Like this article? rabble is reader-supported journalism. Chip in to keep stories like these coming. In December, Memorial University in Newfoundland announced planned cuts to thousands of journal subscriptions. Soon after, the library and archives at Toronto’s Ryerson University also said there would be similar cuts ahead due to an “enduring budget crisis” for academic […]

Following news that Memorial University is considering cancelling its subscription to thousands of academic journals, Ryerson University's library says saying that similar cancellations are on the way for its school.

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.

Earlier this week, the news broke that Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) is reviewing 2,500 journals and looking for cost savings where possible. The response has been an outcry from the pr…

In the face of tight budgets and spiralling costs, Memorial University’s library will be cancelling its subscription to thousands of academic journals in January — something faculty members say could seriously damage the university’s credibility.

The current weakness of the Canadian Dollar has had a negative effect on many industries in Canada who have seen their purchasing power drop to zilch. One industry particularly effected by the Doll…

A study at the University of Montreal shows that the market share of the five largest research publishing houses reached 50 percent in 2006, rising, thanks to mergers and acquisitions, from 30 percent in 1996 and only 20 percent in 1973.

Levine-Clark, Michael. “Can We Have it All? Do We Want it All? The Evolution of Academic Library Collection Development,” Invited Keynote. INFORUM Conference o…

For more than three-and-a-half centuries, the scholarly infrastructure—composed of commercial publishers, learned societies, libraries, and the scholars themselves—has provided the foundation functions of certification, registration, access, preservation, and reward. However, over the last two decades, the stability of this infrastructure has been disrupted by profound changes in the technological, economic, cultural, and political climate. We examine the actions of scholars in response to this infrastructure instability through the lens of Hirschman’s “exit, voice, and loyalty” framework. We describe the motivations and actions by scholars, especially those with tenure, who have chosen exit from the mainstream scholarly communication infrastructure to a proliferation of newly available alternative infrastructures. However, this option is not practical for all scholars due to the “enforced loyalty” imposed by reward systems based on metrics that are intricately tied to the traditional infrastructure. We examine the alternative of voice exercised by these scholars, combined with the threat of exit that has changed policies that are the source of dissatisfaction with the system.

This week The CU Board of Regents will hear the campus’s initial budget recommendations for the upcoming fiscal year, including potential tuition increases. The regents are not expected to vo…

Corporate press releases announcing mergers and acquisitions inevitably tend to be written in a similar style. There is a breathy air of excitement as if the reader is expected to rejoice that Company A has bought a 51% stake in Company B or that Smith and Jones […]

Journal prices could rise further if Springer-Macmillan deal goes ahead, some fear