Recent developments in commercial scientific publishing: an economic and strategic analysis

Abstract

Almost 75% of the current academic journals have gone online, even as they continue to publish in print. Furthermore, a rising number of new e-only journals are being started, most of them outside the range of traditional publishers. It is an interesting issue how these developments have influenced the policy of traditional publishers. The paper describes and analyses recent developments in traditional commercial scientific journal publishing, taking into account important aspects such as pricing policy, mergers and acquisitions, licensing variants, and attitudes towards open access. The trends that can be observed give some insight into possible future scenarios and their probability.