When Consolidation Provides Benefits as well as Market Power - The Scholarly Kitchen

peter.suber's bookmarks 2021-09-14

Summary:

"The past twenty years have brought substantial consolidation to our sector. Each of today’s major scholarly publishers is the product of progressive acquisitions. And, the past decade has seen a drumbeat of acquisitions in the platforms that support scholarship and scholarly communication — from Elsevier’s acquisitions of SSRN, bepress, Mendeley, Pure, and Aries to the announcement this year that Clarivate will acquire ProQuest. Not surprisingly, there has been frequent, at times reflexive, customer opposition to acquisitions in these sectors, motivated by concerns about pricing. Here are a few powerful examples. Despite these objections, we expect there to be further announcements of mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances, and other forms of consolidation in the days and years ahead. Which raises an important question: While consolidation is certainly in the interest of the consolidators, are there times when consolidation also works to the benefit of customers and users?..."

Link:

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/09/14/when-consolidation-provides-benefits/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.publishers oa.monopoly oa.benefits

Date tagged:

09/14/2021, 10:40

Date published:

09/14/2021, 06:40