The obscene profits of commercial scholarly publishers
January 13, 2012
In an article that many of you will now have seen, Heather Morrison demonstrated the enormous profits of STM (Scientific, Technical and Medical) scholarly publishers. The figures are taken from her in-progress dissertation which in turn cites an article in The Economist. It all checks out. I emphasise this because I found the figures so hard to believe. Here they are again: profits as a percentage of revenue for commercial STM publishers in 2010 or early 2011:
- Elsevier: £724m on revenue of £2b — 36%
- Springer‘s Science+Business Media: £294m on revenue of £866m — 33.9%
- John Wiley & Sons: $106m on revenue of $253m — 42%
- Academic division of Informa plc: £47m on revenue of £145m — 32.4%
So it’s evident that profits on the order of 35% are pretty typical for commercial STM publishers, and that Elsevier’s figures are not an aberration. Not only that, but all four of these companies’ profits as a proportion of revenue are still increasing — by 2.4%, 4%, 13% and 3.3% respectively. The U.K. Office of Fair Trading noted back in 2002 that “the overall profitability of commercial STM publishing is high, not only by comparison to ‘non-profit’ journals (which is not surprising), but also by comparison to other commercial journal publishing”.
I wanted to be sure that I was assessing this fairly, so I looked through Elsevier’s annual reports for the last nine years — happily, they make them available, if not particularly easy to find. What I found is that they have been consistently bringing in profits in the region of 33% throughout the last decade. Specifically:
- 2002: £429m profit on £1295m revenue – 33.18%
- 2003: £467m profit on £1381m revenue – 33.82%
- 2004: £460m profit on £1363m revenue – 33.75%
- 2005: £449m profit on £1436m revenue – 31.25%
- 2006: £465m profit on £1521m revenue – 30.57%
- 2007: £477m profit on £1507m revenue – 31.65%
- 2008: £568m profit on £1700m revenue – 33.41%
- 2009: £693m profit on £1985m revenue – 34.91%
- 2010: £724m profit on £2026m revenue – 35.74%
- UPDATE (14 March 2012) The 2011 figures are out: £768M on £2058M revenue – 37.3%
(I have not been through the same exercise for Springer, Wiley or Informa, but there is no reason to expect that the results would be any different.)
What does it all mean?
Yes, publishers have a right to make a living. Not only that, but they have a right to make as big a profit as the market can bear (though of course when they form a cartel that distorts the market monopolistically, that changes things).
But here’s what it means to scientists that Elsevier’s profit is 35.74% of revenue:
- When you pay $37.95 to download a PDF from an Elsevier journal, $13.56 of that goes straight into the pockets of Elsevier shareholders.
- When you pay $3000 to have your submission to an Elsevier journal appear as open access, $1072.20 of that goes straight into the pockets of Elsevier shareholders.
- When your library pays $1.7m for a bundle of Elsevier-journal subscriptions, $607,580 of that goes straight into the pockets of Elsevier shareholders.
- When you or your library pays Elsevier $23783 for any reason, that is enough for them fund Representative Caroline Maloney’s $8500 bribe to co-sponsor the evil Research Works Act, out of their profits alone.
You just have to ask yourself whether that’s where you want your money going.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
January 14, 2012 at 11:44 am
Almost enough to make me want to be a shareholder.
January 15, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Excellent rant! See mine on the same topic:
http://bjoern.brembs.net/comment-n820.html
January 15, 2012 at 10:51 pm
should we as authors get more royalties? should universities who pay our wages be paid for the time we spend for peer-reviewing articles and book proposals (usually for free or for very symbolic sums)? we are assessed on publications in rated journals, so we have to continue publishing here; where we can effectively do something is in the peer reviewing process. An article review takes me about 2 to 3 hours, let’s ask for 50 dollars, or 100 dollars per review for commercial publishers
January 16, 2012 at 3:37 am
Forgive my ignorance, but none of these publishers are geared to return any of these super profits to authors are they? I know that being paid royalties for scholarly publications is a contentious issue, however incredible profits are being made regardless. I just find it curious that when decent sums are being paid for copies of your work, you as the author see 0% of that. In fact, I believe it usually COSTS authors to publish in these journals (i.e. purchasing images for the papers, purchasing copies of the journal itself, etc). I’m admittedly green to the world of academic publishing so I’m sure there’s a good reason for this that I’m not aware of – I’m just interested as to what it is.
January 16, 2012 at 5:23 am
@Daniel: No, we need to figure out a way to change our system, such that what we publish again becomes more important than where we publish!
January 16, 2012 at 7:59 am
You are right, Paul and David, that it is vanishingly rare for academic authors to be paid for the journal articles that they write. I have never heard of this happening, in fact, and I’d be interested if anyone knows of any special cases where it has happened.
But I am OK with that. On the whole, writing papers is part of what academics get paid their salary for, so there’s no particular reason whey they should get paid twice. (Again, there are exceptions: people like me research and write in our spare time just because we like to; but there’s no reason anyone should be obliged to pay me to do what I choose to do anyway.)
But it certainly wrong that journals which assume ownership of the papers also charge authors. As you know, I would rather that publishers never take copyright, but if they are going to do that, then they most certainly need to provide something in return, and at the very least that something should include not charging the authors for the privilege of giving them free content.
On being paid for peer-review: I half-facetiously suggested this in my Times Higher Education piece, but more as a deterrent than as a source of income. If we were to charge a realistic consulting rate to publishers, then $100 for 2-3 hours’ work would be far too low, and something more like £100 ($150) per hour would be more reasonable — something in the same ball-park as commensurate professionals like lawyers and physicians. But, really, the progress of science is better served by sweeping commercial considerations as far out of the way as possible, and just considering reviews as one part of the way we contribute. Just so long as we are contributing to science rather than to Science!
January 16, 2012 at 8:01 am
Oh, and Anne Jefferson wrote:
If you can get in, make a profit in the next year to eighteen months and get out again, then maybe. But I think that all academic publishers in the sciences are heading for an almighty crash as the simmering indignation of researchers rises towards boiling point. If I had Elsevier shares, I’d be selling them, not buying more.
January 16, 2012 at 8:34 am
@Paul: the only reason why this system exists today is history: it once made sense to outsource publishing to people with printing presses. Now that nobody really reads paper papers any more, the reality has changed but the publishers use their profits to prevent modernization of scholarly communication (which most likely would force them out of business). See also my post linked above for more details and background.
January 16, 2012 at 8:48 am
As an author, I do get royalties for my books, though this is not much (may 200-300 pounds a year per book). I do not get royalties for articles. But I am evaluated by the number of articles I publish in A or B rated journals. The ratings are those by the European Science Foundation. Initiatives like HAU and other open access journals change here the game, but only at the medium term. For the moment all their authors are high profile academics with permanent senior jobs who certainly have time and freedom to publish wherever it pleases them. If I were to submit an article for HAU (which I will enthusiastically do whenever I have something appropriate), I will have to explain this to my management and also consider that this publication will be “lost” in terms of my evaluation as a researcher – as long as HAU does not have a rating of its impact factor.
And: Let’s not pretend to live in a bubble – some kind of idealised commerce free community which is only made possible by commerce and the system of capitalism. My point is: If we work we should be paid appropriately, or work for no cost if the project is a non for profit. I have no problem with either. If Elsevier really makes such huge profits, they should be held responsible for costs such as those of peer reviewing. That’s why my claim to 100 dollars per review (I work on a Portuguese pay roll =) considerably lower than a british or US american one)
January 16, 2012 at 9:06 am
[…] Read the comments on this piece too – here. […]
January 16, 2012 at 9:06 am
David,
In Portugal, do lawyers work for $33 per hour?
Don’t underestimate the value of the work you do in peer-reviewing. The expertise that you bring is the result of (most likely) six to ten years’ training in a batchelor’s degree and then a doctorate, plus the extensive experience and relevant knowledge you’ve accumulated since then. If the professional-grade work that you do is going to be charged at all, it should be charged at a rate in keeping with that training and experience, just it is with other professions.
January 16, 2012 at 9:13 am
The commercial publishers have been increasing subscription rates at about 400% the inflation. Even if we ask for reviewer compensation, why shouldn’t they just add these costs to their subscription rates?
January 16, 2012 at 10:17 pm
[…] costs of unemployment – again The obscene profits of commercial scholarly publishers (powerful context at the end, although why is no one mentioning that Darrell Issa, the leading […]
January 17, 2012 at 1:11 pm
The Lead Story in the Science section of today’s NY Times is “Cracking Open the Scientific Process.”
http://tinyurl.com/794zlur
January 18, 2012 at 6:58 am
Shalom & Erev tov, Mike…you might wish to peruse a parallel paper…Thomas Lin, 2012. Cracking open the scientific process. Driven by the Web’s collaborative potential, many want to replace an age-old (and costly) system of submitting private research to commercial journals. THE NEW YORK TIMES, 17 January:D1, D4
STEPHAN PICKERING / Chofetz Chayim benAvraham
January 18, 2012 at 10:29 am
[…] threat is the Research Works Act (RWA), by which scholarly publishers like Elsevier (with its 36% profits as a proportion of revenue) hope to claw back total ownership of federally funded research. The […]
January 18, 2012 at 12:53 pm
[…] Dr. Mike Taylor (University of Bristol, Bristol, England, United Kingdom) of SV-POW! (see here and here) to oppose another US bill, HR 6399, the Research Works Act, which attempts to overturn the NIH […]
January 18, 2012 at 4:53 pm
Great post. This makes me curious what the profit margins of open access journals like PLoS are.
January 18, 2012 at 5:06 pm
PLoS are very transparent about their financials, in keeping with their general ethos of openness. You can find their annual reports and their tax returns (most recent: 2010) on their Progress Updates page. For 2010, the total operating revenue was $12.995M, yielding a profit of $785k — 6% of revenue. This was the first year that PLoS turned a profit, but then it’s such a young organisation that it’s not had a chance to get into a stable financial routine yet. (It’s hard to believe it only started in 2003, and PLoS ONE didn’t launch until 2006!)
January 18, 2012 at 5:23 pm
Thanks for the information. Having published in PLoS I am happy to see that their profit margins aren’t as ridiculous as other publishing groups. There is absolutely no reason Elsevier should have a 33% profit margin. I hope universities can use this data to better negotiate with these companies.
That being said, the way the scientific publishing world currently works there is a trade off between paying to have your article published in an open access journal, or not paying to have an article published as non-open access. I know a lot of people who would love to publish every single article in an open access journal but don’t have the funding to do so. I’m not sure what the alternative to authors paying for this is. Lord knows I’d hate to see banner adds at PloS CB.
January 18, 2012 at 5:29 pm
Actually, PLoS is a non-profit organization, so any surplus is invested immediately: A tax-exempt, 501(c)3, nonprofit corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California (Federal Tax ID 68-0492065) http://www.plos.org/about/what-is-plos/
So there are no PLoS shareholders laughing all the way to the bank…
Currently, the bulk of the revenue comes from PLoS One and I have the impression that they’re using the funds to try and keep up with the growth. IMHO, if this continues and prevents innovation, PLoS has a problem. But so far all looks well.
Indeed, it is an interesting experiment and it will be exciting to see how far this experiment can scale.
January 19, 2012 at 2:11 pm
That being said, the way the scientific publishing world currently works there is a trade off between paying to have your article published in an open access journal, or not paying to have an article published as non-open access. I know a lot of people who would love to publish every single article in an open access journal but don’t have the funding to do so.
We should all be agitating within our universities for university libraries to stop paying ridiculous subscription fees to commercial publishers, and instead have universities use that money to fund OA publications by their researchers.
Also, I can’t speak for other fields, but there are quite a few OA paleontology journals that don’t charge anything to publish, either because they are state-supported or have other lines of support, or because they’re out to make a name for themselves, or both.
Finally, PLoS ONE has a fee waiver for authors who can’t afford to pay. Obviously it won’t last if it’s abused, but it does exist. Other OA journals may also do this, but I haven’t checked.
So there are options.
January 19, 2012 at 2:43 pm
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January 23, 2012 at 2:56 am
Does anybody know whether it is allowed to post pdfs of your (non-open access) publications on websites like Academia.edu?
January 23, 2012 at 8:12 am
Posting PDFs of your own papers is widespread — see the list of researchers’ pages here, for example, but whether you’re actually allowed to do it technically depends on the policies of the specific journal in question, which may depend on the policies of the publisher. I’ve never heard of anyone getting in trouble for doing it, and I think that any publisher greedy and stupid enough to make trouble on this basis would reap a whirlwind of bad publicity.
January 24, 2012 at 3:43 pm
I always post every thing I publish on my website as soon as I have the PDF (and I often post the HTML version, too). I’d just hope they’d go after researchers like us one day…
January 25, 2012 at 6:33 pm
[…] from 2006-2010, an experience which turned us into complete Open Access advocates) managed to suck the greatest percentage of profit out of its system of volunteer labor and captured librarie… — 42%, beating out Elsevier’s 36%: In an article that many of you will now have seen, […]
January 26, 2012 at 12:37 pm
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January 27, 2012 at 10:32 am
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January 28, 2012 at 10:11 am
[…] sense (research being mostly publicly funded and all, you would think it should be open access). And then I came across this article on the obscene profits of Science/Medical/Technical publishing. This is how it looks: But here’s what it means to scientists that Elsevier’s profit is 35.74% […]
February 3, 2012 at 3:25 am
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February 3, 2012 at 7:06 am
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February 3, 2012 at 10:02 pm
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February 3, 2012 at 10:44 pm
[…] holandesa Elsevier lucrou $1,16 bilhões em uma margem de 36% da receita, em um ano de crise. E margens de lucro de mais de 30% parecem ser a regra para editoras acadêmicas, levando a considerações sobre o quanto as […]
February 4, 2012 at 1:17 pm
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February 8, 2012 at 8:38 pm
[…] total revenues.” (And indeed, 691 × $3000 = $2.073 M, which is about 0.065% of their 2010 revenue of £2026 M ≈ $3208 M.) As Elsevier publishes 2639 journals in all, that amounts to just over a quarter of […]
February 13, 2012 at 7:33 pm
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February 15, 2012 at 6:55 am
[…] then restructure itself as an open-access publisher. That will probably mean saying goodbye to 30+% annual profit margins, but hey, wake up. If PLoS ONE can offer no length limits, no full color figure limits, and open […]
February 17, 2012 at 5:40 pm
[…] because PLoS isn’t taking in enough money to cream off 36% of all revenue as profit, it seems likely that Elsevier’s response is going to be “Eerrrrrrrrrrrrmmmm…erm, […]
February 19, 2012 at 5:25 pm
[…] aside, for a moment, that you pull down an astonishing-in-any-industry, surely-ripe-for-disruption 36% profit margin. The obvious (to me at least) solution is that all work needs to be made available under a true […]
February 19, 2012 at 7:59 pm
[…] legislation. There is, apparently, no law against bundling and ruthless pricing that produces a profit margin in line with what monopolies […]
February 20, 2012 at 10:09 am
[…] the behest of others. Signing large long term license deals with no real get-out to publishers with 36% profit margins has not helped our professional image. 3. Commitment to the defence, and the advancement, of […]
February 22, 2012 at 8:04 pm
[…] to propose solutions: you got yourselves into this damned mess, funnel a little of that £724 million in profits to some clever people and figure a way out. That said, I’m not above handing out […]
March 12, 2012 at 3:08 pm
[…] they were able in 2011 to bring this up to £768M/£2058M = 37.3%. This continues a fine trend of five successive years of increasing profits — not just increasing in absolute amount (although that’s true, too), but increasing as […]
March 19, 2012 at 3:32 pm
[…] I often think about that in reference to barrier-based academic publishing. It doesn’t serve authors, it doesn’t serve readers, it doesn’t serve academic libraries, but doggone it, at least it costs vastly more than it should. […]
April 7, 2012 at 6:34 am
[…] de 37.3% comparado, por ejemplo, con el 24% registrado por Apple en 2011. Esto hace del 2011 el quinto año consecutivo en el cual las ganancias de Elsevier se han incrementado. Los editores están desangrando a las […]
May 4, 2012 at 11:15 pm
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May 18, 2012 at 5:53 pm
[…] evidence is not evidence of absence.) When embargo limits are cut down, it may be that instead of climbing for a sixth consecutive year, Elsevier will not be able to improve on their 2011 profit margin of 37.3%. Their profit margin […]
May 22, 2012 at 1:10 pm
[…] the public who funded it and the researchers who created it. In doing so, these corporations make grotesque profits of 32%-42% of revenue – far more than, say, Apple’s 24% or Penguin Books’ […]
May 25, 2012 at 12:57 pm
[…] yes. Yes, they are. Because the profit margins of the Big Four academic publishers are all in the range of 32%-42% of revenue – much more than, say,Apple’s best-ever 24% margin in 2011. And that’s without […]
May 25, 2012 at 8:23 pm
[…] yes. Yes, they are. Because the profit margins of the Big Four academic publishers are all in the range of 32%-42% of revenue — much more than, say, Apple’s best-ever 24% margin in 2011. And that’s without […]
June 2, 2012 at 10:03 am
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June 7, 2012 at 6:31 am
[…] 那么Elsevier的利润究竟有多高呢？以下的数据摘自博客文章“The obscene profits of commercial scholarly publishers”： […]
June 29, 2012 at 10:23 am
[…] their desperate scramble to retain the 32%-42% profit margins they’ve grown used to, academic publishers have told us a lot of different lies (e.g. that […]
August 20, 2012 at 6:58 pm
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December 10, 2012 at 11:38 pm
[…] think about this: the Big Four academic publishers have profit-margins between 32.4% and 42%. Let’s pick an typical profit margin of 37% — a little below the middle of that range. […]
January 9, 2013 at 6:05 am
[…] Thanks to Nick Scott-Samuel and Mike Taylor. […]
January 21, 2013 at 1:58 pm
This is what Aaron Swartz died for.
January 22, 2013 at 6:27 pm
[…] geared toward curing cancer or reversing global warming – have profit margins of between 32 and 42%. Anyone with a scintilla of business experience will know that this is an absolute goldmine; to put […]
January 27, 2013 at 1:02 pm
[…] I am not great with financial analyses, but this was written about on the SV-POW post “The obscene profits of commercial scholarly publishers.” Yes, the company needs to profit. Except, while other companies invest in inventory, […]
February 12, 2013 at 3:31 pm
[…] corporations addicted to profit margins of 32-42% find it hard to give them up. As a result, while the world’s leading open-access journal, […]
February 17, 2013 at 9:12 pm
[…] clears more profit than Walmart, Apple, and Disney. Data are from Mike Taylor, The obscene profits of commercial scholarly publishers, 2012. Chart by Stuart Shieber, […]
February 28, 2013 at 4:56 am
[…] access research that is tax-payer funded. And a large portion of that money goes straight into the pockets of shareholders for that particular journal. In a nutshell, the excessive amounts of money an institution spends to […]
March 11, 2013 at 12:01 pm
[…] clears more profit than Walmart, Apple, and Disney. Data are from Mike Taylor, The obscene profits of commercial scholarly publishers, 2012. Chart by Stuart Shieber, […]
March 28, 2013 at 12:42 pm
[…] known, the profit margins for the Big Four publishers (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley and Informa) are between 32.4 and 42 percent — not one of them has a margin as low as the highest end of the range you cite. Not only […]
April 1, 2013 at 6:28 pm
[…] read here that Springer’s profit in 2010 was £294m on revenue of £866m — 33.9% […]
April 29, 2013 at 5:33 pm
Reblogged this on oliveberry and commented:
A snip-it of Elsevier’s crazy profits…
May 23, 2013 at 9:44 pm
[…] increasing prices to the institutions that provide that labor (universities) in order to generate high profit margins for themselves. Furthermore, despite the fact that much of the funding that pays for these […]
May 25, 2013 at 4:47 am
[…] increasing prices to the institutions that provide that labor (universities) in order to generate high profit margins for […]
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[…] than those of all-OA publishers like PLOS, F1000 Research, eLife or Peerj? Sure, part of it is sheer profiteering, but even when you factor that out their prices are outrageous. It’s because they have to pay […]
July 1, 2013 at 9:01 am
[…] unless you’re a barrier-based legacy publisher, of course. Recall that the 2010/11 profit margins for the Big Four academic publishers came in at 32.4% for Informa, 33.9% for Springer, 36% for Elsevier and 42% for Wiley. And […]
August 16, 2013 at 2:31 am
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September 17, 2013 at 9:31 am
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September 18, 2013 at 11:01 am
[…] sorely underestimating. The large for-profit academic journal publishers are making 35-40%!!!! (as this well researched piece on the Sauropod vertebra picture of the week blog shows but I’ve seen the same numbers in other sources like this) This means greater than 1/3 […]
September 24, 2013 at 11:18 pm
[…] with Apple’s 24 percent profit margin in their record-breaking 2011. This makes 2011 the fifth consecutive year in which Elsevier’s profit margin has increased. Publishers are bleeding libraries dry: […]
October 16, 2013 at 2:17 am
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November 26, 2013 at 4:53 pm
[…] of around £700 million. That’s a profit of about 35% of turnover (click here for similar figures for other […]
December 17, 2013 at 2:06 pm
[…] non payés). De telles pratiques permettent à cette industrie d’afficher des marges record (de l’ordre de 30 à 40%) sur le dos des finances publiques. Je n’ai rien contre les entreprises qui gagnent de […]
December 20, 2013 at 9:33 am
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January 4, 2014 at 9:53 pm
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February 17, 2014 at 11:58 am
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February 25, 2014 at 3:28 pm
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May 20, 2014 at 4:37 pm
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December 26, 2014 at 1:53 pm
[…] Taylor, M. The obscene profits of commercial scholarly publishers. 2012 Jan 13 [cited 2014 Nov 22]. In: Saurapod Vertebra Picture of the Week [Internet blog]. [Place unknown]: Available from: https://svpow.com/2012/01/13/the-obscene-profits-of-commercial-scholarly-publishers/↩ […]
February 21, 2015 at 11:01 am
The commercial publishers have been increasing subscription rates at about 400% the inflation. Even if we ask for reviewer compensation, why shouldn’t they just add these costs to their subscription rates?
February 21, 2015 at 11:52 am
Right. This is one reason why I don’t support paying peer-reviewers.
March 20, 2015 at 3:18 pm
It’s fallacious & misleading to imply these are true profits since it is only based on revenue. Revenue is simply the amount of money earned in a given year. In order to properly calculate a profit, you have to consider expenditures as well. For just Wiley & Sons the true profit percentage fluctuates between ~less than 2%-13% (depending on the year) and averages less than 10%. By anyone’s standards, that isn’t “obscene”. In fact, 10% is the bottom percentage a company should make to be considered healthy and viable (read: survive more than a few years). See: http://ycharts.com/companies/JW.B/profit_margin
Even in the digital age, there is no free ride for publishing. Hosting any amount of content and making it readily available to users costs a great deal of money, energy & staff. Nothing is free, including all the “free” blog & social media sites. Just because you can’t see how the money is being generated doesn’t mean it isn’t happening on your back in one form or another.
Google clears 15-32% profit margin, Apple ranges from 17-27%; are you planning to boycott these greedy corporations and their exorbitant profit generating practices that reward shareholders? It’s not fair that I can’t afford an Apple product to view open access journals and that Google violates my privacy on a daily basis just to search for these resources. Shouldn’t these things be free for educational purposes? You do support free access to information for everyone, right? What about scientists? Why should a scientist make any “exorbitant” money for his/her work no matter how valuable or excellent? We’re talking education and knowledge for the better good, it should be free. Or is the idea starting to sound a little ridiculous?
The shareholders in a company are a part of the profit making sector and also part of the costs – they are not some undeserving leeches stealing money from others. I’m sure just about every professional on this page participates in this practice of shareholding, either because you like to own a part of a company or you are simply investing your money in the hopes that it turns enough of a profit to retire comfortably (read: you’re a leech stealing revenue for your own benefit). Unless you are planning on dumping all of your investments, drop the angry mob banter; it doesn’t help anything & makes you look like a hypocritical idiot for even bringing it up.
Maybe if scientists would educate themselves better in the basics of business economics they would be better poised to have this conversation in a more meaningful and constructive manner to create a better system for themselves. As it stands now, you’re liable to be completely ignored by those who understand these basics and, worse, used to create a truly malignant leviathan through ignorance of the facts. Politicians LOVE emotionally charged issues with little facts.
The old adage “A little information is a dangerous thing.” rings true every time. Open access is nice, but it is unsustainable and it really has nothing to do with greed. If that were the case, I’d be looking at a maintained and thorough Open Access page on this site right now (which I’m not). Reality has a way of creeping back into dreams whether we like it or not. If there truly is a problem with the system, then only through CORRECT facts and thoughtful analysis can a better system be created. You’re scientist, you’re supposed to be good at that.
March 20, 2015 at 3:22 pm
Thanks for that, The Voice of Reason You Will Come to Hate. May we know who you are? Just so we can avoid the impression that you’re a paid shill for the legacy publishers.
Note that these profit margins are taken from the publishers’ own annual reports. If they’re not true profit margins, I can only conclude that the publishers are deliberately misleading potential investors. But it’s hard to believe that they’d do that.
March 27, 2015 at 10:46 am
[…] Against that analysis, PeerJ’s fees don’t look crazy. The truth is that, as well as their 40% profit-margins, legacy publishers’ costs are sky-high because they are dragging around the carcass of […]
March 29, 2015 at 9:11 pm
[…] Academic publishing is dominated by for-profit publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, and others), who rake in the big bucks. […]
April 17, 2015 at 8:01 am
[…] prendre en compte ces réductions budgétaires et, au contraire, augmentent leurs tarifs et leurs profits est assez surprenante et le changement de modèle économique induit par la transition achat […]
May 1, 2015 at 10:49 am
[…] money off the top of research budgets. The Big Four (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Informa) all have profit margins in the range 32–42%. For Elsevier alone, a 38.9% profit on revenue of £2126M (page 17 of their own 2013 annual report) […]
July 13, 2015 at 4:32 am
[…] action. These folks start to shift in their seats when we put up too many posts in a row on open access or rabbits or…okay, mostly just OA and bunnies. If that’s you – or, heck even if […]
July 17, 2015 at 1:11 am
[…] to what happened/is happening to the music industry fair? Scholarly Publishers have some of the highest profit margins of any industry, and authors don’t rely on their “article sales” to survive as musicians rely on their […]
September 17, 2015 at 2:42 pm
[…] but maintain per-article revenue at similar levels, with the potential to double their already obscene profit margins of around 40%. This model of open access thus entails one of the few ways which is set to make […]
October 5, 2015 at 12:17 am
[…] il rimedio dell’accesso aperto, per quanto concerne la via verde, ha bisogno di sostegno legislativo e istituzionale; mentre la via aurea può essere ed è facilmente dirottata dagli editori che spostano l’onere del pagamento dal lettore all’autore, con la prospettiva di mantenere per sé margini di profitto attorno al 40%. […]
October 22, 2015 at 3:11 pm
[…] [2] “The Obscene Profits of Commercial Scholarly Publishers | Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week.” N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. https://svpow.com/2012/01/13/the-obscene-profits-of-commercial-scholarly-publishers/ […]
November 10, 2015 at 10:10 am
[…] 9.24 tot 9.28). De commerciële wetenschappelijke uitgevers, die crisis of niet, boeken al jaren nettowinsten van 30-35% (and rising). Uitgevers zijn op het punt van mindering van prijzen notoir lastig te bewegen zoals bibliotheken […]
November 30, 2015 at 10:04 pm
[…] Digital Era.” PLoS ONE 10, no. 6 (June 10, 2015): e0127502. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502., “The Obscene Profits of Commercial Scholarly Publishers.” svpow.com. Accessed November 30, 2015. […]
December 6, 2015 at 11:52 pm
[…] disseminated (largely) through scientific journals. Scientific journals are a product (and a very profitable one) and because capitalism, publishing companies want to sell more product. This means attracting […]
December 29, 2015 at 2:02 pm
[…] Digital Era.” PLoS ONE 10, no. 6 (June 10, 2015): e0127502. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502., “The Obscene Profits of Commercial Scholarly Publishers.” svpow.com. Accessed November 30, 2015. […]
January 28, 2016 at 6:34 am
[…] available – get the links from the References section below. A few are paywalled – really, Elsevier? $31.50 for a half-century-old paper on chicken pee? – but I’m pooling them, and […]
February 25, 2016 at 8:03 am
[…] emelkednek az árak – 2006 és 2012 között például 145%-kal –, a kiadók 35% körüli profittal operálnak, míg a mások munkáját elbíráló szakemberek ingyen dolgoznak, a szerzők pedig […]
March 23, 2016 at 12:03 am
Thanks for this page, which was one of those prompting me to finally stand up and take a stance against commercial control of peer-review: http://www.benkenward.com/peer-review.html
March 23, 2016 at 8:23 am
That’s very well put, thanks for the link. I may well point editors to it myself when asked to review for a non-open journal. (Although in my case, I am more concerned with propping up paywall-based models than about commercial profits.)
March 23, 2016 at 9:51 am
Thanks for the feedback Mike! Feel feel to link to that page anywhere. Yes, it’s probably true that my own political leanings lead me to emphasise the private profit from public money aspect – but the reason I bother to take a active stance is that there are enough different problems with the status quo that the overall argument is hard to counter irrespective of your political stance. I thought about putting more arguments in but decided to keep it short and sweet.
March 23, 2016 at 10:17 am
I agree, short-and-sweet is the way to go.
March 26, 2016 at 3:35 pm
[…] If you’re a for-profit publisher you’re probably raking in a 30-40% profit margin (Taylor). I doubt you think that’s a “broken” model. But if you’re an employee of a […]
May 1, 2016 at 1:25 pm
[…] PLoS ONE 10, Nr. 6 (2015 birželio 10): e0127502. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502. // “The Obscene Profits of Commercial Scholarly Publishers.” („Nepadorūs komercinių mokslo leidinių leidėjų pelnai“). Žiūrėta 2015 lapkričio 30. […]
May 14, 2016 at 3:20 am
[…] Digital Era.” PLoS ONE 10, no. 6 (June 10, 2015): e0127502. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502., “The Obscene Profits of Commercial Scholarly Publishers.” svpow.com. Accessed November 30, 2015. […]
May 31, 2016 at 3:07 pm
[…] Era.” PLoS ONE 10, no. 6 (10. junij, 2015): e0127502. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502., “The Obscene Profits of Commercial Scholarly Publishers.” svpow.com. Dostopno 30. november […]
June 19, 2016 at 9:53 am
[…] Digital Era.” PLoS ONE 10, no. 6 (June 10, 2015): e0127502. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502., “The Obscene Profits of Commercial Scholarly Publishers.” svpow.com. Accessed November 30, 2015. […]
August 3, 2016 at 9:02 am
[…] by exploitative publishers. The big four publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer and Informa) have a typical annual profit margin of 37%. Articles are donated to the publishers for free by the academics, and reviewed by other academics, […]
September 7, 2016 at 11:05 am
[…] by exploitative publishers. The big four publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer and Informa) have a typical annual profit margin of 37%. Articles are donated to the publishers for free by the academics, and reviewed by other academics, […]
September 8, 2016 at 1:36 pm
[…] Era.” PLoS ONE 10, no. 6 (Junioe 10, 2015): e0127502. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502., “The Obscene Profits of Commercial Scholarly Publishers.” svpow.com. Accesado Noviembre 30, 2015. […]
November 3, 2016 at 1:08 pm
[…] including Elsevier and MacMillan, have profit margins of 30-40%! (Here, see Mike Taylor on The obscene profits of commercial scholarly publishers.) (One particularly outrageous common practice is to charge a single lump sum for access to a large […]
November 28, 2016 at 1:36 pm
[…] money off the top of research budgets. The Big Four (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Informa) all have profit margins in the range 32–42%. For Elsevier alone, a 38.9% profit on revenue of £2126M (page 17 of their own 2013 annual report) […]
November 29, 2016 at 4:00 pm
[…] to know the obscene level of profits these companies make? From Sauropod Vertebrata Picture of the Week, we have a listing of the profits of well known technical scientific publishers. These are from […]
December 20, 2016 at 11:50 am
[…] Techdirt has written numerous stories about efforts to rein in the considerable — and vastly profitable — power that Elsevier wields in the world of academic publishing. These include boycotts of […]
December 20, 2016 at 5:34 pm
[…] de los journals académicos es, indudablemente, muy interesante: las compañías que los publican generan grandes ingresos cobrando grandes cantidades por las suscripciones a universidades y bibliotecas, pero en el lado de […]
December 20, 2016 at 7:46 pm
[…] académicos es, indudablemente, muy interesante: las compañías que los publican generan grandes ingresos cobrando grandes cantidades por las suscripciones a universidades y bibliotecas, pero en el lado de […]
December 20, 2016 at 9:59 pm
[…] académicos es, indudablemente, muy interesante: las compañías que los publican generan grandes ingresos cobrando grandes cantidades por las suscripciones a universidades y bibliotecas, pero en el lado de […]
May 9, 2017 at 8:15 pm
[…] it the publishers’ profit margins? As we’ve discussed before, the Big Four publishers all make profits in the region of 35% of revenue, which is more than […]
May 25, 2017 at 6:05 am
[…] are run by companies — well, most are run by incredibly rapacious corporations that extract insane profits from the collective suckerhood that is academia — and using such an image in a for-profit […]
June 29, 2017 at 10:34 pm
[…] upshot is that publishing houses make huge profits for doing relatively little. […]
August 29, 2017 at 10:28 pm
[…] get paid” thing is good, because it indicates that academics broadly are waking up to how badly they’ve been had by commercial publishers. It’s part of that necessary anger that Scott Aaronson wrote about […]
October 10, 2018 at 2:55 pm
[…] Copak vydávání odborných studií o hudbě může nést nějaké velké peníze? Inu, může být, ceny předplatného světových odborných časopisů nebo knih se pohybují […]
December 18, 2018 at 4:39 pm
Just to add my two penn’rth: There are plenty of other publishers of academic books, for example Zero Publications in Istanbul, with reasonable prices, very accessible and, with the rise of the US$ against the Turkish pound, it is a very attractive idea.
May 14, 2019 at 1:45 pm
[…] to know the obscene level of profits these companies make? From Sauropod Vertebrata Picture of the Week, we have a listing of the profits of well known technical scientific publishers. These are from […]
January 14, 2020 at 3:09 pm
[…] prices have exploded: it is called the Serials crisis. With profit margins between 23% (32% according to others) and 42%, science publishing does better than Apple, Google, Microsoft… or most of the world […]
June 18, 2020 at 8:31 pm
[…] por ejemplo a Elsevier, el mayor editor de material académico, cuyo margen de beneficio del 37 %1 contrasta fuertemente con el aumento de las tarifas universitarias, el crecimiento de la deuda de […]
January 22, 2021 at 12:58 am
[…] [1]. Taking into consideration the enormous profit of above 30% made by most commercial publishers [2], it will give us around US$7 700 000 000 that could have been spent on research instead. […]
April 25, 2021 at 9:03 pm
[…] The Academic Publishing industry earns a fortune, from all corners (See more here, here, and here), by exploiting these copyrights, which were intended to ensure reasonable revenue and control in […]
October 18, 2021 at 8:02 am
[…] by their lower-priced competitor. (Half of those price-cuts would be absorbed just by decreasing the huge profit margins; the rest would have to come from streamlining business processes, in particular things like the […]