25% of journal turnover from corporate subscibers?

[Jan Velterop <jan@biomedcentral.com>]

Anthony,

I'd like to see substantiation of the idea that a quarter of journal
income comes from corporate subscribers. I know you haven't done the
calculation yourself, and you appropriately insert "apparently" in your
message, but it seems an extremely high percentage to me. It may apply to
the entire Reed-Elsevier turnover (Crispin Davis mentioned the percentage
in the House of Commons hearing on March 1st), in which case I would find
it plausible, but just to the scientific journal turnover? Historically,
the corporate subscribers were estimated in the 5-10% range. Would anybody
on this list have access to information to substantiate the figure of 25%,
and willing to share it?

Another point is the idea of "big gains" for the corporates, stemming from
the perception that in an OA model they would not contribute financially.
That would surely be wrong; big gains are the prerogative of traditional
publishers, as we all know. However, isn't the corporate world funding a
lot of research, too, including contract research done at universities?
Aren't they, by virtue of including provisions for OA article charges in
their funding, contributing in a similar way that other funders are?

R&D expenditure figures from the UK Office of Science and Technology:
http://164.36.164.104/setstats/6/t6_3.htm

Unfortunately, the latest percentages are from 2000 (we all know that 3
years is a long time in STM; especially the next 3 years):

Govt: 14%
Funding councils: 7%
HEFCE: 7%
Higher education: 1%
Business enterprise: 49%
Private non-profit: 5%
>From abroad: 16%

Best,

Jan Velterop

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anthony Watkinson [mailto:anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com]
> Sent: 03 March 2004 23:18
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Publishers' view/reply to David Prosser

[SNIP]

> Calculations have been done in the UK which appear to show 
> that the cost to the government (equate government with funding of OA 
> charges which one cannot of course) of a total OA regime (based upon 
> $1500 per article) will be about twice as much as the £89m spent by 
> libraries on STM journals. If someone looks into these figures and finds 
> flaws in the calculation please accept advance apologies. I have not 
> done the calculations myself but it seems plausible as the UK is a net 
> exporter of scientific papers - a curious concept but one which no doubt 
> appeals to government. 
>
> It has also been suggested that the big gains will be for the corporates 
> who apparently account for 25% of journal income through their spending 
> on scholarly materials. Again I am quoting figures I have not 
> investigated.
> 
> Anthony Watkinson