Market Consolidation and the Demise of the Independently Publishing Research Society - The Scholarly Kitchen

"I want to be clear that I’m not referring to larger publishers as dinosaurs to imply that they’re obsolete or stodgy and stuck in their ways. If anything, the largest of publishers have achieved that success for a reason – they’re very good at what they do, and because publishing is a service industry, that means being able to change to meet the needs of their customers. And open access (OA) has been a great example of that willingness to adapt, as the largest publishers have all embraced OA and extended their already successful businesses around it. But if the goal was to shake things up and displace the dominant players, then that has not happened, and the net result to date of Plan S has been a massive consolidation of the market. The biggest publishers are growing bigger, and the smaller, independent publishers are largely abandoning their independence and signing on with the biggest houses. I’ve been in kind of a unique position here as an observer over the last few years – I’ve been on both sides of the negotiating table for Publishing Service Agreements, first as a publisher looking to bring in new journals, and now as a consultant running the Request for Proposal (RFP) process on behalf of journals looking for a publisher. I can tell you that since the announcement of Plan S, at my former employer, we saw an enormous spike in the number of formerly independent journals looking for a larger publishing partner, and that now as a consultant, there remains a continuing stream of independent journals who have realized that they can’t thrive in the new environment on their own. I think there are three forces driving all this consolidation: Uncertainty, Transformative Agreements, and the required Technology and Reporting Burdens...."