisclosure of prices? bundled subscriptions? something else?) What
> would
> restore an efficient, competitive, innovative marketplace?
> >
> > Beyond an academic study, I've also wondered if this issue would interest
> investigative journalists such as the NPR Planet Money Team?
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Carl
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 7:46 AM, Jenny Molloy <jenny.molloy at okfn.org>
> wrote:
> > Hi All
> >
> > I wondered about a potential collaboration between School of Data and the
> Open Science/Open Access working groups on a Data Expedition around
> scholarly publishers and their income.
> >
> > The bottom line is some make a lot of profit, much of it from public
> funding of higher education and research and possibly pay very little tax,
> but there's not been much exploration of this beyond some figures on
> profits
> which appear in blogs and a few articles and mostly in text and tables.
> >
> > It would be great to try and draw a more comprehensive dataset together,
> visualise it and tell some stories.
> >
> > Some figures:
> > THE Summary: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/421672.article
> > Full article: https://lra.le.ac.uk/handle/2381/9689
> > From Mike Taylor
>
> http://svpow.com/2012/01/13/the-obscene-profits-of-commercial-scholarly-publ
> ishers/ :
> >
> > "Here they are again: profits as a percentage of revenue for commercial
> STM publishers in 2010 or early 2011:
> >       • Elsevier: £724m on revenue of £2b — 36%
> >       • Springer‘s Science+Business Media: £294m on revenue of £866m —
> 33.9%
> >       • John Wiley & Sons: $106m on revenue of $253m — 42%
> >       • Academic division of Informa plc: £47m on revenue of £145m —
> 32.4%"
> > Similar figures are also in Heather Morrison's thesis:
> > http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/chapter-two-scholarly-commun
> > ication-in-crisis/
> >
> > A few questions:
> >       • Do you think this is a suitable topic for exploration?
> >       • What are the thoughts of those who have run data expeditions or
> spending stories type projects before?
> >       • Does anyone feel strongly about this and would like to coordinate
> the project?
> >       • Would anyone like to help out? (could you host a workshop, are
> you
>
> > organising an event or conference where this could run as a session, are
> you a data wrangler, visualisation expert, journalist, coder, accountant,
> researcher or anybody just interested in digging in?) Reply to the list and
> sign up on the pad if so!
> > http://pad.okfn.org/p/scholarly-publishers-data-expedition
> >
> > Thanks very much :)
> >
> > Jenny
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > open-science mailing list
> > open-science at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
> > Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-science
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Carl Boettiger
> > UC Santa Cruz
> > http://carlboettiger.info/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > open-science mailing list
> > open-science at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
> > Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-science
>
> --
> Dr. Heather Morrison
> Assistant Professor
> École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
> University of Ottawa
>
> http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca
>
>
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