Two new articles within the past fortnight question the assumed oligopoly in scholarly publishing, looking beyond the curated and selective WoS and Scopus data that drives the industry narrative.
This article: "...shows that the oligopoly narrative, derived mainly from Web of Science and Scopus data, overlooks extensive local publishing ecosystems sustained by academic communities. As a result, the dominance of elite commercial companies appears far less pronounced in Latin American and certain European contexts than the global narrative suggests. The landscape of academic journals is beyond the oligopoly: it is diverse and often grounded in public, academic-driven initiatives rather than market imperatives." This analysis of national journal landscapes in seven Latin-American and European countries shows relatively low concentration and the minor role of commercial publishers.
The study argues that this challenges assumptions of a globally uniform publishing system and calls for bibliometric methods that better integrate national-level publishing landscapes.
In this study, "A major geographical divergence is revealed, with English-speaking countries and/or those located in northwestern Europe relying heavily on major publishers for the dissemination of their research, while the rest of the world is relatively independent of the oligopoly."
By comparing Web of Science (WoS) and Dimensions, the authors found a stark contrast in how publishing power is concentrated. • In WoS, the big five publishers appear to dominate output (59% of all articles in 2021); • In Dimensions, the Big Five's share is declining (from 65% in 2000 to 44% by 2021); • What’s behind this? The growth of independent, open access (OA) publishers, especially in the humanities, social sciences, and non-English-speaking regions.
Citation: van Bellen S, Alperin JP, Larivière V (2025) Scholarly publishing’s hidden diversity: How exclusive databases sustain the oligopoly of academic publishers. PLoS One 20(6): e0327015. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0327015
Does anyone have a sense of the size of the US Government Springer Nature subscription? I am asking because of this news - https://www.axios.com/2025/06/25/trump-cuts-contracts-scientific-publisher
I know that the government used to fund huge amounts of research, but most of that was in universities. How big would the actual government subscription be? Equivalent to an average sized university? Equivalent to the whole university sector?
I found this data point from this source<https://gizmodo.com/trump-reportedly-cuts-funding-for-publisher-of-prestigious-nature-journals-and-scientific-american-magazine-2000620234>: According to data compiled via USA Spending, the open data source of federal spending information, Springer Nature currently<https://www.usaspending.gov/search?hash=b8c3d48e734a83afa153bfa74a9a9335> has 19 active contracts with federal agencies, the largest being a $5.2 million multi-year portfolio-wide contract<https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_1333BJ22C00150001_1344_-NONE-_-NONE-> subscription held by the National Institutes of Health.
Hi Please don’t believe everything you read, particularly when the only source is anonymous.
We are proud of our track record in communicating U.S. research to the rest of the world for over a century and continue to have good relationships with U.S. federal agencies.
We don’t comment on individual contracts, but across our U.S. business there is no material change to our customers or their spend and we remain confident about the strength of the service we provide.
And apologies for the poor proof reading on my part… 😊
From: OpenCafe-l <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Susie Winter Sent: 27 June 2025 08:05 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [OPENCAFE-L] Understanding the impact of the Trump cancellation of Springer Nature
Hi Please don’t believe everything you read, particularly when the only source is anonymous. We are proud of our track record in communicating U. S. research to the rest of the world for over a century and continue to have good relationships
While it’s true that the average enrollment at a US university is substantially lower than the average enrollment at an Australian university, that average is a function of the relatively large number of US universities and the great diversity of size among them. There are roughly 200 American universities that enroll between 20,000 and 30,000 students (and more than 300 that enroll between 10,000 and 20,000).
A reminder our next webinar <https://www.oaspa.org/events/rethinking-innovative-open-scholarly-outputs-practice-recognition-and-impact/> takes place on *Wednesday July 2* when we will explore the landscape of innovative open access publishing formats, especially those that go beyond traditional monographs. We’ll look at their visibility, practical applications, and how they are currently assessed within research evaluation systems.
This webinar will be chaired by *Magdalena Wnuk*. We welcome our panelists - *Ioana Galleron, Allison Levy *and *Frédéric Clavert.*
*Knowledge Unlatched Finds a New Home with Annual Reviews* *Trailblazing open access initiative to return to nonprofit stewardship for its next chapter*
Annual Reviews today announced that it has signed an agreement with Wiley that enables Knowledge Unlatched (KU) – most recently owned and operated by Wiley – to move to a new home within the Annual Reviews organization. The move supports one of the most recognized initiatives in open access publishing and marks KU’s return to nonprofit stewardship.
Join us at *OASPA2025* (September 22-24, Irish College Leuven, Belgium) as we tackle the defining challenge of our time: What will it take to reach 100% open access?
*Early bird pricing ends on Monday, June 30*—secure your spot now <https://www.tickettailor.com/events/oaspa/1602818> and save and join representatives from over 80 organisations already registered!
We are delighted to share information about the Keynote Speakers at the OASPA Conference in September.
Just a reminder that there is still time to register for this Wednesday’s webinar “Creating the Response Strategies for Academic Libraries,” offered by Emerald Publishing and Every Library: https://www.everylibraryinstitute.org/creating_the_response_strategies_for_academic_libraries
The first session in this series was really informative, as I’m sure this one will be as well.
We are thrilled to announce that Lifecycle Journal (https://lifecyclejournal.org/) is open for submissions.
Lifecycle Journal is a 3-year research and development pilot on a new model of scholarly communication initiated by the Center for Open Science that aims to transform the vision and value of a journal as an effective facilitator of knowledge production and self-correction.
