[Open-access] [open-science] Elsevier: some facts, by Tim Gowers

Wed Apr 30 21:44:30 UTC 2014

Elsevier 2013 STM revenue was a little over 2.1 billion GBP, with about 39% profit, a slight increase in the profit. Key figures and references here:

http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2014/03/elsevier-stm-publishing-profits-rise-to.html

The best source of information for a company's financial data is generally the annual report, often posted on the website. Scholarly journal publishing us often one line of a larger business so some digging is often necessary to find the relevant figures.

best,

Heather Morrison

On Apr 25, 2014, at 8:12 AM, "Ross Mounce" <ross.mounce at gmail.com<mailto:ross.mounce at gmail.com>> wrote:

Fantastic work everyone!

Now that we have data coming in for US, Brazil, UK, Germany, and many more... it's crucial we think about this as a combined total. It costs them almost nothing more to make the *same* digital content/platform/service available to extra countries and institutions.

Would it be unreasonable to suggest that a very minimum Elsevier get paid (globally) at least $500,000,000 USD for journal subscriptions, PER YEAR.

Their ScienceDirect platform only makes available access to ~12,500,000 articles (some of which are freely accessible anyway).

May I suggest a very rough back of the envelope calculation...

The length of Elsevier's copyright monopoly over scientific content they 'own' will be 70 years in most jurisdictions. This means they can continue to have the exclusive right to rent out content for 70 years after it's first production.
They get approximately $500,000,000 USD per year (globally) for renting digital access to this content. PLUS single article purchase fees typically at $40 USD per person.

70 years * $500,000,000 USD / 12,500,000 articles = $2800 USD over the subscription-lifetime per article

With a standard PLOS ONE APC of $1350 USD per paper, we'd get all the benefits of open access at less than half the lifetime cost relative to Elsevier's subscription model. Even cheaper with a SciELO*, or Journal of Machine Learning Research** (JMLR), Peer J*** , or Ubiquity Press **** style model.

It's clearer than ever to me that with a little bit of long-term thinking - RENTING access to research literature is extremely expensive, relative to 'buying' lifetime open access upfront for a one-off fee for the services provided.

I also can't hesitate to point out that publishers are constantly *increasing* the subscription prices they charge, at an above inflation level and have been doing so for years (google 'serials crisis'). Renting access to research has got to stop.

* $200 - $600 "The SciELO Open Access: A Gold Way from the South" (2010) p123 http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/cjhe/article/view/479/504
** http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/
*** https://peerj.com/pricing/
**** http://www.ubiquitypress.com/about

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Dr Ross Mounce, postdoc
Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group
University of Bath, 4 South Building, Lab 1.07
http://about.me/rossmounce
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