The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) has published ‘The STM Report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing’, a follow-up to the 2006 report, ‘Scientific publishing in transition: an overview of current developments’. ‘The STM Report’ is updated and released once every three years, presenting an overview of the current state of the world of scientific journal publishing.
The report is funded by STM, and prepared by Mark Ware Consulting and STM. It aims to collect the available evidence, and provides a comprehensive picture of the trends and currents in scholarly communication. Scholarly communications are undergoing profound changes driven by technology and economic factors, while authors’ core motivations to publish remain stable, says the report.
Annual revenues generated from English-language STM journal publishing are estimated at $8 billion in 2008, up by 6-7 percent compared to 2007, within a broader STM publishing market worth some $16 billion. About 55 percent of global STM revenues (including non-journal STM products) come from the US, 30 percent from Europe, 10 percent from Asia-Pacific and 5 percent from the rest of the world.
According to the report, continued growth in output, particularly from East Asia and China, will put further pressure on the system. This is particularly so when combined with funders’ desire for more returns on research investments, and the pressure on researchers to accelerate the research cycle.
There are about 2,000 journal publishers worldwide. The main English-language trade and professional associations for journal publishers include 657 publishers producing about 11,550 journals. This is around 50 percent of the total journal output by title. Of these, 73 percent publishers and 20 percent journals are not-for-profit.
In addition, the report further notes that there were about 25,400 active scholarly peer-reviewed journals in early 2009, collectively publishing about 1.5 million articles a year. The number of journals and the number of articles published each year have both grown steadily for over two centuries, by about 3.5 percent and 3 percent per year respectively. The reason for this can be attributed to the equally persistent growth in the number of researchers, which has also grown at about 3 percent per year. It now stands at between 5.5 and 10 million, depending on definition, although only about 20 percent of these are repeat authors.
The ‘STM Report’ also reveals that the debate over business models and access to information paradoxically occurs at a time when access to literature has never been wider, nor cost per download lower. Within this maturing debate, there remains an increased interest on an evidence-based approach to these various business models.
Search for more such Industry reports in K-Store
Discuss this NEWS
