Thursday, April 24, 2014
Elsevier journals - some facts
Timothy Gowers' excellent post details his research looking for Elsevier pricing mechanisms and actual prices paid by university libraries through FOI requests. Lots of useful data noted here for future number-crunching.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Would Elsevier's Universal Access in the US raise Elsevier profits to 98.6%
Brian Matthews at Ubiquitous Librarian has calculated that it would cost the U.S. about $91 billion to purchase Elsevier Universal Access for everyone in the U.S. By my calculations, this move would have little to no impact on Elsevier costs, therefore increasing Elsevier's global STM revenue 25-fold and increasing their profit margin from 39% to 98.6%. Following are my calculations.
Elsevier's Universal Access is their corporate alternative to open access - the vision where open access is not necessary, because everyone on the planet is covered by an Elsevier subscription. Brian Matthews at Ubiquitous Librarian estimates that a U.S. national subscription to Elsevier Universal Access for the U.S. would cost $91 billion U.S. That's 25 times Elsevier's global STM revenues of approximately $3.7 billion U.S. (based on $2.2 million UK pounds converted at today's rate as quoted by Bank of Canada). That $3.7 billion U.S. already accounts for a 39% profit margin. Universal Access for everyone in the U.S. would likely have little to no impact on Elsevier's costs (those who really need the journals already subscribe, and any slight increase in usage costs is likely to be more than offset by a decrease in technical support and sales costs). If Matthew's calculations are correct, this would mean that Elsevier profits would increase from $1.3 billion U.S. (based on 826 million GBP) would increase to approximately $89.7 billion U.S., a profit rate of 98.6%.
My post calculating the Elsevier 39% profit margin and highlighting key Elsevier financial data is available here: http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2014/03/elsevier-stm-publishing-profits-rise-to.html
Elsevier's Universal Access is their corporate alternative to open access - the vision where open access is not necessary, because everyone on the planet is covered by an Elsevier subscription. Brian Matthews at Ubiquitous Librarian estimates that a U.S. national subscription to Elsevier Universal Access for the U.S. would cost $91 billion U.S. That's 25 times Elsevier's global STM revenues of approximately $3.7 billion U.S. (based on $2.2 million UK pounds converted at today's rate as quoted by Bank of Canada). That $3.7 billion U.S. already accounts for a 39% profit margin. Universal Access for everyone in the U.S. would likely have little to no impact on Elsevier's costs (those who really need the journals already subscribe, and any slight increase in usage costs is likely to be more than offset by a decrease in technical support and sales costs). If Matthew's calculations are correct, this would mean that Elsevier profits would increase from $1.3 billion U.S. (based on 826 million GBP) would increase to approximately $89.7 billion U.S., a profit rate of 98.6%.
My post calculating the Elsevier 39% profit margin and highlighting key Elsevier financial data is available here: http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2014/03/elsevier-stm-publishing-profits-rise-to.html
Monday, April 07, 2014
Dramatic Growth of Open Access First Quarter 2014
Highlights this quarter: three open access initiatives illustrating particularly strong growth this quarter are featured (Directory of Open Access Books, Highwire Press free sites, and PubMedCentral with 5 of the top 15 spots by quarterly growth rate). The number of journals in DOAJ has decreased this quarter; please note that this reflects a vigorous weeding process at DOAJ rather than a decrease in fully open access journals. For example, the number of articles searchable at the article level through DOAJ increased by over 21,000 this quarter. To download the full datasets or the most recent rationale and method, see the Dramatic Growth of Open Access dataverse at Morrison, Heather, 2014-03, "Dramatic Growth of Open Access", http://hdl.handle.net/10864/10660 Morrison, Heather [Distributor] V1 [Version]
Please note that there an issue with this URL has been resolved.
Double kudos to the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) for taking the two highest places for quarterly growth as measured in percentage. DOAB added 293 open access monographs this quarter for an 18% growth rate (annual equivalent 72%) and a total of 1,912 books as of March 31, 2014. DOAB also added 8 new publishers for a 15% quarterly growth rate (annual equivalent 60%) and a total of 62 publishers. I hope my small contribution of faculty library start-up funds to the Knowledge Unlatched pilot helped with this!
This quarter's data has a few indicators which suggest an increased tendency for traditional society publishers to move to open access. Highwire Press' completely free sites had the third highest growth by percentage this quarter, adding 10 journals for an 11% quarterly growth rate (annual equivalent 44%) and a total of 99 titles.
PubMedCentral staff have obviously been very busy this quarter, enough to take up a third of the top 15 spots by quarterly growth rate for journal participation alone (PMC free article growth has its own worksheet). PMC indicators that grew by more than 5% this quarter (20% annual equivalent) include the number of journals with some articles open access (up 8% / 23 journals to 310 journals), the number of journals with immediate free access (up 5% / 64 journals to 1,252 journals), the number of journals that deposit ALL articles in PMC (up 5% / 68 journals to 1,462 journals, the number of journals with all articles open access (up 5% / 49 journals to 1,070 journals), and the number of journals actively participating in PMC (up 5% / 79 journals to 1,769 journals).
Selected numbers
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access series.
Please note that there an issue with this URL has been resolved.
Double kudos to the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) for taking the two highest places for quarterly growth as measured in percentage. DOAB added 293 open access monographs this quarter for an 18% growth rate (annual equivalent 72%) and a total of 1,912 books as of March 31, 2014. DOAB also added 8 new publishers for a 15% quarterly growth rate (annual equivalent 60%) and a total of 62 publishers. I hope my small contribution of faculty library start-up funds to the Knowledge Unlatched pilot helped with this! This quarter's data has a few indicators which suggest an increased tendency for traditional society publishers to move to open access. Highwire Press' completely free sites had the third highest growth by percentage this quarter, adding 10 journals for an 11% quarterly growth rate (annual equivalent 44%) and a total of 99 titles.
PubMedCentral staff have obviously been very busy this quarter, enough to take up a third of the top 15 spots by quarterly growth rate for journal participation alone (PMC free article growth has its own worksheet). PMC indicators that grew by more than 5% this quarter (20% annual equivalent) include the number of journals with some articles open access (up 8% / 23 journals to 310 journals), the number of journals with immediate free access (up 5% / 64 journals to 1,252 journals), the number of journals that deposit ALL articles in PMC (up 5% / 68 journals to 1,462 journals, the number of journals with all articles open access (up 5% / 49 journals to 1,070 journals), and the number of journals actively participating in PMC (up 5% / 79 journals to 1,769 journals).
Selected numbers
| Quarterly growth (numeric) | Quarterly growth (percentage) | Annual growth (numeric) | Annual growth (percentage) | ||
| Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) http://www.doaj.org/ | |||||
| # of DOAJ journals | 9,709 | -95 | -1% | 862 | 10% |
| # of titles added last 30 days (DOAJ) | |||||
| # of countries (added March 31, 2013) (DOAJ) | 133 | 9 | 7% | 12 | 10% |
| # of journals searchable at article level (DOAJ) | 5,621 | -15 | 0% | 1,082 | 24% |
| # of articles searchable at article level (DOAJ) | 1,595,722 | 21,875 | 1% | 539,905 | 51% |
| Directory of Open Access Books http://www.doabooks.org/ | |||||
| # of academic peer-reviewed books (DOAB) | 1,912 | 293 | 18% | 518 | 37% |
| # publishers (DOAB) | 62 | 8 | 15% | 14 | 29% |
| Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliotek - Electronic Journals Library # journals that can be read free of charge http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7&lang=en | 44,756 | 1,258 | 3% | 5,529 | 14% |
| Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliotek - total # of journals (added March 31, 2014) | 75,337 | ||||
| Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliotek - # online-only journals (added March 31, 2014) | 13,536 | ||||
| Highwire Press Free Online Fulltext Articles http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl | |||||
| # free articles (Highwire) | 2,344,479 | 16,186 | 1% | 84,682 | 4% |
| total # articles (Highwire) | 7,174,703 | -77,113 | -1% | 101,110 | 1% |
| Highwire Completely Free Sites | 99 | 10 | 11% | 28 | 39% |
| Sites with free back issues (Highwire) | 275 | -4 | -1% | -9 | -3% |
| Open DOAR http://www.opendoar.org/ added April 2, 2007 (2006 from Peter Suber's SPARC Open Access Newsletter (SOAN) | |||||
| OpenDOAR # repositories | 2,619 | 66 | 3% | 350 | 15% |
| Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) http://roar.eprints.org/ # repositories | |||||
| ROAR # repositories | 3,621 | ||||
| BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine http://www.base-search.net/ (note) | |||||
| # of documents (BASE) | 59,953,450 | 3,237,029 | 6% | 16,410,772 | 38% |
| # of content providers (BASE) | 2,910 | 122 | 4% | 406 | 16% |
| PubMedCentral http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ | |||||
| # items Dec. 2011 - posted on PMC website(from ROAR) 100% fulltext - for historical purposes - for more accurate data, see PMC Free tab | 3,000,000 | 100,000 | 3% | 400,000 | 15% |
| # journals participating in PMC (from PMC website) * PMC1 *2004 Tim Gray | |||||
| # journals actively participating in PMC (total minus predecessor minus no new content) | 1,769 | 79 | 5% | 282 | 19% |
| # journals in PMC with immediate free access | 1,252 | 64 | 5% | 49 | 4% |
| # journals in PMC with all articles open access | 1,070 | 49 | 5% | 94 | 10% |
| # journals in PMC with some articles open access | 310 | 23 | 8% | 30 | 11% |
| # journals that deposit ALL articles in PMC (from PMC website - full participation journals) | 1,462 | 68 | 5% | 229 | 19% |
| # journals that deposit NIH-funded articles in PMC (from PMC website - NIH portfolio journals) | 281 | 8 | 3% | 27 | 11% |
| # journals that deposit selected articles in PMC (from PMC website) | 2,506 | 92 | 4% | 422 | 20% |
| arXiv http://arxiv.org/ | 926,535 | 23,866 | 3% | 93,676 | 11% |
| RePEC http://repec.org/ total items (from LogEC as of March 2012) (Sept. 2013 note) | 1,510,688 | 28,720 | 2% | ||
| RePEC online (fulltext) (downloadable as of March 2012) | 1,368,765 | 27,333 | 2% | ||
| Social Sciences Research Network http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/DisplayAbstractSearch.cfm | |||||
| Abstracts (SSRN) | 540,025 | 17,179 | 3% | 65,172 | 14% |
| Full text papers (SSRN) | 442,928 | 14,592 | 3% | 57,090 | 15% |
| Authors (SSRN) | 250,824 | 8,016 | 3% | 28,948 | 13% |
| Papers received in last 12 months (SSRN) | 66,769 | 401 | 1% | -376 | -1% |
| Paper downloads - to date (SSRN) | 74,367,932 | 2,464,964 | 3% | 10,308,673 | 16% |
| Paper downloads - last 12 months (SSRN) | 10,313,690 | -597,001 | -5% | -1,072,072 | -9% |
| Paper downloads - last 30 days (SSRN) | 852,445 | 74,144 | 10% | -266,148 | -24% |
| Open Access Mandate Policies based on ROARMAP http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ | |||||
| Sub-Institutional (was Departmental) Policies (ROARMAP) | 36 | ||||
| Funder Policies (ROARMAP) | 80 | ||||
| Institutional Policies (ROARMAP) | 165 | ||||
| Multi-institutional Policies (ROARMAP) | 4 | ||||
| Thesis Policies (ROARMAP) | 100 | ||||
| Total Policies (ROARMAP) | 385 | ||||
| Proposed Mandates Policies (ROARMAP) | 27 | ||||
| Internet Archive http://archive.org/index.php | |||||
| Webpages (Internet Archive) (in billions) | 402 | 28 | 7% | 121 | 43% |
| Moving images (movies) (Internet Archive) | 1,585,064 | 85,753 | 6% | 398,536 | 34% |
| Live music archive (concerts) (Internet Archive) | 126,466 | 2,944 | 2% | 12,229 | 11% |
| Audio (recordings) (Internet Archive) | 1,930,400 | 111,487 | 6% | 360,098 | 23% |
| Texts (Internet Archive) | 6,028,983 | 360,035 | 6% | 1,631,709 | 37% |
| SCOAP3 respository (proejct start date January 1, 2014) (beta) | 1,071 |