ALPSP report indicates publisher health but OA concerns - Research Information

"A report by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) on the state of the publishing industry shows that publishers are generally in good health. However, the association warned that the report should be seen as a benchmark against which to assess the future effects of changes in scholarly publishing, particularly the move towards open access. The report found that publishers of all sizes continue to launch new titles and acquire new titles and that smaller publishers have shown the most growth over the past four years. Revenue streams are also changing. The majority of publishers show a decrease in income from single subscription sales and an increase in income from other revenue streams, such as aggregator sales, consortia sales, pay-per-view and sales of content collections. Another finding is that use of pay per view as a revenue stream has increased; 65 per cent of publishers offered it in 2003 but this had grown to 83 per cent in 2012. Large publishers have done the most to monetise directly their back files and also to provide the greatest flexibility in content purchasing, especially of content packages. In addition, most publishers now offer perpetual access to subscribers. Libraries argue that once they have paid for the journal they should have ‘life-long’ access however publishers argue that there are continuing costs for hosting the online material.      There have also been trends on the author side of the process. Nearly all the publishers surveyed have now moved to automated systems for receipt of manuscripts through to publication. In 2005 39 per cent did not use automated systems but this had dropped to only 5 per cent by 2012. Larger publishers have also moved away from demanding the assignment of copyright from authors in favour of a licence to publish. In 2008 half of publishers had some form of open access but this had risen to two thirds by 2012. Most publishers surveyed now have a hybrid model in place across all titles (i.e. author has option to pay for their article to be open access). However take up of the hybrid model by authors is low, 1 per cent of articles published. There has also been a large increase in publishers offering open access after an embargo period (normally 12 months). In 2005 25 per cent of publishers offered this and this rose to 42 per cent in 2012. Because the demand for text and data mining is so low, it is not yet commonly offered by the majority of publishers. Another trend is that most publishers, regardless of size, are working with Google and Google Scholar. However, fewer publishers are working with the library technology companies. The report by the ALPSP, Scholarly Journals Publishing Practice, is the fourth survey in a series that looks into scholarly publishing practice for journals, and was conducted during the summer of 2012. It follows on from earlier surveys conducted in 2003, 2005 and 2008 ..."