Re: 25% of journal turnover from corporate subscibers?

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

Jan

I too was surprised by the figure and only put it into the arena (because
the statement was made in public) because it is certainly of general
interest. No doubt we shall see further explanation soon.

Anthony

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan Velterop" <jan@biomedcentral.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 3:25 AM
Subject: 25% of journal turnover from corporate subscibers?

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