Wiley to Acquire Blackwell Publishing (Holdings) Ltd.

["Colin Steele" <Colin.Steele@anu.edu.au>]

This is yet more evidence of the increasing domination of,
particularly STM, scholarly publishing by a small number of
international publishers?

In our article, 'The Publishing Imperative: the pervasive
influence of publication metrics' (Learned Publishing, October
2006. Available at: http://eprints.anu.edu.au/archive/00003523/),
Linda Butler, Danny Kingsley and myself quote the EPS July Market
Monitor as follows:

"Publicly-traded STM publishers grew 8.6% in their reported
currencies in 2005; aggregate profit margins held steady at 25%.
Thomson posted the strongest increase in profits with a
year-over-year gain of 20.5%, outperforming its peers and the
market average of 17.7%. Elsevier achieved the strongest organic
growth: 5% and 6% in its Science & Technology and Health Sciences
divisions, respectively. The five largest players (Reed Elsevier,
Thomson, Wolters Kluwer, Springer and Wiley) continued to acquire
scale, and now account for over half (52.3%) of total market
revenues. (EPS, 2006)"

Through a combination of factors, some of which are documented in
the above article, namely the dominance of 'the Big Deal' in many
university libraries, the need for researchers, through research
assessment exercises and university league tables, to publish
increasingly in journals which are covered by Thomson Scientific
Citation Indices, the cost of electronic platforms and linkages,
etc, the trends identified above will undoubtedly continue,
arguably to the budgetary detriment and accessibility of content
of smaller publishers, learned societies and regional publishers
in the Social Sciences and Humanities.

There is clearly a need to continue to debate and adopt more
strategic and holistic approaches to scholarly communication
frameworks, as the October US Association of Research Libraries
seminar (http://www.arl.org/forum06/), 'Improving Access to
Publicly Funded Research Policy Issues and Practical Strategies',
the Stanford University Library November Scholarly Communications
Colloquium
(http://library.stanford.edu/scholarly_com/colloquium/) and the
'Research Communication Costs in Australia, Emerging
Opportunities and Benefits' by Houghton, Steele and Sheehan
(http://eprints.anu.edu.au/archive/00003519/) illustrate.


--------------------------------------------------------------
Colin Steele
Emeritus Fellow
The Australian National University
Canberra  ACT 0200
Australia
Email: colin.steele@anu.edu.au

University Librarian, Australian National University (1980-2002)
and Director Scholarly Information Strategies (2002-2003)


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Sent: Saturday, 18 November 2006 5:27 AM
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Subject: Email News Release: Wiley to Acquire Blackwell Publishing
(Holdings) Ltd.

Email News Release
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Wiley to Acquire Blackwell Publishing (Holdings) Ltd.

Hoboken, N.J., and Oxford, U.K., November 17, 2006 - John Wiley &
Sons, Inc. (NYSE:JWa) (NYSE:JWb) announced today that it has
entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the outstanding
shares of Blackwell Publishing (Holdings) Ltd., one of the
world=FF=FFs foremost academic and professional publishers.  The
purchase price of =A3572 million will be financed with a
combination of debt and cash.  The transaction will be
implemented through a U.K. Scheme of Arrangement.  Wiley has
received irrevocable commitments from the principal shareholders
of Blackwell Publishing to sell their shares to Wiley.  The
companies anticipate that the transaction will close early in
2007.



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