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Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Disclaimer
Contents
List of Tables
1 Preface
The Key Research Questions and the STM Journal Sector
Why Were STM Journals Selected for Analysis?
The Years 2000–2020
Methodological Theories
Conclusion
Notes
2 Introduction to History and Development of Scientific, Technical, and Medical [STM] Journals
Definitions
The First Two STM Journals and the “Butterfly Effect”
STM Journals After Sallo and Oldenburg
Why Did the Number of STM Journals Grow After 1939?
Post-World War II Developments
The Need for Reliable Metrics to Evaluate Scholars and Research
Developments 1977–1999
Conclusion
Notes
3 The State of the Scholarly Journal Publishing Industry in 2000
STM Journals in 2000
Data on Higher Education, Faculty, and STM Degrees in 2000
The Number of Library Holdings, Research and Development Expenditures, and the Number of STM Journals
STM Paid Subscription Prices in 2000
Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement for “Representative” Printed and Digital STM Journals in 2000
Researchers Analyze Journal Costs and Profits
Conclusion
Notes
4 The Impact of Disruption: 2001–2012
The Scientific, Technical, and Medical Sector: Strengths
The STM Sector: Opportunities and Competitive Advantage
The STM Sector: Concerns About the Costs of STM Journals
Preprints and Megajournals
The STM Sector Confronts Piracy and “Shadow Libraries”
Conclusion
Notes
5 The Impact of Legal, Intellectual Property, and Copyright Infringement Issues: 2000–2022
Intellectual Property: Definitions and Legal Origins in the U.S.
U.S. Patents
Trademarks and Servicemarks
Trade Secrets
Copyrights: 17 U.S.C.
Copyright Infringement and Piracy
The Size and Scope of Piracy and Copyright Infringement
IP Copyright Litigation in the U.S.
Sci-Hub
Conclusion
Notes
6 The Responses of the Major STM Journal Publishers: 2013–2020
Basic Business Metrics
The Average Paid Subscription Price for Printed STM Journals
The Average Paid Subscription Price for Digital Online STM Journals
Criticism About Journal Publisher Profits
The Movement Toward Open Access Journals
Plan S and Open Access
The Response of the U.S. Government to the OA Movement
STM Publishing Confronts a Series of Exceptional Events
The STM Publishing Responses to the Problems Confronting the Industry
Conclusion
Notes
7 The Future of STM Journals
Student Enrollments
The Future of Scholarly Research and Publishing
The Rapid Movement Toward Open Access
The Impact of APCs
Predatory Publishing
Gender Disparity in STM Publishing
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STM Publishing
Learned Societies, Academic Libraries, and the Future of STM Publishing
ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence, and the Rise of the Machines
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Recommend Papers

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The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals A Business History of a Dynamic Marketplace, 2000–2020 Albert N. Greco

The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals

Albert N. Greco

The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals A Business History of a Dynamic Marketplace, 2000–2020

Albert N. Greco Fordham University Bronx, NY, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-31963-1 ISBN 978-3-031-31964-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31964-8 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Elaine

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Marcus Ballenger for his continued support of my research and Palgrave Macmillan’s superb production office for their assistance in the publication of this book.

vii

Disclaimer

A large number of scholarly scientific, technical, and medical publishers and journals are mentioned and analyzed in this book along with a number of companies that operate in the journal sector. My wife and I do not own stock in any company. All of our investments are handled by T.I.A.A. where I clearly have no say in buys or sells.

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Contents

1

Preface The Key Research Questions and the STM Journal Sector Why Were STM Journals Selected for Analysis? The Years 2000–2020 Methodological Theories Conclusion

2

Introduction to History and Development of Scientific, Technical, and Medical [STM] Journals Definitions The First Two STM Journals and the “Butterfly Effect” STM Journals After Sallo and Oldenburg Why Did the Number of STM Journals Grow After 1939? Post-World War II Developments The Need for Reliable Metrics to Evaluate Scholars and Research Developments 1977–1999 Conclusion

1 1 3 4 4 8 11 12 13 15 16 17 21 24 24

xi

xii

3

CONTENTS

The State of the Scholarly Journal Publishing Industry in 2000 STM Journals in 2000 Data on Higher Education, Faculty, and STM Degrees in 2000 The Number of Library Holdings, Research and Development Expenditures, and the Number of STM Journals STM Paid Subscription Prices in 2000 Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement for “Representative” Printed and Digital STM Journals in 2000 Researchers Analyze Journal Costs and Profits Conclusion

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The Impact of Disruption: 2001–2012 The Scientific, Technical, and Medical Sector: Strengths The STM Sector: Opportunities and Competitive Advantage The STM Sector: Concerns About the Costs of STM Journals Preprints and Megajournals The STM Sector Confronts Piracy and “Shadow Libraries” Conclusion

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The Impact of Legal, Intellectual Property, and Copyright Infringement Issues: 2000–2022 Intellectual Property: Definitions and Legal Origins in the U.S. U.S. Patents Trademarks and Servicemarks Trade Secrets Copyrights: 17 U.S.C. Copyright Infringement and Piracy The Size and Scope of Piracy and Copyright Infringement IP Copyright Litigation in the U.S. Sci-Hub Conclusion

31 32 34 36 37 39 39 44 47 48 53 55 61 63 64 69 70 70 72 73 73 77 78 81 82 86

CONTENTS

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The Responses of the Major STM Journal Publishers: 2013–2020 Basic Business Metrics The Average Paid Subscription Price for Printed STM Journals The Average Paid Subscription Price for Digital Online STM Journals Criticism About Journal Publisher Profits The Movement Toward Open Access Journals Plan S and Open Access The Response of the U.S. Government to the OA Movement STM Publishing Confronts a Series of Exceptional Events The STM Publishing Responses to the Problems Confronting the Industry Conclusion The Future of STM Journals Student Enrollments The Future of Scholarly Research and Publishing The Rapid Movement Toward Open Access The Impact of APCs Predatory Publishing Gender Disparity in STM Publishing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STM Publishing Learned Societies, Academic Libraries, and the Future of STM Publishing ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence, and the Rise of the Machines Conclusion

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93 94 100 102 103 107 108 109 111 113 118 127 127 128 130 133 135 137 139 140 141 143

Bibliography

153

Index

165

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table Table Table Table

2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5

Table 2.6

Table 2.7 Table 3.1

Table 3.2

Table 3.3 Table 3.4 Table 3.5

U.S Higher Education Institutions, Faculty, and Students: 1940–1990 Number of STM bachelor’s degrees awarded: 1960–1990 Number of STM master’s degrees awarded: 1960–1990 Number of STM doctor’s degrees awarded: 1960–1990 Number of dentistry and medical degrees awarded: 1950–1990 U.S. government’s expenditures for Research and Development (R & D): 1953–1990 ($U.S.; Billions of constant 2022 U.S. dollars) U.S. higher education research expenditures: 1940–1990 ($U.S.; in 000) The number of higher education institutions, faculty, students, STM Degrees, Dentistry Degrees, and Medical Degrees: 2000 The number of higher education library holdings, research and development expenditures, and Journals in the Science Citation Index: 2000 Average Prices of Printed Scientific, Technical, and Medical (STM) Serials: 1998–2000 ($U.S.) Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement For An “Average” STM Printed Journal in 2000 Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement For An “Average” STM Digital Journal in 2000

19 20 21 21 22

22 23

35

37 38 40 42

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 4.5 Table 4.6 Table 4.7 Table 4.8 Table 4.9 Table 6.1 Table 6.2

Table 6.3 Table 6.4 Table 6.5 Table 6.6 Table 6.7 Table 6.8

Table 6.9 Table 6.10

U.S. Higher education institutions, faculty, students, and degrees: 2001–2012 U.S. Higher education libraries: selected years: 2000–2004–2006–2008–2010–2012 ($U.S.) U.S. Research and Development expenditures: 2001–2012 ($U.S.; in billion) Number of STM bachelor’s degrees awarded selected years: 2001–2004–2008–2012 Number of STM master’s degrees awarded selected years: 2001–2004–2008–2012 Number of STM doctor’s degrees awarded selected years: 2001–2004–2008–2012 Average prices of printed scientific, technical, and medical (STM) serials: 2000–2002 ($U.S.) Average prices of printed scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2003–2007 ($U.S.) Average prices of printed scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2008–2012 ($U.S.) U.S. higher education institutions, faculty, students, and degrees: 2013–2020 U.S. higher education libraries total number of libraries, physical and digital books and physical and E-serial subscriptions selected years: 2012 and 2015–2016–2017–2018–2019–2020: collections in thousands for the number of books and serials U.S. research and development expenditures: 2013–2019 ($U.S. in million) U.S. higher education research and development STM expenditures: 2018–2019 ($U.S. in billion) Number of STM bachelor’s degrees awarded selected years: 2013–2015–2017–2019–2020 Number of STM master’s degrees awarded selected years: 2013–2015–2017–2019–2020 Number of STM doctor’s degrees awarded selected years: 2013–2015–2017–2019–2020 Number of first professional degrees: medicine (M.D.) and dentistry (D.D.S. and D.M.D.) selected years: 2000–2005–2008–2009 and 2010–2020 Average prices of printed scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2013–2017 ($U.S.) Average prices of printed scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2018–2022 ($U.S.)

49 50 50 51 52 53 56 57 58 94

95 96 96 97 98 98

99 100 101

LIST OF TABLES

Table 6.11 Table 6.12 Table 6.13 Table 7.1 Table 7.2 Table 7.3

Average prices of digital online scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2010–2014 ($U.S.) Average prices of digital online scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2015–2019 ($U.S.) Average prices of digital online scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2020–2022 ($U.S.) Projected number of U.S. undergraduate and graduate and professional school students: 2021–2030 List of the 20 largest scientific journal publishers and the number of their journals: 2023 Top 20 science journals based on citation indices: 2022

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103 104 105 128 131 132

CHAPTER 1

Preface

Abstract In this business history, scientific, technical, and medical scholarly (STM) journal publishing are analyzed. Other substantive issues explored include: the strategies and structures developed and utilized by various STM journal publishers; the impact of open access (OA) and the development of article processing charges (APCs); technical issues, including data mining; allegations about the creating of an “oligopoly;” the emergence of pre-prints; and issues related to intellectual property (IP). Keywords Medical journals · Open Access (OA) · Science journals · Technical journals · STM · Royal Society · Article processing charges (APCs)

The Key Research Questions and the STM Journal Sector This is a business history, drawing extensively on marketing, management, and media economics histories, theories, and practices, of the scientific, technical, and medical scholarly (STM) journals sector in the communications industry. Broadly defined, the STM journal sector includes 7

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. N. Greco, The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31964-8_1

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primary categories: agriculture and natural resources; computer and information technology; engineering; the health sciences; the life sciences; mathematics; and the physical sciences. Today, the other 2 journal categories include: the humanities and social sciences (HSS; this journal group includes history, philosophy, literature, religion, finance, economics, marketing, etc.); and the legal, tax, and regulatory (LTR; includes, law journals, tax journals, and publications addressing regulatory issues including governmental laws, rulings, and collection of related journals). Some journal publishers have been in business for centuries (e.g., The Royal Society, 1665; Brill, 1683; Wiley, 1807; Springer, 1842). While there are a larger number of journal publishers today, the 5 largest STM journal publishers in terms of revenues are: RELX (also known as Elsevier); Wolters Kluwer; John Wiley, Springer Nature; and Informa PLC/ Taylor & Francis. This book will investigate the following questions regarding the 5 largest STM journal publishers, although there will be some references about other STM journal publishers (e.g., Oxford University Press; the American Chemical Society). What were the diverse strategies and structures created by the largest public STM publishers between 2000 and 2020? Were these strategies effective, especially in response to the gold open access (OA) and Plan S developments? Did these publishers create, as some critics have maintained, an “oligopoly” in the scholarly journal sector? Will open access journals grow in importance and replace traditional paywall journals? Will gold open access article processing charges (APCs; although also known as article publication charges), that vary between $500.00 and +$9000.00, become the norm in STM? If yes, what impact will this have on university and/or college/department research budgets, university presses, and academic societies? For example, university presses and academic learned societies rely on paid subscriptions. Will APC revenues replace lost subscription revenues? Will preprints (e.g., www.arXiv; www.ssrn.com; a aversion of an article before it is submitted for publication to a journal) grow in importance and replace paywall journals? How did these 5 STM journals publishers utilize economic and marketing strategies to address: (1) technological issues: the transformation from a print oriented, to a hybrid (print and digital) format to a digital only oriented delivery system; (2) the explosion of data-intensive research is challenging publishers to create new solutions to link publications to research data and vice versa; and (3) to facilitate data

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mining; and to manage datasets, workflows, 3-D images, and geographic data as a potential unit of publication? Did the STM publishers face any threats to their intellectual property? How did these 5 publishers utilize mergers and acquisitions to become exceptionally large and diversified publishing operations (e.g., journals; preprints; etc.)? N.B. when possible £ revenue totals will be converted to U.S. dollars. The words or phrases journals, scholarly journals, and STM journals will be used interchangeably. The words or phrases colleges, universities, graduate, and professional schools will be used interchangeably.

Why Were STM Journals Selected for Analysis? STM journals were selected for the following reasons. First, STM is the largest scholarly journal category in terms of the number of peer-reviewed journals citation indices, revenues. There has been a sharp growth in the availability of digital STM journals; and open access journals, megajournals, and preprint journals posted some impressive gains in citations in recent years. The broader STM information publishing market (i.e., books; journals; subscription services, etc.) is worth an estimated +$28 billion dollars in 2023. About 40% of global STM revenues come from the U.S., 26.5% from Europe/Middle East, 29% from Asia/Pacific, and 4.5% from the rest of the world.1 Second, STM journals publish articles of interest to academics, researchers, and interested readers in a variety of the social science fields. For example, Fischer Black and Myron Scholes used articles on thermodynamics; and Robert Merton utilized Ito calculus in his contribution to the Black–Scholes Model.2 Scholes and Merton won the Nobel Prize in economics for their contribution to understanding options; Black was deceased and not eligible for this award. Third, academics and researchers in the publishing studies, business history, the library science, and the information processing and technology fields utilize various STM journals that address publishing, business history, library, or technology research published in various STM journals. Fourth, while revenues varied significantly depending on the time period (e.g., 1665 versus 2023), the type of journal, business developments, and economic conditions, etc., for many journals in 2023 paid subscriptions averaged about 70% of total revenues, easily eclipsing revenues from advertising, “other” non-paid subscription tallies (possibly off-print charges for articles; revenues from STM solutions; or licensing

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fees), and APCs (which has posted some impressive gains in the past few years).3

The Years 2000–2020 The years 2000–2022 were selected for a variety of reasons. First, this has been a period of tremendous economic, marketing, data mining of substantive datasets, and technological growth and developments, including the slow and at times painful migration from a print only to a hybrid (print and digital options) publishing format to a completely digital publishing world. Second, the development of various open access initiatives impacted directly the entire journal sector (e.g., the impact of Plan S on commercial and society publishers; universities; libraries; authors; etc.).4 Third, there has been a substantial growth in the number and acceptance of journal articles first appearing as preprints before acceptance and publication in traditional journals (e.g., www.arXix.org). Fourth, publishers, journal editors, and authors during the years 2000–2022 witnessed a period of exceptionally unusual economic (e.g., inflation), medical (e.g., the Covid-19 pandemic), and copyright challenges (e.g., the theft by Sci-Hub of more than 64,500,000 scholarly journal articles and more than 1 million books). It has been estimated that Sci-Hub stole almost every journal article published since January 5, 1665, when the Journal des sçavans began publication in France.5 Fifth, the emergence of journal sharing platforms impacted in a substantive way the entire journal sector (e.g., Academic.edu; and Research Gate.net.).6 Research Gate has +14 million users; funders include Goldman Sachs, Benchmark Capital, the Wellcome Trust, and Bill Gates. Sixth, exceptionally accurate marketing and financial data about STM journals, as well as the major STM publishers, is available for the years 2000–2020 (with some partial data for the years 2021–2022–2023).

Methodological Theories Since this is a business history drawing on the theories and practices of marketing, management, and media economics, a number of the major scholars in these fields were selected. A list of some of the most important scholars and their theories utilized in this book include the following. Alfred D. Chandler was a business historian who studied the histories of a number of major U.S. corporations. Based on his intensive analyses

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and observations, Chandler maintained, in his important work Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise,7 that a successful corporation needed to develop and stress the following key points. First, every firm needs to develop, and continually modify, a coherent strategy to succeed in what has been, and is likely to remain, a challenging business environment in the U.S. Second, once the strategy is created, a corporation needs to craft an effective structure to implement the strategy. Third, an effective structure must be evaluated constantly, because of a variety of business issues and the inevitable economic uncertainty that too often threatens every business, to ascertain that the company has the adequate human and financial resources, as well as the materials, needed to create and maintain consistently a first-class product or service. Fourth, to achieve and maintain a growth strategy, the corporation must consider relevant acquisitions and, at times, the diversification of a product(s) or a service(s) that consumers no longer want or need. Lastly, since a large firm will have a number of disparate operations (e.g., manufacturing; legal affairs; distribution) to ensure that the firm operates at maximum efficiency.8 Chandler’s book has become an important source of ideas that influenced countless researchers and industry executives over the years (See Note 8). Ted Levitt’s “Marketing Myopia” has become a landmark article in the development of marketing and strategy. Levitt’s major points, in his highly cited Harvard Business Review article, drew on some of Chandler’s pivotal ideas, including the following substantive comments. “Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline… In every case, the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management.”9 This “failure of management” was due to the fact that too many companies, in a variety of industries, assumed, incorrectly: that future growth was assured, if not guaranteed, because of an expanding economy in the U.S. (and ultimately in global markets); consumers “loved” their product and, accordingly, there was no real competition for their product; the “learning curve” would trigger inevitably decreases in unit manufacturing expenditures; and, unfortunately, a belief that marketing was irrelevant. “In truth, there is no such thing as a growth industry, I believe. There are only companies organized and operated to create and capitalize on growth opportunities.”10 In essence, the companies that faltered or

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failed were product and not customer oriented; they believed they were indispensable; and they were unable or unwilling to accept the fact that they were in business not to sell a product but to understand and satisfy the wants and needs of current or potential consumers. Lastly, these firms needed to understand the importance of what have become known as the “4 Ps;” that is, product, price, placement, and promotion. “The entire corporation must be viewed as a customer-creating and customer-satisfy organism. Management must think of itself not as producing products but as providing customer-creating value satisfaction.”11 Levitt explained his theories in a rather intriguing way. “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter-inch hole.”12 Robert H. Hayes and William J. Abernathy, also writing in the Harvard Business Review, addressed many of the issues developed by Levitt. They wrote that “during the past several years [N.B.: this article was published in 1980], American business has experienced a marked deterioration of competitive vigor and a growing unease about its overall economic well-being….”13 This decline in “competitive vigor” was due, as far as Hayes and Abernathy were concerned, because of a number of stark managerial errors, including a preference or dependence for: “(1) analytic detachment rather than the insight that comes from handson experience; and (2) short-term cost reduction rather than long-term development of technological competitiveness. It is this new managerial gospel, we feel, that has played a major role in undermining the vigor of American industry.”14 Their answer to this business and managerial malaise echoed many of the ideas of Chandler and Levitt. Hayes and Abernathy insisted that a firm must: be customer oriented rather than product oriented (echoing Levitt’s comments); understand the current and future wants and needs of current or potential customers; and an emphasis on portfolio analysis of products must be tempered by the fact that a product is not the same as a bond (with a clearly defined interest rate) since companies are subject to the whims of consumers as well as intense competition from other firms operating in the sector (harking back to Chandler’s comments). Their final answer was clear. “The key to long-term success—even survival—in business is what is what is has always been: to invest, to innovate, to lead, to create value where none existed before….”15 Michael E. Porter, also writing in the Harvard Business Review, created the intellectual template for strategic planning that has influenced academics and managers for decades. Porter wrote that “in essence, the

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job of the strategist is to understand and cope with competition. Often, however, managers define competition too narrowly, as if it occurred only among today’s direct competitors. Yet competition for profits goes beyond established industry rivals….”16 Porter developed a framework that would enable a manager in any industry to understand and cope with the constantly shifting sands of business competition. This meant an effective manager had to: locate a potentially profitable niche; develop products designed to satisfy the needs of the customers in this market segment (an issue also stressed by Levitt); and create a defensive plan designed to withstand the intense competitive thrusts of other companies eager to gain market share and profits in this niche.17 Porter insisted that to be effective, a manager had to: evaluate existing economies of scale; determine product differentiation; ascertain capital requirements; analyze cost disadvantages independent of size; consider existing distribution channels; and ponder current regulatory agency rules along with local, county, state, and U.S. laws.18 Porter elaborated on what he called the “5 forces” that a manager needed to understand in order to conduct an effective industry analysis. In addition, the manager must understand what current or potential forces shape a firm’s strategy, a position that mirrored somewhat the ideas of Chandler. Porter’s “5 forces” are: (1) understand the threat of new entrants into a sector; (2) understand the bargaining power of suppliers; (3) understand and cope with the threat of substitute products or services; (4) understand the bargaining power of buyers; and (5) understand rivalry among existing competitors.19 While strategic planning and competitive analysis are pivotal in understanding the nature of contemporary business in the U.S. or, for that matter, in any industrialized nation, sometimes unusual events or anomalies occur that challenge and, at times, undermine strategies and structures. In essence, a review of the business history of the U.S. reveals far too many events that disrupted “normal” or “traditional” and well-established businesses. The unexpected impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in the months and years after March 2020 was an example of what Porter referred to in his article. Clayton M. Christensen writing in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business as well in his co-authored Harvard Business Review article by Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Rory McDonald “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” addressed the impact of disruption on businesses.20 In his book, Christensen wrote that “this book is about the failure of companies to

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stay atop their industries when they confront certain types of market and technological change.”21 Christensen created certain rules regarding disruption. “These rules, which I call principles of disruptive innovation, show that when good companies fail, it often has been because their management either ignored these principles or chose to fight them… There is great value in coming to grips with ‘the way the world works,’ and in managing innovative efforts in ways that accommodate such forces.”22 Christensen, Raynor, and McDonald provided a series of definitions and theories that explained some of the misunderstanding by some critics of the key ideas in Christensen’s book. These authors also echoed some of Porter’s ideas; they maintained that “disruption” “was a process whereby a smaller company with fewer resources is able to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses… entrants that prove disruptive begin by successfully targeting those overlooked segments, gaining a foothold by delivering more-suitable functionality—frequently at a lower price. Incumbents, chasing higher profitability in more-demanding segments, tend not to respond vigorously.”23 In summary, the authors maintained that: “disruption is a process. Disrupters often build business models that are very different from those of incumbents… [and] some disruptive innovations succeed, some do not….”24

Conclusion Clearly, Chandler, Levitt, Hayes and Abernathy, Porter, and Christensen (and his coauthors) presented a series of thought-providing observation and theories about modern businesses. Overall, these authors provided an intellectual framework that enabled this author to understand both the past and current developments, and try to understand the future of the eclectic and critically important scientific, technical, and medical journal publishing sector.

Notes 1. Michael Mabe. “The Growth and Number of Journals;” file:///C:/ Users/angre/Downloads/729-729-1-PB.pdf. Also see STM. “STM Global Brief 2021—Economics & Market Size;” https://www.stm-assoc. org/wp-content/uploads/2021_10_19_STM_Global_Brief_2021_Econ omics_and_Market_size-1.pdf. STM is the leading global publishing trade

1

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

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association; it has about 140 members, and this organization released substantive statistical data on the eclectic STM sector. Also see STM. “About STM;” https://www.stm-assoc.org/about-stm/about-the-ind ustry. Goldman Sachs. “Revolutionary Black–Scholes Option Pricing Model Is Published by Fischer Black, Later a Partner at Goldman Sachs;” https:/ /www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/history/moments/1973-black-sch oles.html. Also see Investopia. “Black–Scholes Model: What It Is, How It Works, Options Formula;” https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/ blackscholes.asp. STM. “STM Global Brief 2021—Economics & Market Size;” https:/ /www.stm-assoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021_10_19_STM_Global_ Brief_2021_Economics_and_Market_Size_1.pdf. cOAlition S. “Plan S: Making Full and Immediate Open Access A Reality;” https://www.coalition-s.org. Also see cOAlition S. “What Is cOAlition S;” https://www.coalition-s.org/about. Albert N. Greco. “The Kirtsaeng and Sci-Hub Cases: The Major U.S. Copyright Cases in the Twenty-First Century,” Publishing Research Quarterly 33, 3(September 2017): 238–253. Academia.edu. “Download 40 Million PDFs for Free;” www.academ ic.edu. Research Gate. “Find and Share Research;” https://www.resear chgate.net. Alfred D. Chandler. Structure and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), pages 1– 51. Ibid., pages 324–380. Also see Andrew W. Lo, Stephen R. Foerster, et al. In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio: The Stories, Voices, and Key Insights of the Pioneers Who Shaped the Way We Invest (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), pages 6–10, 54–67. Ted Levitt. “Marketing Myopia,” Harvard Business Review 82, 7/8(July/ August 2004): 138–149; https://eds-p-ebscohost-com.avoserv2.library. fordham.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=8&sid=aeea70ab-28e6-47fcbe89-fdffd6f498da%40redis. Ibid. Ibid. Ted Levitt. Quote; https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/what-customers-wantfrom-your-products. Robert H. Hayes and William J. Abernathy. “Managing Our Way to Economic Decline”; https://hbr.org/2007/07/managing-our-way-toeconomic-decline?autocomplete=truehttps://hbr.org/2007/07/man aging-our-way-to-economic-decline?autocomplete=true. Ibid. Ibid.

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16. Michael E. Porter. “The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy;” https://eds-p-ebscohost-com.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/eds/pdfvie wer/pdfviewer?vid=10&sid=aeea70ab-28e6-47fc-be89-fdffd6f498da%40r edis https://eds-p-ebscohost-com.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/eds/pdf viewer/pdfviewer?vid=10&sid=aeea70ab-28e6-47fc-be89-fdffd6f498da% 40redis. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. Also see Anchit Goyal. “A Critical Analysis of Porter’s 5 Forces Model of Competitive Advantage;” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_ dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=3201604. 20. Clayton M. Christensen. The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business (New York: HarperCollins, 2011); and Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Rory McDonald. “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” https://www.pspi. ed/export/sites/ospi/documents/documentos/innovation-en-el-sectorPublico/What-Is-Disruptive-Innovation.pdf. 21. Clayton M. Christensen. The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), page xi. 22. Ibid., page xv. 23. Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Rory McDonald. “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” https://www.pspi.ed/export/sites/ospi/doc uments/documentos/innovation-en-el-sector-Publico/What-Is-Disrup tive-Innovation.pdf. 24. Ibid.

CHAPTER 2

Introduction to History and Development of Scientific, Technical, and Medical [STM] Journals

Abstract From rather humble origins, the first scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journal the Journal des Scavans was launched in France in January 1665. Within a few months the Royal Society in the U.K. released the first issue of Philosophical Transactions, a journal still publishing today. There was a need for journals; and new journals were launched aided by the widespread use of the printing press. This chapter analyzes: journal growth rates (about 10 journals by 1699 and 100,000 1999); increases in STM students, colleges, faculty, researchers, research institutions, the “publish or perish” movement,” the development of journal citation indices, the need for peer review of articles, and financial support for various STM projects. The original journals were sponsored by societies, but eventually university presses and commercial publishers entered the sector, impacting directly its rapid growth. Keywords Science · technology · and medicine · Journal definitions · Scholarly journals · STM journals · Journal des Scavans · Philosophical Transactions · History of journals · Growth in STM fields · Marketing strategies · U.S. Government support for STM fields · “Butterfly effect”

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. N. Greco, The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31964-8_2

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Definitions Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “journal” as “a periodical dealing especially with matters of current interest.”1 The National Cancer Institute defines a “scientific scholarly journal” as “a publication that contains original articles that have been written by scientists and evaluated for technical and scientific quality and correctness by other experts in the same field.”2 Examples of science journals in chemistry include: the American Chemical Society’s Chemical Reviews ; the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Chemical Society Reviews ; and Springer Nature’s Nature Materials and Nature Reviews Chemistry. The World Bank’s definition of a “technical journal” is somewhat broad including “mathematics, engineering, technology, and space technologies.”3 Some technical journals address the following academic areas: mathematics; computer science; engineering; technology; and military and naval (engineering) science. A few examples of important engineering journals include: the American Society of Civil Engineer’s Journal of Structural Engineering ; Springer Nature’s Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Energy, and Computational Mechanics. Medical journals, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, “are publications that report medical information to physicians and other health professionals.”4 Medical journals include research findings related to, for example: radiology; cancer; and oncology. Examples include: RELX’s Lancet ; the American Cancer Society’s CA—A Cancer Journal for Clinicians ; the American Heart Association’s Circulation; Springer Nature’s Nature Review of Clinical Oncology; and the Massachusetts Medical Society’s New England Journal of Medicine. The terms scientific, technical, and medical journals, STM, and journals will be used interchangeably in this book. While some journals publish articles on very specific topics (and a few are listed above), some STM journals publish articles in broadly defined academic areas. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine is rather eclectic publishing articles on allergies, case studies in social medicine, data sharing, ethical and legal issues, race and medicine, public health, and, on a few occasions, major political issues.5

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The First Two STM Journals and the “Butterfly Effect” For a number of decades, some scientists have studied the “butterfly effect.” The “butterfly effect” is a theory developed accidently by Edward N. Lorentz. Lorentz was running a computer program to stimulate weather patterns. He left his computer running to get a cup of coffee, and, when he returned, he discovered a dramatic anomaly in the results. Upon investigating, he realized that “he had rounded off 1 of his many variables in his work from 0.506127 to 0.506. To his surprise, that tiny alternation drastically transformed the whole pattern his program produced, over 2 months of simulated weather.”6 This observation was striking to Lorentz and, ultimately, to many other scientists. “Small changes can have large consequences. The idea came to be known as the ‘butterfly effect’ after Lorentz suggested that the flap of a butterfly’s wings might ultimately cause a tornado… [in essence Lorentz maintained that] forecasting the future can be nearly impossible.”7 This insight proved to be one of the fundamental concepts of the nascent scientific field known as “chaos theory.”8 On January 5, 1665, a cold day in France, a small “butterfly effect” took place that generated initially very little attention. For on that day, the first STM journal, the Journal des Scavans, was published in Paris, and it was a rather small 12 page scholarly journal that helped trigger seismic developments in journal publishing that have lasted into today. The Journal des Scavans was launched by Denis de Sallo. This was an important event in the initial development of printed STM journals. The Journal des Scavans’ original “mission statement” was rather eclectic. Sallo announced that the journal would list and comment on: newly published books; the obituaries of famous individuals; and important scientific experiments. Sallo wrote that “in general, there is nothing that occurs in Europe worth be known by men of letters that you cannot learn from this Journal.”9 The Journal des Scavans underwent, over the past few centuries, a series of name changes and a shift away from its original emphasis on science, later becoming the Journal des Savans , and today, it is the Journal des Savants , a literary journal in France.10 On March 6, 1665, the second small “butterfly effect” occurred with the publication in England of Philosophical Transactions , and, while Journal des Scavans was first STM journal, Philosophical Transactions of

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the Royal Society would have a substantive impact on all future STM journal publishers, authors, and readers for almost 4 centuries. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society was the idea of Henry Oldenburg who realized, because of his knowledge about science, scientists, and scientific research in Europe, that science needed a first-class publication. Oldenburg’s journal was more focused than Sallo’s, rarely publishing information about books; it was “much more philosophical in nature” than Sallo’s journal11 ; and it was not peer reviewed. Oldenburg hoped, as it turned out incorrectly, that Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society could “break even if he sold 300 copies, and in mid1665 the print run for commercial sale was negotiated at 1,000 copies… Oldenburg never succeeded in gaining his living from Philosophical Transactions — the most it had ever done, he noted in 1667, was to cover the rent on his house….”12 However, the Royal Society realized the importance of the journal since it “was widely valued by natural philosophers and the Royal Society in particular, and, after Oldenburg died, editorial and financial responsibility for the journal was unofficially assumed by his Secretarial successors.”13 Eventually, after a series of financial crisis, the Royal Society assumed total control over the journal. “Under Royal Society control, the journal settled into a slower publication rhythm, and its content became fundamentally linked to what went on in the Society’s scientific meetings… New procedures of collective editorship were put in place, with papers selected by a 21-person committee.”14 In spite of the support of the Royal Society, and the editor’s ability to publish exceptionally important scientific papers, the journal “operated at a loss for most of its existence, and it was only from the mid-twentieth century that income from the journal regularly began to exceed expenditure.”15 Over the centuries, the Royal Society realized that some substantive changes were needed in the management and intellectual scope of its rather small portfolio of journals. The Society introduced a peer review process that strengthened its position as an important STM society publisher. It also launched the Proceedings of the Royal Society, an abstract journal. Philosophical Transactions also underwent a series of major changes. In the late nineteenth century, the Royal Society and the journal, reflecting the dramatic growth in both the physical and natural sciences, divided the journal into 2 journals. Philosophical Transactions A stressed the physical sciences, and Philosophical Transactions B’s orientation became the biological sciences.16 The Royal

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Society augmented its commitment to STM journals by launching a series of new, innovative journals, including: Proceedings was also separated into Proceedings A (with an emphasis on chemistry, mathematics, engineering, and the physical sciences) and Proceedings B (biological sciences); Interface (published cross-disciplinary articles about science); Interface Focus (cross-disciplinary science themed issues); Biology Letters (biological sciences); Notes and Recommendations (the history of science); and Biographical Memories (lists of the Fellows of the Royal Society). The Society’s emphasis on the importance of open access triggered the development of Open Biology (biological sciences).17

STM Journals After Sallo and Oldenburg After the journals developed by Sallo and Oldenburg, new STM journals were launched (and sometimes launched and closed rather quickly) in Europe and eventually in the U.S. The unbelievable developments in science, and the impact of the printing press (Elizabeth Eisenstein was correct about the tremendous importance of the printing press as an agent of change),18 enabled societies and entrepreneurs the opportunity to publish groundbreaking developments in the physical and the biological sciences. For example, Philosophical Transactions, under Oldenburg, faced competition from commercial (e.g., Brill), universities (e.g., Oxford University Press), and new society publishers, a trend that continued continually and consistently in the centuries after the end of the seventeenth century. Some of the important competing journals and publishers included: Medical Essays and Observations (the Royal Society of Edinburgh; 1731); Nature (now Springer Nature; 1869); the Mining Journal (1835); the British Medical Journal (1840); and The Engineer (1856).19 In the U.S., the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) launched its flagship STM journal Science in 1880, which is now a weekly with a robust circulation of about 130,000.20 However, data on the precise number of journals published after Sallo and Oldenburg is, at best, somewhat fragmentary and often based on interesting calculations of annual growth rates. Asghar Ghasemi, Parvin Mirmiran, Khostow Kashfi, and Zagra Bahadoran utilized the research of Derek J. Solla Price, who has studied the history of journals. Price estimated that, in the years after 1665, “science had an exponential growth during 3 centuries (between 1665 and 1961), with the crude size of

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science tending to double every 10–20 years. During the 17th to twentieth centuries, active scientific journals grew by a rate of 3.46% per year….”21 Michael Mabe has studied the history of journals, and he used Price’s research to calculate the annual growth of journals, confirming the accuracy of Price’s initial observations. Mabe wrote that “remarkably, for the last 3 centuries, the growth rate of active peer reviewed scholarly and scientific journals has been almost constant at 3.45% per annum. This means that the number of active journals has been doubling every 20 years.”22 Drawing on the initial estimates, observations, and research of Price and Mabe, Ghasemi, Mirmiran, Kashfi, and Bahadoran ran a series of calculations, and their results were quite revealing. “The number of scholarly journals was about 10 at the end of the seventeenth century, which raised to about 100 at the end of the eighteenth century, to 10,000 at the end of the nineteenth century, and to 100,000 at the end of the twentieth century.”23

Why Did the Number of STM Journals Grow After 1939? Mabe also investigated the period between 1900 and 1940, and he determined that World War I did not impact adversely STM journal developments and publications. Between 1900 and 1940, Mabe wrote that “the number of active journal titles grew at an annual rate of 3.23%, a doubling every 22 years….”24 However, everything changed because of major scientific developments in Europe. First, there was an unbelievably impressive outburst of research in Germany during the years after the end of World War I, and Germany attracted some of the best minds in physics, engineering, mathematics, and related areas from North America, Asia, etc., to study and/or work in German universities and laboratories (e.g., the American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer studied in Germany). Some of the important early atomic research was undertaken in Germany after 1920 (e.g., Werner Heisenberg). Second, impressive scientific research was being conducted in the U.S. and England after the end of World War I, partially because of the influx of important European scientists (e.g., in the U.S. Albert Einstein; Enrico Fermi) fleeing the rise of Hitler in Europe.25

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Third, once World War II began in Europe in 1939, England initiated a series of important scientific research projects, especially in atomic physics, early computer technology, and code breaking (e.g., Alan Turing at Bletchley). The U.S., with vast resources, transformed factories producing consumer products (e.g., washing machines, dresses, hats) into a wartime juggernaut (adopting modern organizational and production theories) producing military uniforms, equipment, etc. Utilizing the latest theories in management and military and navel science (i.e., engineering; mathematics; metallurgy; aeronautics; etc.), the U.S. manufactured or built: “141 aircraft carriers; 8 battleships; 807 cruisers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts; 203 submarines; 88,410 tanks; 2.4 million trucks; 2.6 million machine guns; 41 billion rounds of ammunition; and 170 aircraft, including the B-17 and the B-29….”26 The innovative research in the health sciences (i.e., medicine; dentistry; nursing; pharmacy) produced new practices and procedures to address: an expanding military structure that provided health services for 16,112,566 men and women in uniform; the death of about 407,000 Americans G. I.s; and about 671,278 U.S. military personnel wounded during this conflict. However, it was the creation of the Manhattan Project, under the direction of General Leslie Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer, that undertook top-secret atomic research in physics, optics, engineering, chemistry, mathematics, metallurgy, etc. The Manhattan Project cost, during the war, $2.2 billion (worth an estimated $3,297,744,444.00 in 2023), producing the first atomic bombs that ended the war in the Pacific.27 So, by September 2, 1945, the day Japan signed the instrument of surrender on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo’s harbor, the U.S. was the center of STM research. In the following years, it would continue to spend vast amounts of money on various STM research projects for civilian and military use.

Post-World War II Developments Clearly, STM journals sustained another period of consistent and constant growth between 1945 and 1976, with an annual increase in the number of journals averaging 4.35%, representing a doubling every 16 years.28 This growth was due to a number of disparate events. First, the development of the “Cold War,” and the concern about the global plans of Russia, compelled the U.S. Government to invest in various STM research

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projects (triggering an increase in a wide variety of STM research articles and ultimately in the number and frequency of journal publication schedules), and this emphasis was increased with creation of the “Iron Curtain” in Eastern Europe, and Russia’s development of the atomic bomb.29 Second, innovative commercial scholarly publishing firms launched or purchased STM journals and, in many instances, published a journal(s) for a society. An interesting example was the work of Paul Rosbaud and Ian Robert Maxwell (known as Robert; some critics pointed out that Maxwell “emerged from the mists of Ruthenia” after the war) to create Pergamon Press (now part of RELX also known as Elsevier) to grow into an important journal publisher. While it initially had only 6 journals in 1951, by 1960 it had 59 journals and 418 in 1992; it eventually launched 700 journals. Pergamon Press was joined by other commercial scholarly publishers after the end of World War II, including: Wiley; Blackwell; Taylor & Francis; and Springer.30 Third, another “butterfly effect” development in 1944 played a substantive role in the phenomenal growth of scholarly journals (and indeed scholarly books, trade books, and college textbooks). On June 22, 1944, just a few weeks after the Allies landed in France, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the “Servicemen’s Readjustment Act,”31 often called the “G.I. Bill.” The National Archives’ substantive analysis of this act, and its impact on higher education in the U.S., includes the following. “While World War II was still being fought, the Department of Labor estimated that, after the war, 15 million men and women who had been serving in the armed services would be unemployed. To reduce the possibility of postwar depression brought on by widespread unemployment, the National Resources Planning Board, a White House agency, studied postwar manpower needs as early as 1942 and in June 1943 recommended a series of programs for education and training… The bill unanimously passed both chambers of Congress in the spring of 1944. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law on June 22, 1944, just days after the D-day invasion of Normandy… Within the following 7 years, approximately 8 million veterans received educational benefits… Approximately 2,300,000 attended colleges and universities, 3,500,000 received school training, and 3,400,000 received on-the-job training… Unfortunately, not all veterans were able to take advantage of the benefits of the G.I. Bill. Black vets were often unable to get bank loans for

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mortgages in Black neighborhoods, and they faced prejudice and discrimination that overwhelming excluded them from buying homes in ‘white’ suburban neighborhoods….”32 Fourth, because of the impact of the G.I. Bill, U.S. higher education experienced a period of impressive growth in terms of the number of: non-profit institution of higher education (junior and community colleges; 4 year colleges, graduate, and professional schools); faculty members; students; and degrees. Table 2.1 has the statistics for the years 1940 to 1990. Fifth, because of the impact of STM research during the war, there was an increase in student interest in careers in the various STM fields. This triggered an unprecedented growth in the number of STM: bachelor’s degrees awarded between 1960 and 1990 in: agriculture and natural resources; computer and information technology; engineering; health sciences; life sciences; mathematics; and the physical sciences. Table 2.1 U.S Higher Education Institutions, Faculty, and Students: 1940– 1990 Year

Number of Higher Education Institutions

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

1,708 1,851 2,004 2,525 3,152 3,587

Faculty

110,885 190,353 281,506 551,000 686,000 987,518

Students

1,498,203 2,444,900 3,635,847 8,004,660 11,569,899 13,538,560

Degrees Awarded Bachelor’s

Master’s

Doctor’s

186,500 432,058 392,440 792,317 929,417 1,049,657

26,731 58,183 74,435 208,291 298,081 324,844

3,290 6,420 9,829 29,912 32,615 38,238

Sources: Thomas D. Snyder. U.S. Department of Education. Center for Education Statistics. 120 years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait; https://www.nces.ed.gov/pub s93/93442.pdf. The Statistical Abstract of the United States; various years; https://statabs-pro quest-com.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/ftv2/4c4e000002b244ea23.pdf. https://www2.census.gov/ library/publications/1970/compendia/statab/91ed/1970-02.pdf. https://www2.census.gov/library/ publications/1980/compendia/statab/101ed/1980-03.pdf. https://www2.census.gov/library/public ations/2001/compendia/statab/120ed/tables/sec04.pdf. https://www2.census.gov/library/publicati ons/2010/compendia/statab/129ed/tables/educ.pdf. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%. Numbers are for non-profit higher education institutions. Higher education includes: junior and community colleges; 4-year colleges; graduate; and professional schools. While the U.S. Department of Education (Education) used academic years (e.g., 1939–1940), the last year (e.g. 1940) was used in this and subsequent tables. The number of students were listed by Education for the Fall semester

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Table 2.2 has the details; unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Education did not track degrees in these categories for the years between 1940 and 1950. See Table 2.3 for the master’s degrees in these same 7 categories for the years 1960–1990, and see Table 2.4 for the important doctor’s degrees in the 7 academic categories for the same 7 categories for 1960–1990. Detailed information was available for the years 1950–1990 for dentistry schools and dentistry degrees (D.D.S. and D.M.D.) as well as the interesting increase in the number of medical schools and medical degrees (M.D.) for 1950–1990; Table 2.5 has the details. Sixth, to support STM research, the U.S. Government, through various departments and agencies, provided funding in 8 areas, including: health; space; general science; energy; natural resources; the ubiquitous “other;” non-defense; and defense. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) collected and aggregated important data on the large financial allocations for these categories for the years 1953 (data for the years before 1953 was not released by AAAS) through 1990; AAAS used “constant” 2022 U.S. dollars in the AAAS dataset. Table 2.6 has the details. Seventh, augmenting the dramatic increase in U.S. Government research, the non-profit college sector increased rather sharply the allocations for instructional and departmental research and institution’s research expenditures for the years 1940–1990. Table 2.7 has these allocations. Table 2.2 Number of STM bachelor’s degrees awarded: 1960–1990 Degrees

1960

Agriculture and Natural Resources Computer and Information Technology Engineering Health Sciences Life Sciences Mathematics Physical Sciences

6,241 N/A 37,679 24,455 15,576 11,399 16,007

1970

1980

1990

12,672 2,388 50,046 25,190 37,389 24,801 21,412

22,802 15,121 75,000 63,348 42,216 11,078 23,952

13,070 27,434 82,110 58,816 37,176 14,597 37,170

Source Thomas D. Snyder. U.S. Department of Education. Center for Education Statistics. 120 years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait; https://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%. Numbers are for non-profit higher education institutions. “Health sciences” includes medicine and its branches including: anesthesiology; audiology; cardiology; dentistry; oncology; pharmacy; radiology; surgery; etc. “Life sciences” include: anatomy; biology; cell biology; botany; bacteriology; biochemistry; microbiology, pharmacology; virology; etc.

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Table 2.3 Number of STM master’s degrees awarded: 1960–1990 Degrees

1960

1970

1980

1990

Agriculture and Natural Resources Computer and Information Technology Engineering Health Sciences Life Sciences Mathematics Physical Sciences

1,203 N/A 7,159 1,838 2,151 1,757 3,326

1,793 1,459 15,593 4,488 5,800 5,636 5,935

3,928 3,647 16,263 15,068 6,510 2,860 5,219

3,373 9,643 24,848 20,354 4,861 3,677 4,861

Source Thomas D. Snyder. U.S. Department of Education. Center for Education Statistics. 120 years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait; https://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%. Numbers are for non-profit higher education institutions. “Health sciences” includes medicine and its branches including: anesthesiology; audiology; cardiology; dentistry; oncology; pharmacy; radiology; surgery; etc. “Life sciences” include: anatomy; biology; cell biology; botany; bacteriology; biochemistry; microbiology, pharmacology; virology; etc.

Table 2.4 Number of STM doctor’s degrees awarded: 1960–1990 Degrees

1960

1970

1980

1990

Agriculture and Natural Resources Computer and Information Technology Engineering Health Sciences Life Sciences Mathematics Physical Sciences

440 N/A 786 107 1,205 303 1,838

823 107 3,681 357 3,289 1,236 4,312

991 240 2,507 771 3,636 724 3,089

1,272 623 4,965 1,543 3,844 915 4,168

Source Thomas D. Snyder. U.S. Department of Education. Center for Education Statistics. 120 years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait; https://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%. Numbers are for non-profit higher education institutions. “Health sciences” includes medicine and its branches including: anesthesiology; audiology; cardiology; dentistry; oncology; pharmacy; radiology; surgery; etc. “Life sciences” include: anatomy; biology; cell biology; botany; bacteriology; biochemistry; microbiology, pharmacology; virology; etc.

The Need for Reliable Metrics to Evaluate Scholars and Research For decades, many college faculty members, in most disciplines, were evaluated based on: teaching (perhaps a semester teaching load of 3 or 4 or 5 sections and an annual load of between 6 and 10 sections); service (on university, college, and department committees); and research.

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Table 2.5 Number of dentistry and medical degrees awarded: 1950–1990 Number of Dentistry schools

Degrees D.D.S./D.M.D

Medical schools

Degrees M.D

40 45 48 58 57

2,579 3,247 3,718 5,258 4,093

72 79 86 112 124

5,612 7,032 8,314 14,902 15,115

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

Source Thomas D. Snyder. U.S. Department of Education. Center for Education Statistics. 120 years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait; https://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%. Numbers are for non-profit higher education institutions

Table 2.6 U.S. government’s expenditures for Research and Development (R & D): 1953–1990 ($ U.S.; Billions of constant 2022 U.S. dollars) Category

1953

1960

1970

1980

1990

Health Space General Science Energy Natural Resources Other Non-Defense Defense Total R & D

0.39 0.43 0.54 N/A 0.32 0.85 2.51 13.21 15.72

2.05 2.44 1.78 1.18 0.50 2.30 10.24 43.90 54.14

6.20 20.33 3.96 2.60 1.74 6.38 41.20 46.34 87.55

10.89 12.61 3.50 9.74 2.82 6.59 46.14 43.32 89.46

15.99 10.89 4.47 4.54 2.37 5.79 44.04 79.58 123.62

Source American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). “Historical Trends in Federal R & D;” https://www.aaas.org/programs/r-d-budget-and-policy/historical-trends-federal-rd. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%. Data for 1940 and 1950 not available from AAAS

However, the first 2 items were the norm at the majority of colleges. In the never-ending quest for STM funding (especially for expensive laboratory facilities, equipment, and research assistants), status, and the ability to attract excellent faculty members and students, many college presidents, deans, and department chairs began to emphasize a relatively new concept known as “publish or perish.”33 With the new emphasis on “publish or perish,” especially in the diverse STM fields, questions were often

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Table 2.7 U.S. higher education research expenditures: 1940–1990 ($ U.S.; in 000) Year

Instructional and Departmental Research Expenditures

Institutions’ Research Expenditures

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

280,248 780,994 1,793,320 6,883,844 18,496,717 42,145,987

27,266 225,341 1,022,353 2,144,076 5,099,151 12,505,961

Source Thomas D. Snyder. U.S. Department of Education. Center for Education Statistics. 120 years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait; https://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%. Numbers are for non-profit higher education institutions

asked about the quality, reach, and impact of a specific journal. In essence was the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation Research more important, in terms of status, than the Alzheimer’s Association’s journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia? What was needed was an impartial way, some type of a number or index, to measure impact. This conundrum was addressed effectively by Eugene Garfield who wrote about the development of his famous journal impact factor model. “In the early 1960s, Irving H. Sher and I created the journal impact factor to help select journals for the Science Index Citation (SCI )… We needed a simple method for comparing journals regardless of their size….”34 Garfield’s model was based on a relatively easy formula: (a) the total number of citations in specific journals in a specific year (perhaps Nature Neuroscience in 2000); (b) the number of 2000 cites in relation to the number of articles published in the 2 previous years (e.g., 1998–1999 in Nature Neuroscience; a subset of a); (c) the number of articles published Nature Neuroscience in 1998–1999); and (d) item b above is divided by item c above.35 For example, looking at the journal Nature Neuroscience, the editors of this journal released its 2000 journal impact factor. “We are pleased to announce that the 2000 impact factor for Nature Neuroscience is 12.636. This represents a 42% increase over its 1999 impact factor (8.863)… Although we encourage readers to interpret these numbers with caution… we nevertheless like to think that this healthy increase is a

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reflection of our growing influence and standing within the neuroscience community.”36 Clearly, the development of journal citation indices by Eugene Garfield enabled deans department chairs, and tenure and promotion faculty committees the ability to evaluate a faculty’s member research paper, in essence the value of an academic’s research for tenure, promotion, merit pay, research funding, laboratory graduate assistants, etc., based on the journal’s citation index. As for the question of the status or importance of the STM journals Circulation Research and Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the 2022 journal citation index for Circulation Research was 23.213 versus 21.566 for Alzheimer’s & Dementia.37

Developments 1977–1999 Mabe maintained that, from 1977 to 1999, there was a period of consistent and constant growth, this time 3.26%.38 And the large commercial publishers, the university presses, and the societies posted a period of impressive growth during those years because of the sharp increases in the number of institutions, faculty members, the creation of the journal impact factor, and the widespread acceptance at many universities and research institutes of the “publish or perish” policy, which was, in reality, a “publish in certain high impact journals or perish” policy.

Conclusion Clearly, the large, sophisticated STM journal sector in 1999 bore little resemblance to the early days of journal publishing in 1665 or, indeed, even in 1940. The important journal publishers felt rather confident in 1999. While there was intense competition among the publishers, these publishers had a coherent marketing strategy designed to burnish the reputation and citation index of a journal and the publishing operation. In essence, this meant a journal publisher: selected the best editor, associate, and assistant editors for a specific journal; attracted and published the best authors with the most important articles; and, hopefully, achieved a higher annual citation index. In addition, the STM journal publishers were able to: create subscription prices that enabled them to post annual profits; launch new journals; and attract advertisers eager to notify potential customers (perhaps doctors or dentists) about their latest approved

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drug. The publishers had grasped the basic marketing and economic concepts needed to create and maintain a successful portfolio of STM “must have, need to know” journals in what was an expanding publishing universe. After all this marketing strategy had worked rather effectively since the end of 1945. And the outlook for the entire STM publishing sector for the twenty-first century was for even greater status, prestige, and, hopefully, greater profits for the commercial publishers or larger surpluses for the university presses and societies (societies and university presses in the U.S. are classified §501(c)(3) “charitable organizations” under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code).39 Unfortunately for most STM publishers, the events after 1999 tested the resolve and resources of the entire STM sector.

Notes 1. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary; https://www.merriam-webster. com/dictionary/journal. 2. The National Cancer Institute; https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dic tionaries/cancer-terms/def/peer-reviewed-scientific-journal. 3. The World Bank; https://databank.worldbank.org/metadataglossary/ world-development-indicators/series/IP.JRN.ARTC.SC. 4. The Journal of the American Medical Association; https://jamanetwork. com/journals/jama/fullarticle/202709#:~:text=Medical%20journals% 20are%20publications%20that,some%20journals%20publish%20only%20o nline. 5. New England Journal of Medicine. “About NEJM;” https://www.nej m.org. Also see The Editors (New England Journal of Medicine). “Dying in a Leadership Vacuum;” https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nej me2029812. Also see Gina Kolata. “In A First, New England Journal of Medicine Joins Never-Trumpers;” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/ 07/health/new-england-journal-trump.html. Arthur Gale. “False Positive: A Year of Error, Omission, and Political Correctness in the New England Journal of Medicine;” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art icles/PMC7144712. The Editors (Wall Street Journal). 6. Peter Dizikes. “When the Butterfly Effect Took Flight;” https://www. technologyreview.com/2011/02/22/196987/when-the-butterfly-effecttook-flight. 7. Ibid. Also see Edward N. Lorentz. “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow;” https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/20/2/1520-0469_1 963_020_0130_dnf_2_0_co_2.xml. Lorentz. The Essence of Chaos. Seattle:

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8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

17. 18.

University of Washington Press, 1993. Adilson E. Motter and David K. Campbell. “Chaos at 50;” https://arXiv.org/ftp/arXiv/papers/1306/ 1306.5777.pdf. Christian Oestreichter. “A History of Chaos Theory;” https://www. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202497. Also see Laura Gardini, Celso Grebogi, and Stefano Lenci. “Chaos Theory and Applications: A Retrospective on Lessons Learned and Missed or New Opportunities;” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11071-020-05903-0. Arthur De Vany and W. David Wells. “Bose–Einstein Dynamics and Adaptive Contracting in the Motion Picture Industry,” Economic Journal 106, 439(November 1996): 1493–1514. Ernesto Spinak and Abel L. Packer. “350 Years of Scientific Publication: From the Journal des Scavans and Philosophical Transactions to SciELO;” https://blog.scielo.org/en/2015/03/05/350-years-of-scientific-public ation-from-the journal-des-scavans-and-philosophical-transactions-toscielo. Also see Roger Philip McCutcheon. “The Journal des Scavans and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society;” https://www.jstor. org/stable/4171899#metadata_info_tab_contents. In February 2014, the Journal des Scavans was available at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/ 12148/cb343488023/date.r=journal+des+scavans.langEN. Harcourt Brown. “History and the Learned Journal,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33, 3(1972): 365–378. https://doi.org/10.2307/270 9041. Aileen Fyfe, Julie McDougall-Waters, and Noah Moxham. “350 Years of Scientific Periodicals;” https://royalsocietyoublishing.org/doi/10.1098/ rsnr.2015. Ibid. The Royal Society. “History of Philosophical Transactions: Philosophical Transactions 350 Years of Publishing at the Royal Society (1665–2015);” https://royalsociety.org/journals/publishing-activities. Ibid. Ibid. Also see Aileen Fyfe, Noah Moxham, Julie McDougall-Waters, and Camilla Mork Rostvik. A History of Scientific Journals (London: ULC Press, 2022). Jeremy Norman. “Exploring the History of Information and media Through Timelines;” https://www.historyofinformation.com/ detail.php?entryid=2661. The Royal Society. “History of Philosophical Transactions: Philosophical Transactions 350 Years of Publishing at the Royal Society (1665–2015);” https://royalsociety.org/journals/publishing-activities. The Royal Society. “Journals;” https://royalsociety.org/journals. Elizabeth Eisenstein. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 21–49.

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19. Ben Mudrak. “Scholarly Publishing: A Brief History;” https://www.aje.com/arc/scholarly-publishing-brief-history. Also see: Minh Hoang Nguyen. “The Emergence of Scientific Publishing;” file:///C:/Users/angre/Downloads/ the%20emergence%20of%20scientific%20publishing^20(1).pdf. 20. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). “Orihttps://aaas.org/archives/150-years-advancing-science-historygins;” aaas-1848-1998. Also see AAAS. “Mission and History;” https://aaas. org/mission. 21. Asghar Ghasemi, Parvin Mirmiran, Khostow Kashfi, and Zagra Bahadoran. “Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine: A Brief History of Scientific Journals;” https://brieflands.com/articles/ijem-131812.pdf. Also see Derek J. Solla Price. Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 11–87. Annamaria Conti and Christopher C. Liu. “The (Changing) Knowledge Production Function: Evidence from the MIT Department of Biology for 1970–2000.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper; https://doi.org/10.3386/w20037. 22. Michael Mabe. “The Growth and Number of Journals;” file:///C:/ Users/angre/Downloads/729–729-1-PB.pdf. 23. Asghar Ghasemi, Parvin Mirmiran, Khostow Kashfi, and Zagra Bahadoran. “Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine: A Brief History of Scientific Journals;” https://brieflands.com/articles/ijem-131812.pdf. Also see Giuseppe Scellato, Chiara Franzoni, and Paula Stephan. “Mobile Scientists and International networks.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper; https://doi.org/10.3386/w18613. 24. Michael Mabe. “The Growth and Number of Journals;” file:///C:/ Users/angre/Downloads/729–729-1-PB.pdf. Also see Mike Thelwall and Pardeep Sud. “Scopus 1900–2020: Growth in Articles, Abstracts, Countries, and Journals;” https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00177. 25. Albert N. Greco. The Growth of the Scholarly Publishing Industry in the U.S.: A Business History of a Changing Marketplace 1939– 1946 (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 33–66. Also see Ashish Arora, Sharon Belenzon, Andrea Patacconi, and Jungkyu Suh. “The Changing Structure of American Innovation: Some Cautionary Remarks for Economic Growth;” https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ doi/epdfplus/10.1086/705638. 26. Robert Kagan. “Challenging the U.S. Is a Historic Mistake,” The Wall Street Journal, February 4–5, 2023, pages C1-C2. 27. Albert N. Greco. The Growth of the Scholarly Publishing Industry in the U.S.: A Business History of a Changing Marketplace 1939–1946

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28.

29.

30.

31.

32. 33.

(Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 33–66. Also see Steven W. Usselman. “Research and Development in the United States Since 1900: An Interpretive History;” https://economics.yale.edu/sites/def ault/files/usselman_paper.pdf. Fritz Machlup and Kenneth Leeson. Information through the Printed Word: The Dissemination of Scholarly, Scientific, and Intellectual Knowledge, Vol. 4: Books, Journals, and Bibliographical Services (New York: Praeger 1980), 177–189. Michael Mabe. “The Growth and Number of Journals;” file:///C:/ Users/angre/Downloads/729–729-1-PB.pdf. Also see Aileen Fyfe. “SelfHelp for Learned Journals: Scientific Societies and the Commerce of Publishing in the 1950s,” History of Science 60, 2(2021): 255–279. Waverly W. Ding, Sharon G. Levin, Paula E. Stephan, and Anne E. Winkler. “The Impact of Information Technology on Scientists’ Productivity, Quality, and Collaboration Patterns,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working paper; https://doi.org/10.3386/w15285. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). “Orihttps://aaas.org/archives/150-years-advancing-science-historygins;” aaas-1848-1998. Also see Joshua Gans and Fiona Murray. “Markets for Scientific Attribution.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working paper; https://doi.org/10.3386/w20677. Michael Mabe. “The Growth and Number of Journals;” file:///C:/ Users/angre/Downloads/729–729-1-PB.pdf. Also see Aileen Fyfe. “SelfHelp for Learned Journals: Scientific Societies and the Commerce of Publishing in the 1950s;” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10. 1177/0073275321999901. Mike Thelwall and Pardeep Sud. “Scopus 1900–2020: Growth in Articles, Abstracts, Countries, and Journals;” https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00177. Also see Mike Thelwall and Pardeep Sud. “Scopus 1900–2020: Growth in Articles, Abstracts, Countries, and Journals;” https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00177. Asghar Ghasemi, Parvin Mirmiran, Khostow Kashfi, and Zagra Bahadoran. “Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine: A Brief History of Scientific Journals;” https://brieflands.com/articles/ijem-131812.pdf. Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944. Public Law 346, chapter 268, S.1767. Seventy-Eighth Congress, Second Session. An Act to Provide Federal Government Aid for the Readjustment in Civilian Life of Returning World War II Veterans. June 22, 1944. The National Archives. “Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (1944);” https:/ /www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/servicemens-readjustment-act. Imad A. Moosa. “Chapter 1: Publish or Perish: Origin and Perceived Benefits Versus Unintended Consequences;” https://doi.org/10.4337/ 9781786434937.00007. “Publish or perish” is a phrase that describes the

2

34.

35. 36.

37.

38.

39.

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pressure put on academics and researchers to publish in scholarly journals as a condition for employment (finding a job), promotion, and even maintaining one’s job. Eugene Garfield. “Journal Impact Factor: A Brief Review;” https:/ /www.cmaj.ca/content/161/8/979#:~:text=In%20the%20early%201 960s%20Irving,be%20covered%20in%20the%20SCI. Also see Steven M. Shugan. “Journal Rankings: Save the Outlets for Your Research,” Marketing Science 22, 4(Fall 2003): 437–441. David Van Fleet, Abigail McWilliams, and Donald S. Siegel. “A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Journal Rankings: The Case of Formal Lists,” Journal of Management 26, 5(September–October 2000): 839–862. Francesco Lissoni, Jacques Mairesse, Fabio Montobbio, and Michael Pezzoni. “Scientific Productivity and Academic promotion: A Study on French and Italian Physicists.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper; https://doi.org/ 10.3386/w16341. Web of Science. “Impact Factor;” https://clarivate.com/webofscience group/essays/impact-factor. Editorial (Nature Neuroscience). “Our 2000 Impact Factor;” https:// doi.org/10.1038/90456. Also see Brian Jacob and Lars Lefgren. “The Impact of Research Grant Funding on Scientific Productivity.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper; https://doi.org/10.3386/ w13519. The 2022 journal impact factor for these 2 journals was available on the association’s websites. American Heart Association (AHA). “Where Investigation Becomes Innovation”; https://www.ahajournals.org/metrics. Alzheimer’s Association. “About the Journal [Alzheimer’s & Dementia];” https://alzjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/15525279. Michael Mabe. “The Growth and Number of Journals;” file:///C:/ Users/angre/Downloads/729–729-1-PB.pdf. Also see Pierre Azoulay, Joshua S. Graff, and Bhaven N. Sampat. “The Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge Across Time and Space: Evidence from Professional Transitions for the Superstars of Medicine.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper; https://doi.org/10.3386/w16683. May R. Berenbaun. “On Peer Review—Then, Now, and Soon To Be;” PNAS, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2302593120. U.S. Internal Revenue System. “Exemption Requirements - 501(c)(3) Organizations”; https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-org anizations/exemption-requirements-501c3-organizations. “To be taxexempt under Sect. 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes

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set forth in Sect. 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization… it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates. Organizations described in Sect. 501(c)(3) are commonly referred to as charitable organizations… Organizations described in Sect. 501(c)(3), other than testing for public safety organizations, are eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions in accordance with Code Sect. 170….”.

CHAPTER 3

The State of the Scholarly Journal Publishing Industry in 2000

Abstract By 2000, scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journal publishing was a well-established component of the entire academic and research sector publishing high quality and “must have, need to know information” journals with high citation impact indices for an expanding number of universities, research centers, academics, researchers, and students. STM journals traditionally required paid annual subscriptions; and many libraries complained about the high subscription fees causing a “serials crisis” for hard-pressed libraries. The development of the internet sparked interest in preprints, digital journals, hybrid journals, and gold OA journals. And many publishers “bundled” a cluster of journals, a procedure called the “big deal,” which sparked a backlash. However, overall, the future looked rather promising for STM publishers at the start of the twenty-first century. Keywords Paid subscriptions journals · Hybrid journals · “Big deal” · Article publishing (processing) charges APCs Preprints · Open Access OA · Academic libraries

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. N. Greco, The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31964-8_3

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STM Journals in 2000 In 2000, STM journals published a number of different types of articles, including: research articles; review articles; case conferences and case reports; editorials; and the inevitable letters to the editor. Some of these journals were published weekly (especially medical journals), monthly, or quarterly. A large number of STM journals were available as a printed document with a durable binding that can be either stapled, glued, or sewn for very large journal issues (employing the Smyth sewing binding system; sometimes called case binding). However, many were the new hybrid journals (i.e., a journal available as both a printed and a digital document); hybrid journals often had a slightly higher annual subscription rate. And some journals utilized only a digital format, including the popular OA journals. Traditional journals in 2000 relied on a number of revenue streams, including: paid subscriptions by an individual, a library, or a company; advertising from perhaps a pharmaceutical company announcing a new drug1 ; off-prints of a journal article (e.g., printed copies of an article that are sold to an individual sent to prospective employers; research foundations; or to members of a tenure and promotion committee; or a company for public relations or information purposes); or, fees generated by article processing charges (sometimes called article publishing charges, APCs) in an open access (OA) journal. Hybrid and OA journals generated a significant amount of publicity, and most of it was very positive since they offered librarians and others a way to counter-balance the impact of what many observers viewed as a pernicious “big deal” (i.e., a publisher bundling a cluster of journals into bundle at a “fixed” price). However, the movement toward hybrid or digital only open access journals was a rather slow process since the printed journal had become the standard format since the launch of the first two journals in 1665: the Journal des Scavans in January that year; and Philosophical Transactions in March 1665. In addition, some readers just preferred reading “ink on paper” rather than on a computer screen. Some of the early digital-only journals, and in some instances preprints of articles before they were published, emerged from discussions, primarily in America and Europe, about the availability and the cost of STM journals (especially for researchers and students in developing nations who lacked access to first-rate libraries or internet access). Related concerns centered on: the time it took to get an article published

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and then circulated among academics, primarily in the STM sector, working in universities and STM researchers employed at research centers throughout the world; and the fact that peer reviewing was not paid.2 A series of “butterfly effects” impacted directly the discussions and concerns of researchers as well as the development and acceptance of the internet. First, the popularity of the internet, by the mid-1990s, the somewhat reasonable costs associated with access to the internet as well as the development and marketing “home” computers (with increased memory using floppy disks and speed; an early example was the famous TRS80 from Radio Shack), and the development of internet browsers (e.g., Netscape Navigator) captured the attention of individuals in and outside the academy.3 Second, the launch of Google in 1998 and its innovative search option replaces a myriad of slow and often complex search engines (e.g., Alta Vista; Ask Jeeves; etc.).4 Third, the launch of arXiv, an innovative information sharing preprint platform; created by Paul Ginsparg in 1991 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “Since 1991, scholars have digitally shared their research quickly, before publication, with their peers thanks to arXiv—and, in the process, reinvented science communications. Speed and openness became essential to research progress.”5 Fourth, in the 1990s, discussion about a new concept called “open access” emerged “due to the feeling of injustice amongst researchers of the closed system of [scientific] publishing… The first effort was put forward by the physicist Paul Ginsparg when he created arXiv… Hoping to threaten the power of big publishers in the long term. Steven Harnard suggested an Open Access model of publishing in 1994—the Green Open Access model… Authors submit their articles in a traditional way to publishers, but then deposit the articles in digital archives as soon as they are accepted by publishers.”6 Fifth, the Royal Society, the publisher of the Philosophical Transactions back in 1665, was again at the forefront of significant scholarly journal innovations. “In the 1990s, it was the advent of electronic technologies that offered new ways of charging for content or services. CDROMs providing additional content or supplementary data files seemed promising at first, but, by the 1990s, the Royal Society’s Publishing Board noted that the whole industry is gearing up for online delivery via the internet, planning ‘new services’ that would basically ‘become a revenue stream’.”7 Some of the early digital journals published by leading commercial journal publishers included the following. RELX’s (originally known as

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Elsevier) history illustrates its endeavor in the digital journal sector. “In conjunction with 9 American universities, Elsevier’s The University Licensing Project (TULIP) becomes the first ground-breaking step in making published, copyrighted material available over the Internet.”8 The Library of Congress also addressed the efforts of Springer Link (managed by Springer Nature), which was “launched in 1996 as a groundbreaking online database of science journals, Springer Link has steadily grown to become one of the world’s largest and most trusted providers of online scientific, technical, and medical literature.”9

Data on Higher Education, Faculty, and STM Degrees in 2000 Since STM journals relied on a growing pool of higher education institutions, faculty members, and undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students enrolled in STM courses and programs (or quite often undergraduates required to take 1 or more science course to fulfill a graduate requirement), the data in 2000 about these sectors was very optimistic to the majority of STM authors, editors, and publishers. Table 3.1 lists detailed information about the overall impressive growth the substantive areas of interest and concern to the entire STM sector. First, there was an increase in the number of U.S. higher education institutions (undergraduate and graduate) in 2000, which topped 4,182, an increase of 16.59% over 1990’s 3,587. Second, the total number of faculty members in 1990 was 987,518; the number of faculty members in 2000 increased 50.82%, reaching 1,489,400. Third, there was a corresponding increase in the number of students enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions; in 1990, the number was 13,538,560; by 2000 the total posted an impressive increase of 13.10%, topping the 15,312,000 mark. Fourth, strong growth rates were recorded in 2000 in the total number of bachelor’s degrees (1,237,875; + 17.93%), master’s degrees (463,185; + 42.59%), and doctor’s degrees (118,736; + 210.53%) awarded by U.S. institutions. Fifth, in the 6 STM academic fields, strong growth rates were posted in many of the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctor’s degree categories. However, declines were posted in a number of them.

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Table 3.1 The number of higher education institutions, faculty, students, STM Degrees, Dentistry Degrees, and Medical Degrees: 2000 Category Institutions Faculty Students Degrees Awarded Bachelor’s Masters’s Doctor’s STM Bachelor’s Degrees Agriculture and Natural Resources Biological and Biological Sciences Computer and Information Technologies Engineering Health Sciences Mathematics Physical Sciences STM Master’s Degrees Agriculture and Natural Resources Biological and Biological Sciences Computer and Information Technologies Engineering Health Sciences Mathematics Physical Sciences STM Doctor’s Degrees Agriculture and Natural Resources Biological and Biological Sciences

Total number in 2000

Percent change from 1990

4,182 1,489,400 15,312,000

16.59 50.82 13.10

1,237,875 463,185 118,736

17.93 42.59 210.52

13,908

6.41

63,630 [Life Sciences]

71.13

37,788

37.74

73,323 80,521 11,418 16,847

−10.70 36.90 −21.78 −54.68

4,524

34.12

6,850 [Life Sciences]

86.29

14,990

−39.67

26,648 42,429 3,208 3,205

7.24 108.46 −12.75 −34.07

3,530

177.52

5,463

42.12

(continued)

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Table 3.1 (continued) Category Computer and Information Technologies Engineering Health Sciences Mathematics Physical Sciences

Total number in 2000 779 5,267 35,467 1,075 3,728

Percent change from 1990 25.04 6.08 2,198.57 17.49 −10.56

Source The Statistical Abstract of the United States 2003; https://statabs-proquest-com.avoserv2.lib rary.fordham.edu/ftv2/4c4e000002b244ea23. U.S. Department of Education (Education). National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). “Digest of Education Statistics;” https://nces.ed.gov/pro grams/digest/d12/tables/dt12_310.asp. U.S. National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). National Science Foundation (NSF); https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23330. U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. “Digest of Education Statistics 2000;” https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/2001034.pdf. N.B. NCES changed the life sciences category to biological and biological sciences category. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%

The Number of Library Holdings, Research and Development Expenditures, and the Number of STM Journals U.S. higher education libraries have been concerned for a number of years about the decline in institutional support for their operations, especially with: sharp increases in the costs to acquire and maintain materials and equipment; and salaries and fringe benefits.10 However, in spite of these serious concerns, Table 3.2 revealed that in 2000, the U.S. higher education libraries spent a staggering $5.025 billion on a variety of materials and employee expenses. This meant that these higher education libraries had more than 913.546 paper copies of books, + 1.11 billion microform units, and subscripted to 7.499 million paper and microform serials. This table also listed the U.S. Government’s research and development (R & D) allocations for 8 key categories, including health, general science, and natural resources. Lastly, the total number of journals listed in the Science Citation Index topped 5,686.

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Table 3.2 The number of higher education library holdings, research and development expenditures, and Journals in the Science Citation Index: 2000 Category

Total number in 2000 ($ US)

Library Expenditures Paper Copies of Books Microform Units Current Serial Subscriptions in Paper and Microform Units Research and Development Total U.S. Government Expenditures Health Space General Science Energy Natural Resources Other Nondefense Defense Number of Journals in the Science Citation Index

$5,025,943,128 913,546,999 1,111,496,736 7,499,870

$267,900,000,000 $25,000,000,000 $8,530,000,000 $7,390,000,000 $1,990,000,000 $2,660,000,000 $6,240,000,000 $51,810,000,000 $64,640,000,000 5,686

Source The Statistical Abstract of the United States 2003; https://statabs-proquest-com.avoserv2.lib rary.fordham.edu/ftv2/4c4e000002b244ea23. U.S. Department of Education (Education). National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). “Academic Libraries: 2000;” https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/ 2004317.pdf. U.S. National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). National Science Foundation (NSF); https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23330. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). “Historical Trends in federal R & D;” https://www.aaas.org/program,s/r-dbu dget-and-policy/historical-trends-federal-rd. Peder Olesen and Markus von Ins. “The Rate of Growth in Scientific Publication and the decline in Coverage by Science Citation Index;” Scientometrics; https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0202-x. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%

STM Paid Subscription Prices in 2000 The “average” price for the 15 STM journal categories in 2000 varied significantly with the journal category as well as a myriad of other economic and business conditions. Clearly, “average prices” lack the precision of actual title costs. However, they do provide a sense of the price elasticity or price inelasticity of demand for these STM journals. Price elasticity and price inelasticity are terms used in economics; and it is generally defined as follows. “If the quantity demanded (https://www.investope dia.com/terms/q/quantitydemanded.asp) of a product changes greatly

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in response to changes in its price, it is elastic. That is, the demand point for the product is stretched far from its prior point. If the quantity purchased shows a small change after a change in its price, it is inelastic. The quantity didn’t stretch much from its prior point.”11 Table 3.3 listed the “average” prices for 1998, 1999, and 2000 as well as percentage changes between 1998 and 2000, for the 15 STM journal categories. In these 3 years, the most expensive STM journals were: physics ($1,263 in 1998; and $1,508; this category had 95 titles in 1998; 93 in 1999; and 94 in 2000 in 1998; $1,508 in 2000); chemistry ($1,218 in 1998; $1,442 in 2000; 82 journals in 1998; 85 in 1999; and 84 in 2000); and biology ($851 in 1998; $1,054 in 2000; 75 in 1998; 77 in 1999; 76 in 2000). Analyzing the data for 1998–2000, indicated clearly that STM journals were “must have, need to know” serials that exhibited price inelasticity of demand.

Table 3.3 Average Prices of Printed Scientific, Technical, and Medical (STM) Serials: 1998–2000 ($ U.S.) Category

1998

1999

2000

Percent change

Agriculture Astronomy Biology Botany Chemistry Engineering Food Science General Science Geology Health Science Mathematics & Computer Science Military & Naval Science Physics Technology Zoology

148 677 851 275 1,218 576 N/A 320 439 279 656 41 1,263 338 739

158 776 945 289 1,306 624 N/A 351 476 309 718 44 1,389 373 858

172 862 1,054 327 1,442 693 N/A 354 553 343 788 46 1,508 407 942

16.22 27.33 23.85 18.91 18.39 20.31 N/A 10.63 25.97 22.94 20.12 12.20 19.40 20.41 27.47

Source Source: American Library Association. The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS); https://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/spi. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%. Data for food science was not available for 1998–2000. “Health science” includes medical, dental, nursing, and pharmacy scholarly journals

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Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement for “Representative” Printed and Digital STM Journals in 2000 A representative profit and loss (P&L) statement for an STM journal is presented. Clearly, actual P&Ls are considered the intellectual property (i.e., a trade secret) of a publisher. However, based on a review of various articles that presented journal P&Ls, Table 3.4 was created for a representative printed journal in 2000. First, a series of basic assumptions were created concerning: the number of pages (black and white; 4-colors; photographs; illustrations; and statistical tables; the basic information (title pages; copyright front material; table of contents); the cover stock and the fine paper used for the pages; advertising, subscription rates; and “other” income. Second, traditional accounting categories were created (e.g., editor’s office; production expenditures; total revenues; corporate overhead; total revenues; total costs); and determining a net profit or a net loss. Clearly, costs varied depending significantly on a variety of factors: whether the journal was published by a society, a university press, or a commercial scholarly journal publisher; if the journal was printed and bound in the U.S. or abroad; if the printer purchased the paper and the cover stock directly from a paper manufacturer or from a distributor; if the editor’s office and staff were provided by a university or a society; differences in domestic and foreign subscription revenues (and currency conversion issues); the amount and level of advertising; and domestic and foreign distribution and warehouse costs. A second P&L (Table 3.5) was created for an “average” digital journal in 2000. As in Table 3.4, a series of assumptions were created to ascertain the costs to produce a journal as a digital journal.

Researchers Analyze Journal Costs and Profits A number of research articles were consulted to see how different individuals approached the issue of P&L estimates, including: Jeffrey MacKie-Mason12 ; and Nagib Callaos13 ; and Donald W. King and Frances M. Alvarado.14 However, while these researcher’s analyses were helpful, a group of other researchers provided, perhaps, more useful evaluations of journal costs.

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Table 3.4 Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement For An “Average” STM Printed Journal in 2000

Assumptions A quarterly 128 page black and white and color text; print run 1,000 copies; 4-color photographs, illustrations, and statistical tables; title page, copyright front material, table of contents; covers heavy paperboard; pages fine heavy paper. Advertising. Domestic and global subscription rates. Other Income Accounting Category

Publisher’s Costs

Editor’ Office Editor’s Professional Fee Associate and Assistant’s Professional Fees Annual Editorial Board Meeting Stipends/Per-Diem’s to Attend Scholarly Conferences Receiving and Reviewing Submission Searching and Assigning Peer Reviewers Communicating With Peer Reviewers Communicating With Authors Handling of Revise and Resubmit Decisions Production: Plant: Editorial, Art, Design, Lay-out, Page Make-Up Printing, Paper, and Binding: Lithographic Print Run, Specified Number of Copies Warehousing and Distribution: Mail Distribution for Paid Subscribers Free Copies: For editorial and publisher’s offices; for authors Copies for Paid Subscribers: Handling Returned Copies: Incorrect Addresses, etc Promotion Costs Revenues Paid Subscriptions: Domestic Libraries Paid Subscriptions: Domestic Individuals Paid Subscriptions: Domestic Students Paid Subscriptions: Foreign Libraries Paid Subscriptions: Foreign Individuals Paid Subscriptions: Foreign Students Sale of Offprints Advertising 1/4, 1/2/ ¾ full page Inside Cover

(continued)

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THE STATE OF THE SCHOLARLY JOURNAL PUBLISHING …

Table 3.4 (continued)

41

Back Cover 20% Discounts for Consecutive Ad inserts Other (Grants; Permission Fees; etc.) Misc Corporate Overhead Employees Pay and Fringe Benefits: Taxes: Marketing: Corporate Charges: Legal Office Expenses (Rent; Utilities, etc.) Technology Upgrades and Maintenance Insurance Membership Fees: Association of American Publishers Society for Scholarly Publishing, etc Write-offs: Inventory Equipment Misc Production Journal Revenues Total Revenues Total Costs Editorial Fees Editorial Expenses Promotion Distribution Postage Offprint Production Costs Annual Editorial Board Meeting Misc Total Costs Total Revenues Minus Total Costs Minus Corporate Overhead Equals Net Profit (Net Loss) Sources Albert N. Greco, Robert M. Wharton, Hooman Estelami, and Robert F. Jones. “The State of Scholarly Journal Publishing: 1981–2000,” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 37, 3(April 2006): 207–208. The Welcome Trust. “Costs and Business Models in Scientific Research Publishing;” https://welcome.org/sites/ default/files/wtd003184_0.pdf. Alexander Grossmann and Bjorn Brembs. “Current Market Rates for Scholarly Publishing Services;” https://f1000research.com/articles/10-20. Marjolein Bot, John Burgemeester, and Hans Roes. “The Cost of Publishing an Electronic Journal;” htt5ps://www.dlib.org/dlib/November98/11roes. html

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Table 3.5 Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement For An “Average” STM Digital Journal in 2000

Assumptions A quarterly digital journal (no lithographic printed copies); 128 page black and white and color text; number of digital copies + 1,000; 4-color photographs, illustrations, and statistical tables; title page, copyright front material, table of contents. Plant done off-shore. Advertising. Domestic and global subscription rates. Other Income Accounting Category

Publisher’s Costs

Online Submission System to Editor’s Office Receiving and Reviewing Submission Searching and Assigning Peer Reviewers Communicating With Peer Reviewers Communicating With Authors Handling of Revise and Resubmit Decisions Computer Plagiarism Review Cross Referencing Review Assigning a DOI for the Article Content Preparation: Production Manuscript Tracking Computer System Manuscript Production Check-In Technical Review of the Manuscript Copyediting Typesetting Formatting of Text, Tables, Figures, etc Almetric XML and Metadata Preparation Processing Author Corrections Content Dissemination and Archiving Web Open Access Platform Long-Term Digital Preservation Distribution to Indexing Services Total Revenues Minus Total Costs Minus Corporate Overhead Equals Net Profit (Net Loss) Sources The Welcome Trust. “Costs and Business Models in Scientific Research Publishing;” https://welcome.org/sites/default/ files/wtd003184_0.pdf. Alexander Grossmann and Bjorn Brembs. “Current Market Rates for Scholarly Publishing Services;” https:/ /f1000research.com/articles/10-20. Marjolein Bot, John Burgemeester, and Hans Roes. “The Cost of Publishing an Electronic Journal;” htt5ps://www.dlib.org/dlib/November98/11roes.html

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Albert N. Greco, Robert M. Wharton, Hooman Estelami, and Robert F. Jones addressed specifically print journal costs.15 While they concentrated specifically on a humanities journal, their basic assumptions for print journals were interesting. They ran a series of models looking at subscription prices for domestic and foreign subscribers (e.g., libraries; individuals; students). Then they evaluated various advertising rates (e.g., full page; ½ page; ¼ page; inside and back covers; and an estimated 20% discount for consecutive advertising placements); incomes; cost of sales; gross profit; overhead allocations; and net profit (or net loss). They estimated that this printed journal would generate a profit + $32,000.00, and a 21.38% profit margin, for this quarterly journal’s annual revenues in 2000.16 Mary Waltham undertook an extensive analysis of 9 learned society’s printed open access journals.17 Waltham made a series of important observations, including: cost estimates varied greatly depending on if the journal was published by a society or a commercial publisher; the number of pages and the length of articles; as well as the circulation of various life science, physical science, and technology journals. Waltham wrote that “net surplus/loss generated by each of these journals [as listed in Sect. 3.4 of her study], varied from a surplus of 62% (£268,000) to a loss of £161,000…”18 The Waltham analysis provided exceptionally useful data about revenues, notably with open access journals, in understanding how journals generated enough profits to support activities related to posting and archiving articles. Theodore C. Bergstrom looked at printed journals in the social science sector, specifically economics journals.19 Bergstrom analyzed annual subscription and circulation data for: non-profit and commercial scholarly journals; the number of pages; and per page estimates (based on subscription rates). Bergstrom remarked that there are no entry barriers for a publisher to enter a journal sector; and a list of expensive journals was included in 1 of his statistical tables. His conclusions were rather clear: economists should support new electronic journals; and too many commercial journal publishers “charged [subscription] prices far above their average costs…draining huge amounts of money from university budgets…”20 In essence, high prices triggered what become known as the “serials crisis”; that is, the high costs of journal subscriptions created a financial crisis in the academic library market making it difficult for many libraries to afford the journals needed by faculty members and students.

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Conclusion By 2000, many STM publishers had crafted effective production and marketing strategies. They published “must have, need to know” articles and information for faculty members, students, researchers, and scientific, technical, and medical personnel. They produced journals with high impact factors; and faculty members needed to get published in these journals in order to tenure, promotion, merit pay, and research grants and facilities. And because of the basic laws of supply and demand, societies, university presses, and the commercial publishers realized that they could increase annual domestic and foreign subscription prices (along with advertising rates) for their journal(s). Overall, the outlook for continued success in the twenty-first century looked very promising. However, the STM journal sector has a long history of being disrupted unexpectedly because of “butterfly effects.” Editors and publishers were able to harness adroitly the basic “4Ps” of marketing: product; price; placement; and distribution; as well as the pivotal “5th P,” purchasing. Yet far too many editors and publishers were “product” (i.e., journal) and not “market” oriented, a marketing problem was addressed by Levitt.21 And, ironically, the vast majority of STM journals (the product) was superb. Another failure that would haunt the STM sector in the years after 2000 was the fact that they were not able to address many of the issues analyzed by Hayes and Abernathy22 (managing for the long haul), Porter (the inevitable forces that every effective manager needs to address constantly),23 or Christensen’s jeremiads about disruptive forces that undermined successful corporations.24 In addition, they really did not understand completely the depth of unhappiness among academics, students, and librarians in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the rest of the world. There was a growing and vocal uneasiness and concern about the state of journal publishing the free efforts of individuals to read and evaluate articles in the peerreview process, and the increasing subscription journal costs. These concerns triggered increased efforts to craft mandatory open access policies. Clearly, all of these serious concerns evident in 2000 would emerge as yet another “butterfly effect” in the years after 2000; and many of the unhappiness “threatened” or “pressured” or “disrupted” the entire STM journal sector and the fundamental business model of STM publishing.

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Notes 1. Lise M. Stevens. “Medical Journals,” https://jamanetwork.com/jou rnals/jama/fullarticle/202709#:~:text=Medical%20journals%20are% 20publications%20that,some%20journals%20publish%20only%20online. Also see Andrew Oldyzko. “The Rapid Evolution of Scholarly Communication,” Learned Publishing 15, 1 (January 2002): 7–19. 2. Owen R. Phillips and Lori J. Phillips. “The Market for Academic Journals,” Applied Economics 34, 1(1 January 2002): 39–48. 3. Science + Media Museum. “A Short History of the Internet;” https:// www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/short-historyinternet. 4. Google. “From the Garage to the Googleplex;” https://about.google/ intl/en_us/our-story. 5. arXiv. “Celebrating arXiv’s 30th Anniversary;” https://blog.arxiv.org/ 2021/08/13/celebrating-arxivs-30th-anniversary. Also see Paul Ginsparg. “Lessons From arXiv’s 30 Years of Information Sharing;” https://www. nature.com/articles/s42254-021-00360-z. 6. Marco Faria. “Producing and Communicating Scientific Knowledge: Current Challenges in the Academy;” https://www.iscap.pt/cei/e-rei/ n10/artigos/Marco%20Faria_Producing%20and%20Communicating%20S cientific%20Knowledge_%20Current%20Challenges%20in%20the%20Acad emia.pdf. Also see Stephen Harter and Taemin Kim Park. “Impact of Prior Electronic Publication on Manuscript Consideration Policies of Scholarly Journals,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 51, 10 (October 2000): 940–948. 7. Aileen Fyfe. “From Philanthropy to Business: The Economics of Royal Society Journal Publishing in the Twentieth Century;” https://royals ocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsnr.2022.0021. Also see John Houghton. “Crisis and Transition: The Economics of Scholarly Communication,” Learned Publishing 14, 3 (July 2001): 167–76. 8. Elsevier (RELX). “About History https://elsevier.com/abouthistory#:~: text=1991,ScienceDirect%2C%20launched%20six%20years%20later. 9. U.S. Library of Congress. “SpringerLink;” https://loc.gov/flicc/svcdir/ so.html#:~:text=Launched%20in%201996%20as%20a,scientific%2C%20t echnical%20and%20medical%20literature. 10. Sharon Gray Weiner. “The History of Academic Libraries in the United States: A Review of the Literature;” https://digitalcommons.uni.edu/lib philprac/58. Also see Andrew Pettegree and Arthur Der Weduwen. The Library: A Fragile History (New York: Basic Books, 2021), 321–402. Claire Creaser and Valerle Spezi. “Improving Perceptions of Value to Teaching and Research Staff: The Next Challenge for Academic Libraries,” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 46, 3(2014): 191–206.

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11. Investopia. “Price Elasticity of Demand Meaning, Types, and Factors That Impact It;” https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/priceelasticity.asp. 12. Jeffrey MacKie-Mason. “Publication Business Models and Revenue;” https://www.ncbi.nim.gov/books/NBK215726. 13. Nagib Callaos. “Costs, Prices, and Revenues in Journal Publishing;” file:///C:/Users/angre/Downloads/Costs_Prices_and_Revenues_in_ Journals_Pu.pdf. 14. Donald W. King and Frances M. Alvarado-Albertorio. “Pricing and Other Means of Charging for Scholarly Journals: A Literature Review and Commentary;” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1087/ 095315108X356680. 15. Albert N. Greco, Robert M. Wharton, Hooman Este4lami, and Robert F. Jones. “The State of Scholarly Journal Publishing: 1981–2000;” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 37 , 3(April 2006): 155–214. 16. Ibid. 17. Mary Waltham. “JISC: Learned Society Open Access Business Models;’ https://www.marywaltham.com/JISCRecport.pdf. 18. Ibid. Also see Milan Frederik Klus and Alexander Dilger. “Success Factors of Academic Journals in the Digital Age:” https://link.springer.com/art icle/10.1007/s40685-020-00131-z. 19. Theodore C. Bergstrom, “Free Labor for Costly Journals;” Journal of Economic Perspectives 15, 3(Summer 2001): 183–198. 20. Ibid. 21. Ted Levitt. “Marketing Myopia,” Harvard Business Review 82, 7/8(July/ August 2004):138–149; https://eds-p-ebscohost-com.avoserv2.library. fordham.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=8&sid=aeea70ab-28e6-47fcbe89-fdffd6f498da%40redis. 22. Robert H. Hayes and William J. Abernathy. “Managing Our Way to Economic Decline;” https://hbr.org/2007/07/managing-our-way-toeconomic-decline?autocomplete=true. 23. Michael E. Porter. “The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy;” https://eds-p-ebscohost-com.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/eds/pdfvie wer/pdfviewer?vid=10&sid=aeea70ab-28e6-47fc-be89-fdffd6f498da%40r edis https://eds-p-ebscohost-com.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/eds/pdf viewer/pdfviewer?vid=10&sid=aeea70ab-28e6-47fc-be89-fdffd6f498da% 40redis. 24. Clayton M. Christensen. The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), xi.

CHAPTER 4

The Impact of Disruption: 2001–2012

Abstract Many STM commercial publishers, societies, and university presses possessed certain competitive marketing advantages because: they published impressive journals with high citation indices; and their size, global reach, scale, and revenue streams provided them with a sense of confidence about their pivotal role in the transmission of knowledge. Because of paid journal subscription revenues, many publishers had the financial resources to purchase smaller journals, increase the number of journals in their portfolio, and, for some firms, the ability to launch megajournals. Yet most publishers faced the specter of disruption in the marketplace, specifically competition from preprint platforms, intense criticism about the “serials crisis” and the “big deal,” and problems with piracy and the development of “shadow libraries.” Many journal publishers became very concerned between 2001 and 2012 about these criticisms and the growing calls to create mandatory OA policies and regulations. Keywords Disruption · STM degrees · Megajournals · Academic libraries · Library budgets · Marketing strategies · Competitive advantage · Desktop computers · Laptop computers · STM publisher criticism · STM journal subscription costs

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. N. Greco, The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31964-8_4

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The Scientific, Technical, and Medical Sector: Strengths An analysis of key metrics for 2001–2012 revealed to the scientific, technical, and medical (STM) publishing community that this sector had a number of substantive strengths. First, the number of higher education institutions increased from 4,182 in 2001 to 4,706 in 2012 (+12.53%). Second, there was a dramatic +36.87% growth in the number of faculty members (2001: 1,113,183; 2012: 1,523,615) as well as a +29.61% increase in total students enrollment (2001: 15,927,987; 2012: 20,644,478). Third, sharp growth rates were recorded for the number of degrees awarded during those years for bachelor’s degrees (+42.75%; 2001: 1,244,171; 2012: 1,776,000); master’s degrees (+55.86%; 2001: 473,502; 2012: 738,000); and doctor’s degrees (+42.41%; 2001: 119,585; 2012: 170; 300). Table 4.1 has the details. Regarding higher education libraries, while the number of libraries rose modestly (+7.54%) between 2000 and 2012, total library expenditures (which included salaries, technology, books serials, etc.) posted a + 30.44% increase. Total current serial subscriptions (for paper and “microfilm”) for 2000 to 2010 grew +233.89%. Total serial expenditures for 2000–2012 generated a +67.33% increase (2000: $1,149,802,832; 2012: $1,923,935,307). While that growth rate was impressive, total electronic serial expenditures surged +604.79%, increasing from $203,845,116 in 2000 to $1,436,670,505 in 2012. Unfortunately, the United States Department of Education (Education), National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) did not release data for certain categories for 2002 and 2012. Table 4.2 has the data. The U.S. economy grew during the years 2001–2012; the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is defined by the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce), Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) as “the value of the goods and services produced in the United States… The percentage that GDP grew (or shrank) from one period to another is an important way for Americans to gauge how their economy is doing. The United States’ GDP is also watched around the world as an economic barometer. GDP is the signature piece of BEA’s National Income and Product Accounts, which measure the value and makeup of the nation’s output, the types of income generated, and how that income is used. GDP is the signature piece of BEA’s National Income and Product Accounts,

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Table 4.1 U.S. Higher education institutions, faculty, students, and degrees: 2001–2012 Year

Number of higher education Institutions

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

4,182 4,197 4,168 4,236 4,216 4,276 4,314 4,352 4,409 4,495 4,559 4,706

Faculty

1,113,183 N/A 1,173,593 N/A 1,290,426 N/A 1,371,587 N/A 1,439,074 1,542,321 1,524,469 1,523,615

Students

15,927,987 16,611,711 16,911,481 17,272,044 17,487,475 17,754,230 18,258,138 19,081,686 20,313,594 21,019,438 21,010,590 20,644,478

Degrees awarded Bachelor’s

Master’s

Doctor’s

1,244,171 1,219,000 1,348,811 1,399,542 1,439,264 1,485,242 1,524,092 1,563,069 1,601,368 1,650,014 1,715,913 1,776,000

473,502 487,313 518,699 564,272 580,151 599,731 610,597 630,666 662,079 693,025 730,635 738,000

119,585 119,663 121,579 126,087 134,387 138,056 144,690 149,378 154,425 158,558 163,765 170,300

Source U.S. Department of Education (Education). National Center for Education Statistics (NCES); https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_315.10.asp; https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/ 2012289rev.pdf; https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_318.20.asp; https://nces. ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_317.10.asp; Institute of Education Sciences. “Projections of Education Statistics to 2028;” https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED605358.pdf. Statistical Abstract of the United States 2023; https://statabs-proquest-com.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/ftv2/4c4e00000 2b244ea23.pdf. N.B.: All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%. Faculty includes full-time and part-time. Data not available for all years from NCES

which measure the value and makeup of the nation’s output, the types of income generated, and how that income is used.”1 Between 2001 and 2012, the U.S. GDP increased +53.60%. The total allocations for research and development (R & D) for those same years in the U.S. increased +55.73%. Percentage allocations for research and development was available for 3 significant parts of the U.S.: business expenditures varied from +1.91% of the GDP in 2001 to +1.79% in 2006 to +1.86% in 2012. The U.S. Government R & D also changed during those years; and higher education’s R & D expenditures outpaced the U.S. Government’s tallies every year between 2001 and 2012. Some of the R & D changes during those years were due to the recession that gripped the country between December 2007 and June 2009.2 Table 4.3 has the details.

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Table 4.2 U.S. Higher education libraries: selected years: 2000–2004–2006– 2008–2010–2012 ($U.S.) Year

Total number of libraries

Total expenditures

2000 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012

3,527 3,653 3,617 3,827 3,689 3,793

5,025,943,128 5,751,247,194 6,234,191,836 6,785,542,230 6,829,108,368 7,008,113,939

Number current serial Serial expenditures subscription paper and Total Electronic microfilm

7,499,870 12,763,537 16,361,013 25,342,205 25,041,250 N/A

1,149,802,832 203,845,116 1,363,671,792 480,137,504 1,521,721,559 691,584,934 1,704,298,887 1,004,393,298 1,786,083,064 1,249,726,269 1,923,935,307 1,436,670,505

Source U.S. Department of Education (Education). National Center for Education Statistics (NCES); https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006342.pdf; https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006308.pdf; https:// nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007343.pdf; https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2008/2008348.pdf; https://nces.ed. gov/pubs2009/2010310.pdf; https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011367.pdf; https://nces.ed.gov/pub s2014/2014039.pdf. N.B. Data not available for all years from NCES.

Table 4.3 U.S. Research and Development expenditures: 2001–2012 ($U.S.; in billion) Year

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

U.S. gross domestic product

U.S. Research and Development expenditures

10,581.9 10,929.1 11,456.5 12,217.2 13,039.2 13,815.6 14,474.2 14,769.9 14,478.1 15,049.0 15,599.7 16,254.0

278.5 277.9 291.4 302.7 325.3 350.9 377.9 404.8 402.9 406.6 426.2 433.7

U.S. Research and Development Percent allocation by Business

U.S. government

Higher education

1.91 1.77 1.75 1.70 1.73 1.79 1.86 1.92 1.95 1.85 1.89 1.86

0.31 0.32 0.33 0.31 0.30 0.30 0.30 0.31 0.32 0.34 0.34 0.32

0.31 0.34 0.35 0.35 0.35 0.34 0.34 0.35 0.38 0.39 0.39 0.37

Source National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics; https://ncses.gov/pubs/nsf22330. N.B. All numbers rounded of and may not always equal 100%

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Another positive metric was the increased in the number of STM degrees awarded in the U.S. Because of the size of this dataset, a selected number of years were analyzed: 2001, 2004, 2008, and 2012. Data for all of the years between 2001 and 2012 was available from Education’s NCES tables. In 2001, NCES started using slightly different classifications; life sciences was renamed biological and biological sciences; and physical sciences was renamed chemistry, geology and earth sciences, and physics; and mathematics was renamed mathematics and statistics; the new categories were utilized in the various degree tables.3 In the STM bachelor’s degree category, all 9 degree groups posted growth percentages between 2001–2004–2008–2012. Impressive gains were recorded in: the health professions (+118.83); mathematics and statistics (+68.66%); biological and biological sciences (+58.23%); and engineering (+35.39%). Table 4.4 has the data for all 9 categories. The master’s degree group also recorded positive growth rates in all 9 categories. Ironically, very impressive tallies were generated in the same 4 degree clusters that were recorded in the bachelor’s category in Table 4.4: the health professions (+93.55%); mathematics and statistics (+94.64%); biological and biological sciences (+76.58%); and engineering (+65.95%). Table 4.5 has the master’s degree results. Table 4.4 Number of STM bachelor’s degrees awarded selected years: 2001– 2004–2008–2012 Degrees Agriculture and Natural Resources Biological and Biological Sciences Computer and Information Sciences Engineering Health Professions Mathematics and Statistics Chemistry Geology and Earth Sciences Physics

2001

2004

2008

2012

23,766 60,576 44,142 72,869 75,537 11,171 9,466 3,495 3,418

23,340 62,624 59,488 78,079 73,429 13,327 9,016 3,312 4,118

24,540 79,869 38,523 83,682 111,133 15,169 11,556 3,557 4,863

31,629 95,850 47,406 98,654 165,301 18,841 13,473 5,111 5,531

Source U.S. Department of Education (Education). National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES); https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digital/d21/tables/dt21/tables/dt21_325.10.asp. N.B.: NCES started using slightly different classifications; Life Sciences was renamed Biological and Biological Sciences; and Physical Sciences was renamed Chemistry, Geology and Earth Sciences, and Physics

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Table 4.5 Number of STM master’s degrees awarded selected years: 2001– 2004–2008–2012 Degrees Agriculture and Natural Resources Biological and Biological Sciences Computer and Information Sciences Engineering Health Professions Mathematics and Statistics Chemistry Geology and Earth Sciences Physics

2001

2004

2008

2012

4,431 7,017 16,911 27,187 43,464 3,209 1,952 1,220 1,365

4,994 7,732 20,143 35,053 44,728 4,191 2,009 1,389 1,625

5,193 9,691 17,096 34,443 57,636 5,211 2,195 1,349 1,788

6,622 12,419 20,925 45,116 84,123 6,246 2,435 1,807 1,873

Source U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Educational Statistics; https://nces.ed. gov/programs/digital/d21/tables/dt21/tables/dt21_325.10.asp. N.B.: NCES started using slightly different classifications; Life Sciences was renamed Biological and Biological Sciences; and Physical Sciences was renamed Chemistry, Geology and Earth Sciences, and Physics

The degree growth patterns in the bachelor’s and master’s groups were important. However, the changes in the doctor’s degree data impacted rather quickly trends in the STM sector since these individuals: needed access to key journals in their field to keep up to date; and they needed to publish in the important journals in order to get a job, a promotion (from assistant to associate to full professor), tenure, and research grants for their labs, equipment, and research assistants (possibly post-doctoral individuals, eager to participate in important research publications). Every category in the doctor’s degree area posted strong growth rates, including: computer and information sciences (+121.09%); mathematics and statistics (+70.83%); the health professions (+61.59%); engineering (+59.65%); biological and biological sciences (+51.87%); and physics (+49.87%). The last 3 categories all hovered in the +20% range: geology and earth sciences +29.66%; chemistry +23.39%; and agriculture and natural resources +20.16%. Table 4.6 has the data.

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Table 4.6 Number of STM doctor’s degrees awarded selected years: 2001– 2004–2008–2012 Degrees Agriculture and Natural Resources Biological and Biological Sciences Computer and Information Sciences Engineering Health Professions Mathematics and Statistics Chemistry Geology and Earth Sciences Physics

2001

2004

2008

2012

3,483 5,225 768 5,547 36,663 997 2,056 472 1,169

3,543 5,538 909 5,859 39,503 1,060 2,033 463 1,119

4,047 7,398 1,697 7,984 48,869 1,360 2,411 577 1,507

4,185 7,935 1,698 8,856 59,245 1,669 2,537 612 1,752

Source U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Educational Statistics; https://nces.ed. gov/programs/digital/d21/tables/dt21/tables/dt21_325.10.asp. N.B.: NCES started using slightly different classifications; Life Sciences was renamed Biological and Biological Sciences; and Physical Sciences was renamed Chemistry, Geology and Earth Sciences, and Physics

The STM Sector: Opportunities and Competitive Advantage In addition to the positive growth rates of the metrics in Tables 4.1– 4.6, there were other developments that sparked the interest of STM publishers. First, there was a tremendous increase in computer technologies, accessibility, search, and memory capabilities among U.S. consumers and members of the academy and research institutes.4 For example, wholesale revenues for consumer electronics in the U.S. grew from $169.79 billion in 2009 to $206.1 billion in 2012 (+21.39%).5 Second, the development of desktop and laptop computers with better memory and rather affordable prices, especially products released by Dell, Apple, IBM (which sold its personal computer business to Lenovo in 2004), and Hewlett-Packard. In 2001, more than 125 million personal computers were sold.6 Third, there was the highly publicized and wellreceived launch of Apple’s tablet in April 2010; this new product sold 15 million units in the U.S. between April and December 2010.7 Overall, this innovative, though rather heavy, tablet sold 94.83 million units in the U.S. between 2010 and 2012.8 It was clear, certainly by 2001, that the STM publishers (the societies, the university presses, and the commercial academic publishers) published “must have, need to know” research. So, if a faculty member, a student,

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or a researcher needed to read a specific article in, for example, Nature Medicine or the Reviews of Modern Physics , the academic or research library needed to have a paid subscription. And equally clear was the fact that an STM journal was unique, it had a competitive advantage, a unique value proposition, since no other journal could publish the specific article that appeared in Nature Medicine or the Reviews of Modern Physics without the written permission of the copyright holder (i.e., the journal publisher or the author). Competitive advantage is defined as follows. “The factors or characteristics that permit one company to compete more effectively than its industry peers… [And this] is what makes an entity’s products or services more desirable to customers than that of any other rival…”9 In essence, competitive advantage gives a firm what economists call “market power.”10 This concept is of great value and importance to industrial organization researchers trying to understand the impact of comparative advantage and “market power” in a variety of industries, including scholarly publishing.11 For decades, STM publishers sold paid subscriptions to academic and research libraries (and also to individual consumers) for a clearly designated price for a specific journal, perhaps CA—A Cancer Journal for Clinicians or JAMA—Journal of the American Medical Association. In essence, they sold 1 journal at a time to a library. Starting in the late 1990s, and accelerating sharply after 2000, there was a movement away from print toward the digital-electronic distribution of scholarly journals. This prompted certain STM publishers to start to “bundle” a cluster of journals for a specific “bundle” fee; and this became known as the “big deal.” This “big deal” offered libraries the opportunity to provide a larger cluster of journals to faculty and students; and the price per journal in the “bundle” was less than the individual price for a specific journal in the bundle. The idea of offering a “bundle” of services was developed in a number of different industries. However, the U.S. cable television industry latched onto this “bundle” option in order to increase a subscriber’s monthly cable bill. And the STM publishers were well aware of the successful bundling of cable television channels in the U.S. Joe Flint in The Wall Street Journal observed that “by the 1980s, the typical cable bill was around $15 a month; and popular channels included ESPN, TBS, USA and CNN. Bundling really took off in the 1990s, when the number

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of channels exploded in large part because of new government regulations.”12 So, since bundling worked in the cable television, the various STM journal publishers theorized that it could also work for STM journals. If a library needed a subscription to a specific journal from, for example, Taylor & Francis, and if Taylor & Francis offered that journal in a “bundle” of other journals, the library had very few choices. They could either accept or reject the “big deal.” Yet the librarians knew that rejecting the bundle of important journals could trigger an adverse reaction among faculty members, deans, and provosts. And the librarian’s budget was dependent on the financial support of their institution. Thus the “big deal” emerged as a major successful marketing strategy, in reality another “butterfly effect,” of journal publishers (at least when it was launched); and this became a budgetary nightmare for the librarian.

The STM Sector: Concerns About the Costs of STM Journals Newton was correct. Newton’s Third Law: Action and Reaction is defined by physicists as follows. “Whenever one object exerts a force on a second object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first.” In essence, Newton’s Third Law “states that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. If object A exerts a force on object B, object B also exerts an equal and opposite force on object A. In other words, forces result from interactions.”13 The reaction to the “big deal,” which was, in reality, another “butterfly effect”; and increases in STM journal prices triggered what turned out to be a major threat to the basic STM business model for many, but not all, STM publishers. First, higher education libraries faced the specter of the Recession of 2007–2009, which had a negative impact on many higher education institutions and their library budgets. For example, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) released extensive statistical details regarding university support for libraries. Their data revealed that university support reached an impressive 3.7% of library funding in 1984 (and this was the largest annual percentage for the next 27 years and in most of the following years); the annual percentage declined rather sharply: by 1990 the allocation slid to 3.3%; 1995: 3.0% 2000: 2.95; 2001: 2.8%; 2002: 2.45%; 2003: 2.32%; 2004: 2.4%; 2005: 2.3%; 2006: 2.22%; 2007: 2.12%; 2008: 2.10%; 2009: 2.00%; 2010: 1.85%; and by 2011: 1.8%. Data was not available for 2012.14

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Second, data for precise “big deal” subscriptions was never released by the publishers or the libraries, possibly because of contractual obligations (although it appears that a small number of librarians were willing to share some aspects of their “big deal” financial arrangements). Detailed data about average subscription prices for the 15 printed STM journal categories was available; however, data for digital journal prices 2000 and 2009 was not available. Also, data was not available for food science; it was listed because data was available for future years. Between 2000 and 2002, every 1 of the 14 categories posted increases in annual subscription prices. The general science cluster of journals, from societies, university presses, and commercial publishers, registered a +33.62% increase in those 3 years. The other large increases were in: chemistry (+22.82%); biology (+22.30%); and astronomy (+19.37%). Table 4.7 has the annual subscription prices for 2000–2002. While critics were concerned about the prices, the annual subscription rates for 2003–2007 were exceptionally high. Agriculture’s rates jumped +225.46% between 2003 and 2007, just eclipsing botany’s + Table 4.7 Average prices of printed scientific, technical, and medical (STM) serials: 2000–2002 ($U.S.) Category

2000

2001

2002

Agriculture Astronomy Biology Botany Chemistry Engineering Food Science General Science Geology Health Science Mathematics & Computer Science Military & Naval Science Physics Technology Zoology

172 862 1,054 327 1,442 693 N/A 354 553 343 788 46 1,508 407 942

186 941 1,171 363 1,612 751 N/A 390 603 379 866 50 1,638 441 1,019

197 1,029 1,289 371 1,771 784 N/A 473 639 410 917 52 1,770 476 1,111

Source American Library Association. The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS); https://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/spi. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%

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225.42%. Health science posted a +133.18% increase. Other categories with increased subscriptions included: technology (+54.94%); chemistry (+47.22%); and astronomy (+45.39%). The military and naval science (i.e., this is an engineering category and a very small STM category; while it recorded a +306.15% increase, this category releases a rather small number of journals annually. Zoology posted a −1.44% decline in annual subscription rates. Table 4.8 has the details. Third, the Recession of 2007–2009 had a crushing impact on American society, consumers’ higher education, and research institutions; and its impact on subscription prices was evident. Food science (+82.98%) and technology (+42.32%) withstood the economic maelstrom with large annual increases in their cluster of journals. A number of journals posted increases, including: geology (+16.79%); general science (+12.85%); and military and naval science (+30.51%). A number of journals posted declines, including: health science (−20.93%); botany (−15.75%); and mathematics and statistics (−10.25%). Table 4.9 has the data. Table 4.8 Average prices of printed scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2003–2007 ($U.S.) Category

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

Agriculture Astronomy Biology Botany Chemistry Engineering Food Science General Science Geology Health Science Mathematics & Computer Science Military & Naval Science Physics Technology Zoology

216 1,106 1,403 413 1,906 859 N/A 513 687 449 975 65 1,856 506 1,177

262 1,184 1,524 442 2,099 908 N/A 556 736 477 1,045 67 2,018 541 1,270

277 1,260 1,644 470 2,245 986 N/A 602 789 518 1,096 69 2,145 582 1,307

787 1,751 1,288 1,344 2,806 1,009 526 689 884 796 1,100 234 2,543 1,045 930

703 1,608 1,570 1,317 3,121 1,388 568 866 1,265 1,047 1,230 264 2,922 784 1,160

Source American Library Association. The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS); https://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/spi. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%

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Table 4.9 Average prices of printed scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2008–2012 ($U.S.) Category

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Agriculture Astronomy Biology Botany Chemistry Engineering Food Science General Science Geology Health Science Mathematics & Computer Science Military & Naval Science Physics Technology Zoology

760 1,722 1,693 1,416 3,334 1,488 588 934 1,191 1,137 1,317 295 3,077 853 1,278

966 1,883 2,037 1,518 3,511 1,728 777 966 1,459 1,058 1,360 287 3,184 1,091 1,348

1,102 2,038 2,108 1,626 3,716 1,861 911 1,034 1,531 1,118 1,416 317 3,362 1,149 1,423

989 1,885 2,054 1,556 3,595 1,913 855 935 1,545 1,111 1,480 260 3,195 1,192 1,310

820 1,782 1,846 1,193 3,430 1,483 1,076 1,054 1,391 899 1,182 385 2,868 1,214 1,125

Source American Library Association. The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS); https://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/spi; http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps// divs/alcts/resources/collect/serials/uspi/cfm. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%

Fourth, a veritable wave of articles was published addressing the “big deal.” Theodore C. Bergstrom, Paul N. Courant, R. Preston McAfee, and Michael A. Williams authored a well-read article about “Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles.” They wrote that “large commercial publishers sell bundled online subscriptions to their entire list of academic journals at prices significantly lower than the sum of their a la carte prices… Publishers also found an ingenious solution to the problem of determining buyers’ willingness to pay [i.e., bundling journals]… The contracts that we have seen show remarkable institution-specific price variations that cannot be explained by university characteristics such as enrollment and Ph.D. programs.”15 Richard Poynder addressed the basic idea in the “big deal,” which he called an “all you can eat” strategy since a large number of journals were available to academics and researchers that most libraries could not afford to pay for each year. “In other words, research libraries continue to buy a single all-you-can-eat subscription for a set fee for a set number of years (usually 3 years). This fee is invariably based on the cost of the member institutions historical print

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subscription… For libraries, the perceived benefit of the Big Deal was access to a greater number of journal titles… The Big Deal was also welcomed by researchers because they naturally want access to as much of the research literature as possible…”16 Other researchers also investigated issues related to bundling, pricing decisions, and legal issues.17 Jennifer Howard at The Chronicle of Higher Education remarked that certain higher education libraries started to abandon the “big deal” options even if it meant upsetting some members of the academic community.18 The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Research Coalition (SPARC) is an association of hundreds of academic libraries; and they began a tracking service that listed library-publisher negotiations and “big deal” cancellations.19 Fifth, major concerns about the “bundling” of journals morphed into what librarians and other researchers called the “serials crisis,” especially when annual subscription prices for journals was made public by various librarians and library publications. Judith M. Panitch and Sarah Michalak, two librarians at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Library, wrote that “the term ‘serials crisis’ has become common shorthand for the runaway cost increases of many scholarly journals. The serials crisis has also come to be closely associated with the pricing practices of certain commercial publishers, particularly in the areas of science, technology, and medicine (STM). To an extent, this characterization is correct—prices for journals in certain areas from certain publishers have skyrocketed far beyond the capacity of most libraries or universities to keep up… Member libraries paid +260% more for their serial subscriptions in 2003 than in 1986 despite having increased the number of subscriptions by only + 14%… Cost increases have not been distributed equally across disciplines. STM journals show some of the steepest prices and price increases…”20 John Houghton, a well-known scholarly communications researcher, wrote that “recent years have seen rapid increases in the price of scholarly content—especially journals in the science, technology, and medical areas (STM). These increases are significantly above he underlying rate of inflation…”21 Philip Young, the University Librarian at Virginia Tech, wrote that “the phrase ‘serials crisis’ has been in use for more than a decade [N.B., Young wrote this article in 2009] as shorthand for the rise in costs for academic journals and the inability of libraries to bring these costs under control. Price inflation for academic journals significantly exceeds the consumer price index… Because journal subscriptions are a large part of the collections budget at academic libraries, any reduction in funding

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usually results in a loss of some journals.”22 Young also discussed the possibility that “open access” (OA) journals might be a viable alternative to the traditional paid subscription policy of the journal publishers. Anup Kumar Das also investigated the OA option especially “the problems faced by researchers in developing nations… Open Access journal publishing helps in mitigating some of the problems associated with the serials crisis…”23 Other higher education librarians also commented on the “serials crisis.” George Breslauer and Elizabeth Deaking, at the University of California, Berkeley shared, with their academic community, a detailed report on the “Future of the Library.” Their goal was “to determine feasible and sustainable strategies for implementation” to maintain the library’s current and future collection for all of the members of the University of California, Berkeley.24 The Harvard University Library issued a highly publicized memorandum on April 17, 2012, to faculty members in all schools, faculties, and units about journal costs. The memo struck a nerve within and outside Harvard because of the role this university has played in the history of higher education in the U.S. and indeed in the world. The memo, which was widely circulated and cited in a number of periodicals (e.g., The Chronicle of Higher Education; Inside Higher Education; The Atlantic; The Guardian; etc.) contained the following key points. “We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called ‘providers’) to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals. Harvard’s annual cost for journals from these providers now approaches $3.75M [dollars]. In 2010, the comparable amount accounted for more than 20% of all periodical subscription costs and just under 10% of all collection costs for everything the Library acquires. Some journals cost as much as $40,000 per year, others in the tens of thousands. Prices for online content from two providers have increased by about 145% over the past six years, which far exceeds not only the consumer price index, but also the higher education and the library price indices. These journals therefore claim an ever-increasing share of our overall collection budget. Even though scholarly output continues to grow and publishing can be expensive, profit margins of 35% and more suggest that the prices we must pay do not solely result from an increasing supply of new articles…”25

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The Harvard Library outlined some substantive issues facing the university. “The Faculty Advisory Council to the [Harvard University] Library, representing university faculty in all schools and in consultation with the Harvard Library leadership, reached this conclusion: major periodical subscriptions, especially to electronic journals published by historically key providers, cannot be sustained: continuing these subscriptions on their current footing is financially untenable. Doing so would seriously erode collection efforts in many other areas, already compromised… It is untenable for contracts with at least two major providers to continue on the basis identical with past agreements. Costs are now prohibitive. Moreover, some providers bundle many journals as one subscription, with major, high-use journals bundled in with journals consulted far less frequently…”26 This jeremiad also contained a series of suggestions for the Harvard community, including: “1. Make sure that all of your own papers are accessible by submitting them to DASH [i.e., Harvard’s open access repository for research by members of the Harvard community] in accordance with the faculty-initiated open-access policies; 2. Consider submitting articles to open-access journals, or to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to open access; and 3. If [you are] on the editorial board of a journal involved, determine if it can be published as open access material, or independently from publishers that practice pricing described above. If not, consider resigning…”27 So Harvard joined the growing chorus of librarians, researchers, and faculty members calling for the adoption of a viable open access journals system. In addition, anyone on an editorial board on what could be construed as a journal with high prices should consider resigning. This call for action by Harvard added credence and support on what was a growing international open access movement, developments that would emerge with more support as well as legislation, in the coming years.

Preprints and Megajournals Starting in the 1990s with the wide acceptance in the academic community of computers and digital products, preprints emerged with a great deal of publicity, and, ultimately, popularity. These innovative platforms enabled a researcher to circulate an article within the STM community before it went through peer review and was accepted for publication in a traditionally peer-reviewed STM journal. Preprints offered a realistic way

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to get up to date research articles out quickly since the traditional peer review and publication practices tended to be rather slow. It must be noted that while many of the earliest preprints were in the STM sector, other preprints were launched in: the humanities (for example “hprints” in 2008 for the arts and humanities; and “PhilArchive” in 2009 in philosophy); and the social sciences (e.g., the very important “RePEc” in economics in 1997). In the STM area, some of the important preprints include: the exceptionally important and influential arXiv, which was launched in 1991; F1000 Research’s creation in 2012 for the life sciences; JMIR Preprints (started in 2009 for the medical field); ViXra, an intriguing preprint for physics and mathematics in 2009; and the very visible SSRN, a multidisciplinary preprint initiated in 1994. Launching and maintaining a digital preprint website was costly; and many of the preprint organizations relied on either government or university support (e.g., arXiv started at Los Alamos and moved ultimately to Cornell University), various societies, or non-profit institutions and foundations interested in supporting STM research. As for the creation of “megajournals,” PLOS is one of the best known and respected of the newly created megajournals. PLOS provided a brief history of its creation (N.B. megajournals are sometimes spelled as mega-journals by some authors it should be noted that megajournals are sometimes spelled as mega-journals by some authors). The idea for PLOS began in 2000, when an open letter was circulated by founders Harold Varmus, Patrick Brown, and Michael Eisen. Nearly 34,000 scientists from 180 countries signed the open letter. “Recognizing that most existing journals were resistant to changing their business practices, in 2003 we launched our first fully Open Access journal in order to empower researchers to make science immediately and publicly available online, without restrictions. Our Article Processing Charge [APC] model, though revolutionary at the time, would soon pave the way for a new wave of publishing options and ensure the future of Open Access.”28 Bo-Christer Bjorn analyzed the history of megajournals after 2006. He remarked that megajournals “are a new kind of scholarly journal made possible by electronic publishing. They are open access (OA) and funded by [article processing] charges, which authors pay for the publishing services. What distinguishes mega-journals from other OA journals is, in

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particular, a peer review focusing only on scientific trustworthiness.”29 Bjorn provided information about some of the important megajournals, which included: IEEE Access; Biology Open; PLOS One; BMJ Open; and BMC Research Notes.30

The STM Sector Confronts Piracy and “Shadow Libraries” The costs of the “big deal,” reaction to the “serials crisis,” the recession, increases in the consumer price index (CPI), and reductions in higher education annual allocations for many academic libraries triggered widespread discussions and research about the “serials crisis.” Since Newton was correct, that every action sparks an equal and opposite reaction, a number of individuals crafted “solutions”; and many of these “solutions” were allegedly illegal. The illegal copying or reproduction of copyrighted publication, perhaps a journal or a book, had existed in the U.S. for several centuries. For many decades, this meant setting type and then printing a book or a journal without the permission of the copyrighted. In the years after the introduction of copier machines, far too many members of the research community, faculty and students and others, just went to a local copy center, dropped an article or a Harvard Business School case study or a cluster of short stories, and asked the staff to make copies. Obviously, the U.S. copyright law address “fair use,” which allowed an instructor to make copies for classroom use. However, Thomas W. Lippman, writing in The Washington Post, wrote that in the New York University copyright infringement case, the university “acknowledged that large scale photocopying of books and magazines ‘may have’ violated copyright law and agreed to impose restrictions on the practice by its faculty members.”31 However, the internet changed how copyright violations became so widespread and, in some instances, a global phenomenon with the creation of a number of “shadow libraries.” A “shadow library” is in essence a global digital library, freely available to anyone with access to the internet, that posted illegally literally millions of copyrighted journal articles and books.32 The most aggressive “shadow library” was Sci-Hub created on September 5, 2011, by Alexandra Elbakyan.33

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Conclusion While a number of positive events and developments took place between 2001 and 2012, the unmistakable sign of disruption and “butterfly effects” emerged with a significant amount of attention and support, specifically regarding: the “bundling” of journals into what became known as the “big deal”; budgetary concerns about higher education funding shortfalls; the open access movement; concerns about steep increases in journal prices and the emergence of the “serials crisis”; massive copyright infringements developments that undermined the basic business model of many STM journals. Clearly, many journal publishers became concerned between 2001 and 2012 about the criticisms, and in some instances severe governmental or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) criticisms, about the STM journal sector, and primarily the commercial publishing sector. For example, in 2012 in the U.K., the movement toward open access become a major topic (that ultimately impacted the U.S.). Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian that “the [U.K.] government is to unveil controversial plans to make publicly funded scientific research immediately available for anyone to read for free by 2014, in the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the invention of the internet…. Work paid for by the British taxpayer will be free online for universities, companies, and individuals to use for any purpose, wherever they are in the world… The move reflects a groundswell of support for ‘open access’ publishing…”34 However, developments in the intellectual property arena as well as more rapid attempts after 2012 to make a significant number of journals into “free” open access journals (at least free to the reader) with article processing charges (APCs) paid for by the author(s) or funding agencies or higher education institutions marked the years after 2012 as a period of rapid disruption, at least for many STM journals and their publishers. Clayton M. Christensen wrote about these issues in The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business . He listed the basic principles of disruption, insisting that (in his rule #4) that “an organization’s capabilities define its disabilities.”35 Christensen also wrote about “lessons for spotting disruptive threats and opportunities,” listing mobile technologies and online sites.36 The years after 2012 would test the intrinsic capabilities of STM journals to withstand what emerged as yet another “butterfly effect” that impacted directly, and, in some instances, negatively the important STM journal environment.

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Notes 1. U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce), Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA); https://www.bea.gov/resources/learning-center/whatto-know-gdp. 2. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). “U.S. Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions;” https://www.nber.org/research/data/usbusiness-cycle-expansion-and-contractions. 3. U.S. Department of Education (Education). National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES); https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digital/d21/tab les/dt21/tables/dt21_325.10.asp. N.B.: NCES started using slightly different classifications; Life Sciences was renamed Biological and Biological Sciences; and Physical Sciences was renamed Chemistry, Geology and Earth Sciences, and Physics. 4. James Manyika and Charles Roxburgh. “The Impact of the Internet on Growth and Prosperity;” https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mck insey/industries/technology%20media%20and%20telecommunications/ high%20tech/our%20insights/the%20great%20transformer/mgi_impact_ of_internet_on_economic_growth.pdf. Also see Jessica R. Nicholson. “New Digital Economy Estimates;” https://www.bea.gov/system/files/ 2020-08/New-Digital-Economy-Estimates-August-2020.pdf. Dale W. Jorgenson and Kevin Stiroh. “Computers And Growth;” https://doi. org/10.1080/10438599500000008. 5. Statista. “Wholesale Revenue Consumer Electronics (CE) Shipments in the U.S. From 2009 to 2019;” https://www.statista.com/statistics/272 115/revenue-growth-ce-industry. 6. Computer History Museum. “Timeline of Computer History;” https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/computers. Also see Martin Campbell-Kelly. “The Origins of Computing: The Information Age Began with the Realization That Machines Could Emulate the Power of Minds;” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/origin-of-computing. 7. Julie Boar. “A History of the Tablet, An Idea Steve Jobs Stole and Turned into a Game-Changer;” www.businessinsider.com. 8. Statista. “Unit Shipments of Tablets in the United States From 2010 to 2027;” https://www.statista.com/statistics/619369/tablet-unitshipments-in-the-us. 9. Investopia. “Competitive Advantage Definition with Types and Examples;” https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/competitive_advant age.asp. Also see Mariano Somale. “Comparative Advantage in Innovation and Production,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 13, 3(July 2021): 357–396. Luis Baldomero-Quintana. “How Infrastructure Shapes Competitive Advantage;” https://economics.indiana.edu/ documents/JMP_Luis_DQ1.pdf. Johannes Boehm, Swati Dhingra, and

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10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

John Morrow. “The Comparative Advantage of Firms,” Journal of Political Economy 130, 12(December 2022): 3025–3027; https://doi.org/ 10.1086/720630. David A. Moss. “A Brief Aside on the Theory of Competitive Advantage;” https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/an-economic-pri nciple-for-us-all-comparative-advantage. Michael J. Mauboussin and Dan Callahan. “Market Share: Understanding Competitive Advantage Through Market Power,” https://www.mor ganstanley.com/im/publication/insights/articles/article_marketshare. pdf. Also see Andrei A. Levchenko and Jing Zhang. “The Evolution of Comparative Advantage: Measurement and Implications,” Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, WP 2014–12 (December 2014); https://www. chicagofed.org/publications/working-papers/2014/wp-12. Martin Grancay, Tomas Dudas, and Ladislav Mura. “Revealed Comparative Advantages in Academic Publishing of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ European Union Member States;” https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10. 1007/s11192-021-04251-z.pdf?pdf=button. Joe Flint. “Why Does the Cable-TV Bundle Exist, Anyway?” https:/ /www.wsj.com/articles/why-does-the-cable-tv-bundle-exist-anyway-143 3807825. NASA. Glenn Research Center. “Newton’s Laws of Motion;” https:/ /www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics/newtons-laws-ofmotion/#:~:text=His%20third%20law%20states%20that,words%2C%20f orces%20result%20from%20interactions. Association of Research Libraries. “Library Expenditures as a Percentage of Total University Expenditures;” http://www.libqual.org/documents/ admin/EG_2.pdf. Theodore C. Bergstrom, Paul N. Courant, R. Preston McAfee, and Michael A. Williams. “Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles;” https:// www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1403006111. Richard Poynder. The Big Deal: Not Price But Cost;” https://www.inf otoday.com/it/sep11/the-big-deal-not-price-but-costshtml. Karla L. Strieb and Julia C. Blixrud. “The State of Large-Publisher Bundles in 2012;” https://publications.arl.org/rli282/13; also available at https://doi.org/10.29242/rli.282.3. Also see Mark Armstrong. “Price Discrimination by a Many-Product Firm,” The Review of Economic Studies, 66, 1(January 1999): 151–168. Aaron S. Edlin and D. L. Rubinfeld. “Exclusion Or Efficient Pricing: The ‘Big Deal’ Bundling of Academic Journals;” htps://scholarship.org/uc/item/3nd7v77z. Mathias Dewatripont, Victor Ginsburgh, Patrick Legros, and Alexis Walckiers. “Pricing of Scientific Journals and Market Power,” Journal of the European Economic Association, 5, 2–3(May 2007): 400–410.

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18. Jennifer Howard. “Libraries Abandon Expensive ‘Big Deal’ Subscription Packages to Multiple Journals;” https://www.chronicle.com/article/lib raries-abandon-expensive-big-deal-sbscriptin-packages-to-multiple-jurnals. 19. SPARC. “Big Deal Cancellation Tracking;” https://sparcopen.org/ourwork/big-deal-cancellation-tracking. N.B. SPARC’s membership includes about 250 libraries and academic organizations across North America. 20. Judith M. Panitch and Sarah Michalak. “The Serials Crisis: A White Paper for the UNC-Chapel Hill Scholarly Communications Convention;” https://ils.unc.edu/courses/2019_fall/inls700_001/ Readings/Panitch2005-SerialsCrisis.htm. 21. John Houghton. “The Crisis in Scholarly Communication: An Economic Analysis;” https://www.vala.org.au/vala2002/2002pdf/16H outon.pdf; https://www.vala.org.au/vala2002/2002. 22. Philip Young. “The Serials Crisis and Open Access: A White Paper for the Virginia Tech Commission on Research;” https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ faculty_archives/YoungP/OAwhitepaper.pdf. Also see Moya K. Mason. “Academic Research, Scholarly Publishing, and the Serials Crisis;” https:/ /www.moyak.com/papers/journals-crisis.html. Xianwen Wang, Chen Liu, Wenli Mao, and Zhichao Fang. “The Open Access Advantage Considering Citation, Article Usage, and Social Media Attention;” https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11192-015-1547-0. 23. Anup Kumar Das. “The Serials Crisis;” https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ima ges/0023/002319/231938e.pdf. 24. University of California, Berkeley. “Future of the Library;” https://evcp. berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/FINAL_CFUCBL_report_10.16.13.pdf. 25. The Harvard Library. “Faculty Advisory Council Memorandum on Journal Pricing;” https://gantercourses.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/ 11/Faculty-Advisory-Council-Memorandum-on-Journal-pricing-%C2% A7-THE-HARVARD-LIBRARY, 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. Also see Jennifer Howard. “Saying Costly Subscriptions ‘Cannot Be Sustained,’ Harvard Library Committee Urges Open Access;” http://chr onicle.com/blogs/ticker/saying-costly-subscriptions-caccot-be sustainedharvard-library-committee-urges-open-access/42589?sid=wc&utm_ source=wc&utm_medium=en. Glenn S. McGuigan and Robert D. Russell. “The Business of Academic Publishing: A Strategic Analysis of the Academic Journal Publishing Industry and Its Impact on the Future of Scholarly Publishing;” https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/ejaslijournal/ 105. Douglas Gurevitch. “The Business of Scientific Publishing;” https:/ /doi.org/10.1016/j.jala.2006.12.002. Carl T. Bergstrom and Theodore C. Bergstrom. The Economics of Scholarly Journal Publishing; https://Oct avia.zoology.washington.edu/publishing. 28. PLOS. “About PLOS;” https://plos.org/about.

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29. Bo-Christer Bjork. “Evolution of the Scholarly Mega-Journal, 2006– 2017;” https://www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5808309. 30. Ibid. 31. Thomas W. Lippman. “Agreement with Publishers Limits Photocopying at NYU;” https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1983/04/ 15/agreement-with-publishers-limits-photocopying-at-nyu/8061cd84b671-4f53-9202-9033ffec17e5. 32. Joe Karaganis. Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018), 17–98. Also see Martin Eve. “Shadow Libraries and Pirate Infrastructure;” https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/ id/eprint/20133. 33. Elsevier Inc. et al. v. Sci-Hub et al., No. 1:2015cv04282 - Document 53 (S.D.N.Y. 2015). 34. Ian Sample. “Free Access to British Scientific Research Within Two Years;” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/jul/free-access-bri tish-scientific-research. Also see Alok Jha. “Academic Spring: How an Angry Maths Blog Sparked a Scientific Revolution;” https://www.thegua rdian.com/science/2012/apr/09/frustrated-blogpost-boycott-scientificjournals. Tim Gowers. “The Cost of Knowledge;” https://gowers.files. wordpress.com/2012/02/elsevierstatementfinal.pdf. This was a letter calling for a boycott of Elsevier that was signed by a large number of individuals. 35. Clayton M. Christensen. The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), xxvi–xxvii. 36. Ibid., page xxix.

CHAPTER 5

The Impact of Legal, Intellectual Property, and Copyright Infringement Issues: 2000–2022

Abstract Intellectual property (IP) is of pivotal importance to the STM journal sector since it provides the legal protection for authors and the content in a publisher’s journal. There are 4 types of IP (i.e., trademarks; trade secrets; patents; and copyright), and all are significant. But most publishers worry about copyright issues because of threats from pirates and copyright infringers. Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States provided the legal protection for IP. However, the Congress had to pass laws that stipulated the terms, rights, and obligations of IP holders. Eventually the U.S. codified its copyright laws into the “Copyright Law of the United States,” which is 17 U.S.C. (United States Code). Various STM publishers, over the years, confronted pernicious copyright infringement problems, including the famous Sci-Hub litigation in: the U.S. District Court (in the Southern District of New York); and in India. Keywords Intellectual property · U.S. Copyright law · Copyright infringement · Alexandra Elbakyan · Sci-Hub · India · Piracy

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Intellectual Property: Definitions and Legal Origins in the U.S. Merriman-Webster’s dictionary defines intellectual property (IP) as “property (such as an idea, invention, or process) that derives from the work of the mind or intellect; also: an application, right, or registration relating to this.”1 The legal source in the U.S. for intellectual property protection is in the Constitution of the United States, specifically Article 1 §8, which states the following: “The Congress shall have Power To… promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”2 While the Congress had the authority to create legal protection for “authors and inventors,” it was up to the Congress to create the law to protect the legal rights of “authors and inventors.” Of course, a related issue centered on defining precisely what was “intellectual property” in the new nation; then the Congress had to create and enforce laws to protect “authors and inventors.” Cornell Law School defined the types of intellectual property. “In general terms, intellectual property is any product of the human intellect that the law protects from unauthorized use by others. The ownership of intellectual property inherently creates a limited monopoly in the protected property. Intellectual property is traditionally comprised of four categories: patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secrets.”3

U.S. Patents In the U.S., the Congress created Title 35 U.S.C. (United States Code) to codify patent law in this nation.4 35 U.S.C. §101 defined a patent as follows. “Inventions patentable. Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefore, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.”5 The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO or the Patent Office) “is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.” The USPTO “serves the interests of inventors and businesses with respect to their inventions and corporate products, and service identifications… In discharging its patent related duties, the USPTO examines applications and grants patents on inventions when applicants are entitled to them;

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it publishes and disseminates patent information, records assignments of patents, maintains search files of U.S. and foreign patents, and maintains a search room for public use in examining issued patents and records… A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Generally, the term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or, in special cases, from the date an earlier related application was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees. U.S. patent grants are effective only within the United States, U.S. territories, and U.S. possessions… The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, ‘the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling’ the invention in the United States or ‘importing’ the invention into the United States. What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention. Once a patent is issued, the patentee must enforce the patent without aid of the USPTO… There are three types of patents: 1. Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof; 2. Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture; and 3. Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant…”6 While it may seem unusual for an STP publisher to be concerned about patents, the reverse is true. For example, RELX (Elsevier is the wellknown and historical name usually used in the STM industry) is in many ways a technology company maintaining a number of important databases (e.g., Scopus; Science Direct; Mendeley; SSRN; Bepress). RELX has 579 patents. Of that total, 292 were issued by the USPTO, easily outpacing the 63 issued in Korea or the 34 in Canada. RELX also has 85 research and development centers in the U.S.7 This chapter will analyze some of the important IP cases since 2000; however, in light of the highly complex nature of patents in the U.S., and the fact that patent litigation is generally not of great concern to many STM firms, patent litigation will be excluded from this chapter.

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Trademarks and Servicemarks The USPTO also handles trademarks and servicemarks in the U.S. USPTO defined trademarks and servicemarks as follows. “A trademark is a word, name, symbol, or device that is used in trade with goods to indicate the source of the goods and to distinguish them from the goods of others. A servicemark is the same as a trademark except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. The terms ‘trademark and ‘mark’ are commonly used to refer to both trademarks and servicemarks. Trademark rights may be used to prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark, but not to prevent others from making the same goods or from selling the same goods or services under a clearly different mark. Trademarks that are used in interstate or foreign commerce may be registered with the USPTO…”8 STM publishers are exceptionally protective of a “word” or a “name” or a “mark” that identifies a specific company (e.g., Elsevier) or a journal (The Lancet ). Legal protection for trademarks consists of the registration the name or symbol with the USPTO; then the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. §1052 covers the trademark; and Lanham effectively provides legal protection under the act’s 15 U.S.C. §1114(1).9 The purpose of the law is to: protect a firms’ name or symbol; and avoid confusion in the marketplace. The USPTO stipulated that “once you own a trademark registration, you must do a few important things to maintain that registration and keep it alive. First, you must use your trademark in commerce. Additionally, you must file certain documents at regular intervals to show that you’re continuing to use your trademark. If you don’t file these documents before the deadline, your registration will be canceled or will expire, or your extension of protection to the U.S. will be invalidated…”10 In essence, if a firm completes the required initial filing, and submits relevant documents at stipulated times, and defends the trademark in public and/or in legal proceedings, then a trademark can last “forever.” However, a U.S. trademark registration will not protect a firm’s trademark in a foreign country. Trademarks are territorial and must be filed in each country where protection is sought. Again as with patents, trademark infringement cases will be excluded in this chapter because of limited interest in the STM sector.

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Trade Secrets Trade secrets are addressed in 18 U.S.C. § 1839.11 The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) defines trade secrets as follows: “The definition of the term ‘trade secret’ in the EEA [i.e., the EEA is the Economic Espionage Act of 1996; Public Law 104-294] is very broad. It includes, generally, all types of information, however stored or maintained, which the owner has taken reasonable measures to keep secret and which has independent economic value. 18 U.S.C. §1839 defined a trade secret as: all forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic, or engineering information, including patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas, designs, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures, programs, or codes, whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically, or in writing if- (a) the owner thereof has taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret; and (b) the information derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable through proper means by, the public… Unlike patents, which must be both novel and a step beyond ‘prior art,’ trade secrets must be only ‘minimally novel’… The legislative history makes clear that the definition of the term trade secret does not include general knowledge, skill or abilities… The sine qua non of information constituting a trade secret is that it is not publicly known…”12 As with patents and trademarks, trade secrets are of great importance to STM publishers regarding the type of information that can remain a secret, including a list of customers, what they paid, discounts, etc. Litigation regarding trade secrets will also be excluded in this chapter.

Copyrights: 17 U.S.C. The U.S. copyright law is contained in Title 17 U.S.C.13 Clearly, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets are of vital importance to every STP publisher; however, the copyright of a journal, an article, a review article, important scientific notes, or an article about a new scientific discovery or a new medical treatment is arguably the most important intangible asset any STM publisher can own. Unfortunately, pirate attacks against the vast

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majority of STM commercial publishing companies, societies, and university presses has been a substantive problem for decades, with little signs that piracy of IP is abating. Title 17 U.S.C. is a complicated 480 page document. A basic understanding a portion of the terms and conditions set forth in 17 U.S.C. are needed to understand the important legal protection afforded by this law. Some, but clearly not all, of the key provisions in 17 U.S.C. that impact every STM publisher (and generated major legal copyright infringement cases since 2000) include the following sections of 17 U.S.C. §101. Definitions: “A work is ‘created’ when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time; where a work is prepared over a period of time, the portion of it that has been fixed at any particular time constitutes the work as of that time, and where the work has been prepared in different versions, each version constitutes a separate work… ‘Literary works’ are works, other than audiovisual works, expressed in words, numbers, or other verbal or numerical symbols or indicia, regardless of the nature of the material objects, such as books, periodicals, manuscripts, phonorecords, film, tapes, disks, or cards, in which they are embodied…”14 “‘Publication’ is the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. The offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display, constitutes publication. A public performance or display of a work does not of itself constitute publication…”15 “For purposes of section 411, a work is a ‘United States work’ only if—(1) in the case of a published work, the work is first published—(a) in the United States; (b) simultaneously in the United States and another treaty party or parties, whose law grants a term of copyright protection that is the same as or longer than the term provided in the United States; (c) simultaneously in the United States and a foreign nation that is not a treaty party; or (d) in a foreign nation that is not a treaty party, and all of the authors of the work are nationals, domiciliaries, or habitual residents of, or in the case of an audiovisual work legal entities with headquarters in, the United States; (2) in the case of an unpublished work, all the authors of the work are nationals, domiciliaries, or habitual residents of the United States…”16 §102. Subject Matter of Copyright: “In general (a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship

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fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories: (1) literary works; (2) musical works, including any accompanying words; (3) dramatic works, including any accompanying music; (4) pantomimes and choreographic works; (5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works; (6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works; (7) sound recordings; and (8) architectural works. (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work…”17 §105. Subject Matter of Copyright: “United States Government Works: (a) In General—Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise. (b) Copyright Protection of Certain of Works…”.18 §106. Exclusive Rights in Copyrighted Works Subject to Sections 107 Through 122: “The owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work; (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending; (4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly; (5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and (6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission…”19 §107. Limitations on Exclusive Rights: “Fair use notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism,

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comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a §107 Limitations on exclusive rights: fair use notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the 4 factors to be considered shall include—(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; §108 20 Copyright Law of the United States Subject Matter and Scope of Copyright (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors…”20 §108. Limitations on Exclusive Rights: “Reproduction by libraries and archives: (a) except as otherwise provided in this title and notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement of copyright for a library or archives, or any of its employees acting within the scope of their employment, to reproduce no more than one copy or phonorecord of a work, except as provided in subsections (b) and (c), or to distribute such copy or phonorecord, under the conditions specified by this section, if— (1) the reproduction or distribution is made without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage; (2) the collections of the library or archives are (i) open to the public, or (ii) available not only to researchers affiliated with the library or archives or with the institution of which it is a part, but also to other persons doing research in a specialized field; and (3) the reproduction or distribution of the work includes a notice of copyright that appears on the copy or phonorecord that is reproduced under the provisions of this section, or includes a legend stating that the work may be protected by copyright if no such notice can be found on the copy or phonorecord that is reproduced under the provisions of this section. (b) the rights of reproduction and distribution under this

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section apply to three copies or phonorecords of an unpublished work duplicated solely for purposes of preservation and security or for deposit for research use in another library or archives of the type described by clause (2) of subsection (a), if—(1) the copy or phonorecord reproduced is currently in the collections of the library or archives; and (2) any such copy or phonorecord that is reproduced in digital format is not otherwise distributed in that format and is not made available to the public in that format outside the premises of the library or archives. (c) the right of reproduction under this section applies to three copies or phonorecords of a published work duplicated solely for the purpose of replacement of a copy or phonorecord that is damaged, deteriorating, lost, or stolen, or if the existing format in which the work is stored has become obsolete, if—(1) the library or archives has, after a reasonable effort, determined that an unused replacement cannot be obtained at a fair price; and (2) any such copy or phonorecord that is reproduced in digital format is not made available to the public in that format outside the premises of the library or archives in lawful possession of such copy…”21 §109. Limitations on Exclusive Rights: “Effect of transfer of particular copy or phonorecord (a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord…”22 §121. Limitations on Exclusive Rights: “Reproduction for blind or other people with disabilities (a) notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement of copyright for an authorized entity to reproduce or to distribute in the United States copies or phonorecords of a previously published literary work or of a previously published musical work that has been fixed in the form of text or notation if such copies or phonorecords are reproduced or distributed in accessible formats exclusively for use by eligible persons…”23

Copyright Infringement and Piracy To simplify matters regarding what are often rather obtuse copyright terms, the U.S. Copyright Office created some clear definitions, including the following. “Under the copyright law, the creator of the original expression in a work is its author. The author is also the owner of copyright unless there is a written agreement by which the author assigns

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the copyright to another person or entity, such as a publisher. In cases of works made for hire, the employer or commissioning party is considered to be the author…Publication has a technical meaning in copyright law. According to the statute, ‘Publication is the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. The offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display constitutes publication. A public performance or display of a work does not of itself constitute publication.’ Generally, publication occurs on the date on which copies of the work are first made available to the public. Publication has a technical meaning in copyright law. According to the statute, ‘Publication is the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. The offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display constitutes publication. A public performance or display of a work does not of itself constitute publication.’ Generally, publication occurs on the date on which copies of the work are first made available to the public… As a general matter, copyright infringement occurs when a copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work without the permission of the copyright owner…”24 Merriam-Webster defined piracy as “the unauthorized use of another’s production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright.”25

The Size and Scope of Piracy and Copyright Infringement Fortunately, the U.S. Government, various trade associations, and analysts have addressed the size and scope of copyright piracy and copyright infringement. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has released a series of documents addressing piracy. In the USTR’s 2022 Review of Notorious Market for Counterfeiting and Piracy, the following key points were raised. “Commercial-scale copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting significant financial losses for U.S. right holders and legitimate businesses, undermine critical U.S. comparative advantages in innovation and creativity to the detriment of American workers, and

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pose significant risks to consumer health and safety. The 2022 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy (Notorious Markets List, or NML) highlights prominent and illustrative examples of online and physical markets that reportedly engage in, facilitate, turn a blind eye to, or benefit from substantial piracy or counterfeiting. A goal of the NML is to motivate appropriate action by the private sector and governments to reduce piracy and counterfeiting… Online piracy refers to the practice of uploading, downloading, distributing, or streaming digital copyrighted works over the Internet without the permission of right holders or other legal authorization. Here are some of the most prominent examples of different delivery methods of unlicensed content: streamed content, which is content delivered online without the permission of the copyright owner through applications (apps) running on smart TVs, piracy devices, laptops, or cell phones; stream ripping (also known as ‘de-streaming’), a practice which involves copying content from a streaming platform, including licensed streaming platforms, before converting the content into a downloadable file that serves as a permanent copy any user can use offline; torrents, which allow users to post information about, exchange, and download files containing copyrightprotected content over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks; cyberlockers and cloud services, which are similar to torrents and other P2P networks, except content is stored in the cloud; and online auction sites, which are often used to sell copies of copyright-infringing software applications… The media and entertainment industries rely on copyright protections, including those reflecting standards in U.S. trade agreements that address piracy, in order to ensure their workers are able to make a living wage from their creative productions…”26 For a number of years, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has submitted its annual 301 Report to the USTR. In the IIPA 2023 Special 301 Report on Copyright Protection and Enforcement: Submitted January 30, 2023, to the United States Trade Representative by the International Intellectual Property Alliance, covering the year 2022, IIPA presented the following information about the piracy of books and journals. “Unauthorized photocopying of academic textbooks, and scientific, technical, and medical books, in many markets remains a persistent problem for publishers. Combatting book piracy requires consistent action by law enforcement authorities against entities engaged in unauthorized reproduction of textbooks and other professional books. Counterfeit books continue to be produced for domestic sale in certain

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markets, but they may also be exported to some developed markets. Government agencies and educational institutions (especially those that are state funded or state operated) should do more to promote and adopt appropriate use and copyright policies, and in particular, the use of legitimate textbooks and journal publications, as well as to discourage the use of unauthorized copies of all literary, educational, and professional works in educational settings. Piracy of journal articles is likewise a significant concern for the publishing industry. Piracy sites such as Sci-Hub and the Library Genesis Project (Libgen) and its many mirror sites collaborate to acquire massive amounts of infringing copies of books and journal articles and enable the seamless flow of the illegally obtained content between the two entities, and the multiple Libgen mirror sites…”27 IIPA and the USTR have not released the dollar losses for U.S. or specific European nations related to piracy; however, several organizations have suggested that total U.S. IP losses ranged from $225 billion to as much as $600 billion annually. These totals included all IP losses, including music, filmed entertainment (i.e., motion pictures and television shows), drugs, books, journals, magazines, consumer products (toys and games; etc.), etc. Most of the estimates, unfortunately, centered on book, e-book, or audiobook losses. For example, IIPA did provide an estimate in 2005 that “the U.S. book industry lost an estimated $606 million to overseas copyright pirates.”28 Adam Rowe, in Forbes , estimated that U.S. publishers lost $300 million annually to domestic and foreign e-book pirates.29 Karen Springen, writing in Publishers Weekly, reported that “according to information provided to the Association of American Publishers [AAP] by a number of its members 2 years ago [i.e., in 2012], U.S. publishers across all categories lose $80 million to $100 million annually to piracy… Muso, one of the many piracy-protection companies, has removed more than 580,000 illegal files for publishing clients. ‘Even at a low estimate of 100 downloads per file—apparently the average file is downloaded 300 times—that is potentially almost 60 million downloads,’ says Chris Anderson, Muso’s client manager for publishing.”30 Statista addressed why consumers use pirated products, services, and the most popular pirate websites. One of Statista’s most interesting statistical charts listed the number of visits to media piracy websites in 2020, including: the U.S. (12.5 billion visits); the Russian Federation (8.3 billion); China (6.9 billion); Brazil (5.4 billion); Ukraine (4.3 billion); France (4.3 billion); Turkey (3.9 billion); Vietnam (3.6 billion); and the United Kingdom (3.4 billion).31 Michael Kozlowski reported in 2017

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in Good Reader about recent research released by Digimarc and Nielsen (N.B., aside from tracking the number of television viewers and radio listeners, Nielsen also maintains consumer panels collecting usage and sales data). Their data revealed that “41% of all adult e-book pirates are aged between 18 and 29 but, perhaps surprisingly, 47% fall into the 30 to 44 year-old bracket. The remaining 13% are aged 45 or up. There are also some surprises when it comes to pirates’ income. Cost is often cited as a factor when justifying downloading for free, and this study counter that the average household income that downloads books the most range from $60,000 and $99,000.”32 Assume you use a journal article, perhaps “Capturing Discrete Latent Structures: Choose LDs Over PCs” published in Biostatistics 33 by Taylor & Francis, as an example; the fee to download this article in 2023 was $52.00. If we assume (using the downloading data from Muso listed above) that this article was downloaded illegally 300 times in April 2023 from a “dark website” or a “shadow library,” the publisher lost $15,600. If perhaps 10 other articles in Biostatistics were downloaded illegally 300 times in that same month, Taylor & Francis lost theoretically $171,600. If this pattern of 11 illegally downloaded articles were duplicated for 12 months, then Taylor & Francis lost, again in theory, $2,059,200. One can only imagine what the entire STM journal industry lost in pirated downloads in any year since 2000 with the billions of downloads reported by some industry analysts. While detailed information is not available for annual losses sustained by journal publishers, it is clear, unfortunately, that, for some individuals willing to violate copyright laws, copyright piracy pays, and piracy has been a successful and profitable illegal endeavor for quite some time.34

IP Copyright Litigation in the U.S. There have been a large and growing number of lawsuits related to various IP issues, especially in the area of copyright. James C. Yoon wrote in “IP Litigation in the United States” that, based on the available data [i.e., as of 2016], there were 22,853 copyright cases in the U.S. in the years before 2007. Starting in 2007, the number of copyright cases accelerated, topping 33,481 cases between 2007 and 2016.35 Some of the important copyright cases that were settled in various Federal courts or foreign courts involving STM publishers included the following.

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Sci-Hub The Elsevier v. Sci-Hub case is the largest copyright infringement case in the history of the U.S. and, arguably, in the history of the world.36 This case involved the unprecedented illegal downloading and posting of about 51 million scholarly journal articles (and court documents indicated clearly that the majority of these journal articles were still under copyright protection) and about 1 million books (again the clear majority were still under copyright protection). The case was tried in the United States District Court Southern District of New York (SDNY). During the trial Elsevier Inc. (Elsevier; RELX) maintained that this was a “civil action seeking damages and injunctive relief for: copyright infringement under the copyright laws of the United States (17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq.); and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030, based upon Defendants’ unlawful access to, use, reproduction, and distribution of Elsevier’s copyrighted works. Defendants’ actions in this regard have caused and continue to cause irreparable injury to Elsevier and its publishing partners (including scholarly societies) for which it publishes certain journals….”37 In the various legal documents submitted to U.S. District Court, Elsevier made the following accusations. “Defendant Library Genesis Project is an organization which operates an online repository of copyrighted materials accessible through the website located at the URL ‘libgen.org’ as well as a number of other ‘mirror’ websites (collectively the ‘Libgen Domains’)…. Defendants are reproducing and distributing unauthorized copies of Elsevier’s copyrighted materials, unlawfully obtained from ScienceDirect, through Sci-Hub and through various websites affiliated with the Library Genesis Project. Specifically, Defendants utilize their websites located at sci-hub.org and at the Libgen Domains to operate an international network of piracy and copyright infringement by circumventing legal and authorized means of access to the ScienceDirect database. Defendants’ piracy is supported by the persistent intrusion and unauthorized access to the computer networks of Elsevier and its institutional subscribers, including universities located in the Southern District of New York….”38 Elsevier also maintained that the “defendants have unlawfully obtained and continue to unlawfully obtain student or faculty access credentials which permit proxy connections to universities which subscribe to ScienceDirect, and use these credentials to gain unauthorized access to ScienceDirect…. Defendants have used and continue to

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use such access credentials to authenticate access to ScienceDirect and, subsequently, to obtain copyrighted scientific journal articles therefrom without valid authorization…. Sci-Hub engages in no other activity other than the illegal reproduction and distribution of digital copies of Elsevier’s copyrighted works and the copyrighted works of other publishers, and the encouragement, inducement, and material contribution to the infringement of the copyrights…”39 Elsevier presented information that “the Defendants have also used the Sci-Hub website to earn revenue from the piracy of copyrighted materials from ScienceDirect. Sci-Hub has at various times accepted funds through a variety of payment processors, including PayPal, Yandex, WebMoney, QiQi, and Bitcoin.”40 In what could be best described as an exceptionally unusual, if not borderline bazaar, event, Alexandra Elbakyan, who founded Sci-Hub in 2011 in Kazakhstan, voluntary wrote a letter to the presiding judge (Judge Sweet); and this letter was part of the legal documents in the SDNY case. Elbakyan, who studied in Europe and at Georgia Institute of Technology in the U.S., wrote the following (which is reproduced “as is”). “I am writing to clarify some details on Elsevier v. Sci-Hub…I am the main operator of sci-hub.org website mentioned in the case. That is true that via sci-hub.org website anyone can download, absolutely for free, a copy of research paper published by Elsevier (Elsevier asks for 32 USD for each download). I would like to clarify the reasons behind scihub.org website. When I was a student in Kazakhstan University, I did not have access to any research papers. These papers I needed for my research project. Payment of 32 dollars is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research. I obtained these papers by pirating them…. Later I found there are lots and lots of researchers (not even students, but university researchers) just like me, especially in developing countries. They created online communities (forums) to solve this problem. I was an active participant in one of such communities in Russia. Here anyone who needs research paper, but cannot pay for it, could place a request and other members who can obtain the paper will send it for free by email. I could obtain any paper by pirating it, so I solved many requests and people always were very grateful for my help. After that, I created sci-hub.org website that simply makes this process automatic and the website immediately became popular….”41 Elbakyan also addressed Elsevier’s allegation that the various Sci-Hub units solicited donations. She maintained that while Sci-Hub has received

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financial donations, she rejected the insinuation that she ever pressured anyone to provide any financial support. She then insisted in her letter that “Elsevier, in contrast, operates by racket: if you do not send money, you will not read any papers. On my website, any person can read as many papers as they want for free, and sending donations is their free will. Why Elsevier cannot work like this, I wonder? I would also like to mention that Elsevier is not a creator of these papers. All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold…”42 Elbakyan commented on the “publish or perish” policy at many universities. “If a researcher wants to be recognized, make a career—he or she needs to have publications in such journals. What I [have] written here is not just my opinion—this topic is widely discussed in research community…. The general opinion in research community is that research papers should be distributed for free (open access).”43 In essence, Elbakyan admitted in her letter that she participated in the alleged copyright infringement activities stipulated in this case, effectively providing Elsevier with a legal victory. All of the other defendants in this case did not provide any legal defense or any legal documents. Judge Sweet issued his ruling on October 30, 2015. “The Motion Is Granted: Except for Elbakyan, none of the defendants filed any opposition to the instant motion [i.e., for a preliminary injunction], participated in any hearing or telephone conference, or in any other way appeared in the case. Although Elbakyan acknowledges that she is the ‘main operator of sci-hub.org website’ (Dkt. No. 50 at 1.1), she may only represent herself pro se; since the Website defendants are not natural persons, they may only be represented by an attorney admitted to practice in Federal court… because the Website defendants did not retain an attorney to defend this action, they are in default….”44 Judge Sweet also wrote that “Elsevier has established that the Defendants have reproduced and distributed its copyrighted works, in violation of the exclusive rights established by 17 U.S.C. § 106…”45 Judge Sweet’s ruling contained the following substantive points. “Elsevier has made a substantial evidentiary showing, documenting the manner in which the Defendants access its ScienceDirect database of scientific literature and post copyrighted material on their own website free of

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charge. According to Elsevier, the defendants gain access to ScienceDirect by using credentials fraudulently obtained from educational institutions…. The harm done to the Plaintiffs is likely irreparable because the scale of any money damage would dramatically exceed Defendants’ ability to pay….”46 The court awarded Elsevier $15 million in damages. There was a second Sci-Hub case involving the American Chemical Society (ASC) against Sci-Hub in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDV) requesting $4.8 million in damages from Sci-Hub. As with the SDNY case, Sci-Hub did not defend itself in the EDV court, resulting in a default judgment against Sci-Hub.47 The Judge also ruled that “internet search engines, web hosting sites, internet service providers (ISPs), domain name registrars, and domain name registries cease facilitating ‘any or all domain names and websites through which Defendant Sci-Hub engages in unlawful access to, use, reproduction, and distribution of the ACS Marks [i.e. trade marks] or ACS’s copyrighted works.”48 However, Sci-Hub’s patently illegal copyright infringements did not end with the SDNY or the EDV cases. The illegal acquisition and downloading of scholarly journal articles continued, topping estimates of more than 88 million files.49 By 2019, Brian M. Till, Niclas Rudolfsant, Saurabh Saluja, Jesudian Gnanaraj, Lubna Samad, David Ljungman, and Mark Schrime writing in The Lancet that, based on their research sample, “nearly 1 million articles published by medical journals are downloaded on Sci-Hub each month… The highest download densities in this sample are from middle-income countries.”50 In spite of the illegal status of Sci-Hub, some researchers continued to emphasize the importance of articles on Sci-Hub. Juan Correa, Henry Laverde-Rojas, Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos, Julian Tejada, and Stepan Bahnik wrote in 2020 in an arXiv article about their analysis of data from 12 leading journals in economics, consumer research, neuroscience, and what they called “multidisciplinary” journals. “Articles downloaded from Sci-Hub were cited 1.72 times more than papers not downloaded from Sci-Hub.”51 However, by 2021, international concerns about Sci-Hub’s illegal activities became more intense, including a major litigation against SciHub in India, initiated by ACS, Elsevier, and Wiley, which triggered Sci-Hub to stop illegal downloads onto the Sci-Hub website.52 While the U.S. lawsuits posed some threats to Sci-Hub’s reputation, no financial payments were ever made by Sci-Hub to any of the plaintiffs. However, the litigation in India posed an exceptionally serious threat to Sci-Hub;

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and, for the first time, Sci-Hub decided to mount a serious defense before the Delhi High Court’s Justice Navin Chawla. Sci-Hub was concerned that its services could be blocked in India.53 This prompted Elbakyan to submit a written appeal to the High Court. A number of prominent Indian scholars supported keeping Sci-Hub on line; and they insisted that the loss of Sci-Hub would pose a serious burden on academics and students since blocking Sci-Hub would have a dramatic impact on scholarship and research.54 However, Justice Chawla pointed out that Elbakyan’s written appeal to the High Court indicated clearly that Sci-Hub had “unequivocally admitted” to copyright infringement; and the Court ruled against Sci-Hub and the other defendants. Therefore, access to Sci-Hub in India was blocked.55 However, apparently “hope springs eternal” among copyright infringers. Sci-Hub posted on its website instructions on how to bypass the blocking of its content in India. In addition, in order to ensure global access to Sci-Hub’s vast storehouse of illegal journal articles and books, an individual (or individuals) downloaded some, most, or all of the SciHub material onto “mirror” websites in various parts of the world.56 Other pirated websites emerged, including the infamous but immensely popular Z-Library and Anna’s Archive, which contained pirated books and possibly some journals. Other websites that generated controversy include ResearchGate and the Internet Archive.57

Conclusion The U.S. Congress passed its first copyright law in 1790, and Congress revised it infrequently for the next + 200 years. However, far too many U.S. printers, authors, and publishers were involved in copyright infringements especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Creative Law Center addressed the matter of copyright infringement of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol . “Within two weeks of the publication of A Christmas Carol [in England], volumes reportedly were selling on the streets of New York for pennies. Dickens’s objection to the loss of income as a result of America’s disrespect for his ownership rights was loud and bold.”58 So it appears that copyright infringement problems have been a plague on the publishing industry since that fateful day when Gutenberg printed his first book; and it seems likely that copyright issues will continue to undermine publishers in the coming decades.

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While the STM faced a series of hurdles in the years after 2000, the problems they would confront after 2012 would test the strength and essential stability of the entire sector as they confronted unprecedented challenges to their basic paid subscription business model.

Notes 1. Merriam-Webster Dictionary; https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictio nary/intellectual%20property. 2. The National Archives. The Constitution of the United States; https:// www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript. 3. Cornell University. Cornell Law School. “Intellectual Property;” https:// www.law.cornell.edu/wex/intellectual_property. 4. 35 U.S. C. Title 35 of the United States Code is a title of United States Code regarding patent law; https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/ USCODE-2011-title35/html/USCODE-2011-title35-partII-chap10-sec 101.htm#:~:text=Whoever%20invents%20or%20discovers%20any,and%20r equirements%20of%20this%20title. 5. 35 U.S.C. §101, July 19, 1952, chapter 950, 66 Stat. 797; https:/ /www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title35/html/USC ODE-2011-title35-partII-chap10sec101.htm#:~:text=Whoever%20inve nts%20or%20discovers%20any,and%20requirements%20of%20this%20title. 6. United States Patent and Trademark Office. “Patents and Trademarks;” https://www.uspto.gov/patents. 7. Insights. “RELX Patents—Key Insights and Stats;” https://insights. greyb.com/relz-patents. Also see Joan Farre-Mensa, Deepak Hegde, and Alexander Ljungqvist. “What Is A Parent Worth? Evidence From the U.S. Patent ‘Lottery’,” Journal of Finance 75, 12(April 2020): 639–682. 8. United States Patent and Trademark Office. “Patents and Trademarks;” https://www.uspto.gov/patents. 9. The Lanham (Trademark) Act. Pub. L. 79–489, 60 Stat. 427, enacted July 5, 1946, codified at 15 U.S.C. § 1051 et seq. (15 U.S.C. ch. 22). 10. United States Patent and Trademark Office. “Keeping Your [Trademark] Registration Alive;” https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/maintain/kee ping-your-registration-alive. 11. Cornell University. Cornell Law School. “U.S. Code Title 18;” https:// www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18. 12. United States Department of Justice. “Trade Secrets;” https://www. justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1127-18-usc-1831element-three-information-was-trade-secret. Also cited in the DOJ’s Criminal Resource Manual 1132; JM 9-59.100.

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13. The Copyright Law of the United States and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code; https://www.copyright.gov/title17/ title17.pdf. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. Also see Simone Schroff. “The Purpose of Copyright—Moving Beyond the Theory,” Journal of Intellectual Property 16, 11(November 2021): 1262–1272. 24. U.S. Copyright Office. “Definitions;” https://www.copyright.gov/help/ faq/faq-definitions.html. 25. Merriam-Webster. “Piracy;” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictio nary/piracy. 26. Office of the United States Trade Representative. 2022 Review of Notorious markets form Counterfeiting and Piracy; https://ustr.gov/sites/ default/files/2023-01/2022%20Notorious%20Markets%20List%20(final). pdf. Also see the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center. “Protecting Publish Health and Safety;” https://www.iprcen ter.gov. Charn Wing Wan. “Three Strikes Law: A Least Cost Solution to Rampant Online Piracy,” Journal of Intellectual Law & Practice 5, 4(April 2010): 232–244. 27. International Intellectual Property Alliance. IIPA 2023 Special 301 Report on Copyright Protection and Enforcement: Submitted January 30, 2023, to the United States Trade Representative by the International Intellectual Property Alliance; https://www.iipa.org/files/uploads/ 2023/011/2023SPECIAL301FILING_WEBSITE-1.pdf. Also see International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA). Copyright Industries in the U.S. Economy: 2022 Report; https://iipa.wpengine.com/files/uploads/ 2022/12/IIPA-Report-2022_Interactive_12-2022-1.pdf. Amanda Wilson Denton. “International Copyright Enforcement: The Lasting Value of 20th Century Tools, and the Tools of the Next Generation,” Journal of Intellectual Property & Practice 10, 4(April 2015): 285–291. Marius Schneider. “The Rand Experiment: Don’t Prevaricate—Participate,” Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 7 , 5(May 2012): 301. 28. UPI. “Publishers Lose $600 Million to Piracy;” https://www.upi.com/ Publishers-lose-606-million-to-piracy.

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29. Adam Rowe. “U.S. Publishers Are Still Losing $300 Million Annually to Ebook Piracy;” https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2019/07/ 28/us-publishers-are-still-losing-300-million-annually-to-ebook-piracy/? sh=9cfe9d7319e0. 30. Karen Springen. “What YA [Young Adult] and Authors Can Do to Fight E-Book Piracy;” https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/chi ldrens/childrens-industry-news/article/63357-the-piracy-problem.html. Also see Stephen E. Siwek. “The True Cost of Copyright Industry Piracy to the U.S. Economy;” https://www.ipi.org/ipi_issues/detail/the-truecost-of-copyright-industry-piracy-to-the-us-economy. 31. Statista. “Number of Visits to Media Piracy Sites Worldwide in 2020 By Country (In Billions); file:///C:/Users/angre/Downloads/study_ id42923_media-piracy-workldwide%20(5).pdf. Also see Benoit Godart. “IP Crime: The New Face of Organized Crime: From IP Theft to IP Crime,” Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 5, 5(May 2010): 378–385. Sabesh Asokan. “Demystifing the ‘Honest” Infringer: Reorienting Our Approach to Online Copyright Infringement Using Behavioural Economics,” Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 13, 9(September 2018): 729–743. 32. Michael Kozlowski. “You Would be Surprised Who Pirates E-books the Most;” https://goodreader.com/blog/e-book-news/you-would-besurprised-who-pirates-the-most-e-books. 33. Theresa A. Alexander, Rafael A. Irizarry, and Hector Corrada Bravo. “Capturing Discrete Latent Structures: Choose LDs Over PCs;” Biostatistics 24, 1(January 2023): 1–16; https://doi.org/10.1093/biostatistics/ kxab030. 34. B. Zorina Khan. “Does Copyright Piracy Pay? The Effects of U.S. International Copyright Laws on the Market for Books, 1790–1920;” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 10271; http://www.nber. org/papers/w10271. 35. James C. Yoon. “IP Litigation in United States;” https://law.stanford. edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Revised-Stanford-August-4-2016Class-Presentation.pdf. 36. United States District Court Southern District of New York. Elsevier Inc., Elsevier B.V., Elsevier LTD. Plaintiffs, v. Sci-Hub d/b/a www. Sci-Hub.org, The Library Genesis Project d/b/a Liben.org, Alexandra Elbakyan, John Does 1-99, Defendants. Index No. 15-cv-4282 (RWS). 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid.

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43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51.

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Also see Quirin Schiermeier. “U.S. Court Grants Elsevier Millions in Damages from Sci-Hub;” https://nature.com/articles/nature.2017. 22196. Lindsay McKenzie. “American Chemical Society Moves to Block Access to Sci-Hub;” https://insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/09/06/ American-chemical-society-moves-to-block-acxcess-to-sci-hub. Also see Quirin Schiermeier. “Pirate Paper Website Sci-Hub Dealt Another Blow by U.S. Courts;” https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.22971. Delmeet Singh Chawla. “Court Demands That Search Engines and Internet Service Providers Block Sci-Hub;” https://www.science.org/ content/article/court-demands-search-engines-and-internet-service-pro viders-block-sci-hub. Diana Kwon. “Sci-Hub Loses Domains and Access to Some Web Services;” https://www.the.scientist.com/daily-news/scihub-loses-domain-and-access-to-some-web-services-30264. Daniel S. Himmelstein, Ariel Rodriguez, Jacob G. Levernier, Thomas Anthony Munro, Stephen Reid McLaughlin, Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, and Casey S. Greene. “Research: Sci-Hub Provides Access to Nearly All Scholarly Literature;” https://elifesciences.org/articles/ 32822. Also see Matthew Jones. “Academic Piracy—Where Are We Now?” https://goodreader.com/blog/digital-publishing/academicpiracy-where-are-we-now. Brian M. Till, Niclas Rudolfsant, Saurabh Saluja, Jesudian Gnanaraj, Lubna Samad, David Ljungman, and Mark Schrime. “Who Is Pirating Medical Literature? A Bibliometric Review of 28 Million Sci-Hub Downloads;” http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214109X(18)30388-7/fulltext. Also see Esra Erkal. “Allegations Linking Sci-Hub With Russian Intelligence;” https://www.elsevier.com/connect/ allegations-linking-sci-hub-with-russian-intelligence. Lindsay McKenzie. “Is Sci-Hub Safe?” https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/01/ 17/universities-ignore-growing-concern-over-sci-hub-cyber-risk. Juan Correa, Henry Laverde-Rojas, Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos, Julian Tejada, and Stepan Bahnik. “The Sci-Hub Effect: Sci-Hub Downloads Lead to More Article Citations;” https://arXiv.org/abs/2006.14979. Holly Else. “What Sci-Hub’s Latest Court Battle Means for Research;” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03659-0. Also see Vivek Kumar Singh, Satya Swarup Srichandan, and Sujit Bhattacharya. “What Do Indian Researchers Download From Sci-Hub?” https://arXiv. org/abs/2103.16783. Sidharth Singh. “An Interview with Sci-Hub’s Alexandra Elbakyan on the Delhi Case;” https://science.thewire.in/thesciences/interview-alexandra-elbakyan-sci-hub—elsevier-academic-publis

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52. 53. 54.

55.

56.

57.

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hing-open-access. Brian Owens. “Sci-Hub Downloads Show Countries Where Pirate Paper Site Is Most Used;” https://www.nature.com/art icles/d41586-022-00556-y. Kilian Buehling. “Free Access to Scientific Literature and Its Influence on the Publishing Activity in Developing Countries: The Effect of Sci-Hub in the Field of Mathematics;” https:// asistdi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.24636. Holly Else. “What Sci-Hub’s Latest Court Battle Means for Research;” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03659-0. Meagan Tobin. “Sci-Hub, The Site for Pirated Papers, Is On Trial in India;” https://restofworld.org/2022/sci-hub-trial-india. Nupur Thapliyal. “Delhi High Court Rejects Sci-Hub’s Founder’s Application Seeking Withdrawal of Admission Accepting Copyright Ownership of Publishers;” https://www.livelaw.in/news-updates/delhihigh-court-sci-hub-founder-application-rejection-of-plaint-publishers-cop yright-infringement-suit-221693. Also see Malavika Prassad. “Delhi High Court Rejects Sci-Hub’s Founder’s Plea Seeking Rejecting of Copyright Infringement Lawsuit of Publishing Houses;” https://indianexpress. com/article/cites/delhi/delhi-high-court-sci-hub-founders-plea-copyri ght-infringement-lawsuit-8449291. Balaszs Bodo, Daniel Antal, and Zoltan Puha. “Can Scholarly Pirate Libraries Bridge the Knowledge Access Gap? An Empirical Study on the Structural Conditions of Book Piracy in Global and European Academia;” https://doi.org/10.1371journal.pone.0242509. Riddhi Setty. “Pirate E-Book Site ‘Z-Library’ Shut Down by FBI Seizure;” https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/pirate-e-booksite-shut-down-by-fbi-seizure. Also see The Authors Guide. “Authors Guild Statement on Federal Criminal Indictment of Z-Library Operators;” https://authorsguild.org/news/statement-on-federal-indictmentof-z-library-operators. Ernesto Van der Sar. “Anna’s Archive Opens the Door to Z-Library and Other Pirate Libraries;” https://torrentfreak.com/annas-archive-opensthe-door-to-z-library-and-other-pirate-libraries-221118. Also see Dalmeet Singh Chawla. “ResearchGate Responsible for Illegal Content on Its Web Site—German Court Rules;” https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/ researchgate-responsible-for-illegal-content-on-its-site-german-courtrules/4015240.article. Andrew Albanese. “Publishers, Internet Archive Set for Key Hearing Today;” https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/bytopic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/91796-publishers-internetarchive-set-for-key-hearing-today.html. Erin Mulvaney and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg. “Online-Books Lawsuit Tests the Limits of Libraries;” The Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2023, page B4. Creative Law Center. “Charles Dickens and the American Copyright Problem;” https://creativelawcenter.com/dickens-american-copyright.

CHAPTER 6

The Responses of the Major STM Journal Publishers: 2013–2020

Abstract In spite of these positive growth rates in the STM sector, serious problems emerged that threatened the basic business model of STM publishers. The concerns included: criticism about publisher’s profits; the rapid movement toward digital publications and the related expenses associated with this transformation; widespread support for Plan S and open access; the Nelson Memo; the impact of Covid-19 and the lockdown of most U.S. universities and research facilities; and increases in journal subscription fees. Yet many publishers created some innovative marketing strategies. STM publishers emerged by 2020 with important journals that, overall, generated enough cash flow to support current and projected operations. Keyword Journal subscription fees · Read and publish · Transformative agreements · Michael Porter · Covid-19 lockdown · STM journal marketing strategies

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. N. Greco, The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31964-8_6

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Basic Business Metrics An analysis of the basic and essential scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journal publishing metrics for the years after 2012 (as listed in Table 6.1) was, overall, rather positive when compared to the data for 2000 in Table 4.1. First, there was a −4.78% decline in the number of higher education institutions (2000: 4,182; 2020: 3,982). However, there was a strong +33.8% growth in the total number of faculty members (2000: 1,113,183; 2020: 1,489,415). Second, the increase in the number of students was exceptionally impressive, +22.3% between 2000 (15,927,987) and 2020 (19,480,000). Third, the number of degrees conferred in the U.S. recorded unprecedented rates: bachelor’s degrees +63.84% (2000: 1,244,171; 2020 2,038,431); master’s degrees +89.65% (2000: 473,502; 2020: 898,000); and doctor’s degrees + 61.22% (2000: 119,585; 2020: 192,800). Table 4.1 lists the earlier data, and 6.1 list has the details for 2013–2020. There was a small +3.6% increase in the number of libraries (2000: 3,527; 2020: 3,654). What was rather intriguing was the digital “transformation” of higher education libraries. Between 2015 and 2020, the Table 6.1 U.S. higher education institutions, faculty, students, and degrees: 2013–2020 Year

Total number of higher education Institutions

Faculty

Students

Degrees awarded Bachelor’s

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

4,726 4,724 4,627 4,583 4,360 4,313 4,042 3,982

1,545,381 N/A 1,552,256 N/A 1,545,653 1,543,212 1,548,824 1,489,415

20,376,677 20,209,092 19,988,204 19,846,904 19,765,598 19,828,000 199,222,000 19,480,000

1,812,000 1,836,000 1,855,000 1,870,000 1,886,000 1,902,000 2,012,086 2,038,431

Master’s 756,000 778,000 798,000 817,000 836,000 857,000 879,000 898,000

Doctor’s 174,700 176,600 179,000 182,400 185,200 187,500 190,000 192,800

Sources United States Department of Education (Education). National Center for Education Statistics; https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_317.10.asp; https://nces.ed. gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_315.10.asp; https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tab les/dt21_318.20.asp; https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_310.asp N.B. Data for all years not available. Some data was rounded off and may not always equal 100%

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number of physical books declined −29.74%, but the number of digital books surged +81.88%. The decline in the number of physical journals was rather small down −7.82%; yet the +88.78% growth in e-serial subscriptions surpassed the digital book growth rate. Table 6.2 has the details. Research and development (R&D) data was available only for the years 2013–2019 from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. While strong gains were posted for total U.S. R&D allocations between 2013 and 2019 (+24.59%), the increases in the other sectors were all positive (business +43.9%; U.S. Government +12.72%; and higher education +24.6%). Table 6.3 has the details. Important R&D tallies for the 9 basic STM fields were available from the National Center for Science and Engineering for 2018 and 2019. The 3 largest fields were: health professions (sometimes called the health sciences in various U.S. Government databases) +5.82%; biological and biological sciences +6.02%; and engineering +6.86%. Computer and information sciences were up a sharp +10.0%; geology and earth sciences registered a small decline −0.97%. Table 6.4 has the details. As for the number of STM degrees conferred in the U.S., recently released data indicated that all of the bachelor’s degree categories grew Table 6.2 U.S. higher education libraries total number of libraries, physical and digital books and physical and E-serial subscriptions selected years: 2012 and 2015–2016–2017–2018–2019–2020: collections in thousands for the number of books and serials Year

2012 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Total number of libraries

3,793 4,134 3,999 3,944 3,710 3,697 3,654

Total number of books

Total number of serials

Physical

Physical

N/A 1,036,223 824,767 799,192 752,950 731,008 728,004

Digital 252,599 675,629 748,575 851,536 884,414 1,067,217 1,228,841

N/A N/A 23,578 21,850 23,552 21,096 21,734

E-serial subscriptions N/A N/A 198,432 267,561 268,723 374,425 374,607

Source U.S. of Education (Education). National Center for Education Statistics (NCES); https:// nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_701.40.asp N.B. Data not available for all years

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Table 6.3 U.S. research and development expenditures: 2013–2019 ($ U.S. in million) Year

U.S. research and development expenditures

U.S. research and development by Business

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

67,145 67,351 68,694 71,879 75,278 79,165 83,653 N/A

3,515 3,734 4,009 4,217 4,432 4,721 5,058 N/A

U.S. Government 39,510 38,032 37,911 38,840 40,295 41,909 44,534 N/A

Higher education 67,013 67,199 68,550 71,736 75,134 79,014 86,496 N/A

Source U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce). Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA); https:/ /www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product; National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics; https://nces.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23321 N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%. Data not available for all years Higher education institutions received large amounts of funding from various U.S. Government agencies (e.g., the Department of Defense; the Department of Education; etc.) However, funding from various state and local governments were not included in the totals in this table

Table 6.4 U.S. higher education research and development STM expenditures: 2018–2019 ($ U.S. in billion)

STM field Agriculture and natural resources Biological and biological sciences Computer and information sciences Engineering Health professions (health sciences) Mathematics and statistics Chemistry Geology and earth sciences Physics

2018

2019

3,311 14,512 2,399 12,366 25,773 750 1,866 1,131 2,203

3,428 15,386 2,639 13,214 27,274 769 1,965 1,120 2,324

Source National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics; https://nces.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23321 N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%. Data not available for all years

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significantly between 2013 and 2020, with exceptionally impressive gains in the computer and information sciences area (+90.43%) and the health professions (+42.59%). Table 6.5 has all of the bachelor’s results. The master’s degree results also revealed strong growth rates for the health professions (+49.25%) and the computer and information sciences (+125.15%). The results for mathematics and statistics (+73.05%), an academic area that often languished in the degree conferred category, were very interesting. Table 6.6 has the details. The results for the doctor’s degree category revealed certain parallels with the master’s degree group. The health professions again excelled up +34.49%, and computer and information sciences emerged as a very popular major (+31.62%). However, engineering posted an impressive increase of + 19.19%. Table 6.7 has the totals. A comparison with the 2001 data in Tables 4.4 and 4.5 for these 3 degrees indicated substantial growth rates in every category with very strong increases in the bachelor’s degree and master’s degree groups. However, what was noteworthy was the doctor’s degree area growth rates, when compared to Table 4.6, that impacted the need for scholarly STM articles for tenure, etc. The “smallest” increases were posted by: chemistry (+37.55%); agriculture and natural resources (+40.28%). Strong increases were recorded in: biological and biological sciences (+50.91%); physics (+53.98%); and geology and earth sciences (+70.76%). Yet 4 Table 6.5 Number of STM bachelor’s degrees awarded selected years: 2013– 2015–2017–2019–2020 Degrees Agriculture and natural resources Biological and biological sciences Computer and information sciences Engineering Health professions Mathematics and statistics Chemistry Geology and earth sciences Physics

2013

2015

2017

34,304 100,397 50,961 102,997 180,437 20,449 13,814 5,539 6,082

37,028 109,904 59,986 115,105 215,478 21,854 14,447 6,405 6,658

38,782 116,768 71,416 133,790 236,931 24,075 14,954 6,616 7,112

2019

2020

41,405 41,848 121,233 126,590 68,638 97,047 146,312 148,120 250,618 257,282 26,155 27,216 14,423 14,341 6,344 5,872 7,679 7,673

Source U.S. Department of Education (Education). National Center for Education Statistics (NCES); https://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_325.10.asp N.B. All numbers were rounded off and may not always equal 100%

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Table 6.6 Number of STM master’s degrees awarded selected years: 2013– 2015–2017–2019–2020 Degrees Agriculture and natural resources Biological and biological sciences Computer and information sciences Engineering Health professions Mathematics and statistics Chemistry Geology and earth sciences Physics

2013

2015

2017

6,601 13,300 22,782 45,328 90,668 6,957 2,396 1,845 1,975

6,894 14,655 31,475 51,441 102,584 7,589 2,425 1,955 1,926

7,373 16,282 46,553 60,229 118,712 9,082 2,489 1,940 1,849

2019

2020

7,800 7,393 18,092 18,776 45,671 51,521 55,933 53,485 131,135 135,324 11,382 12,039 2,355 2,238 1,813 1,869 1,961 2,085

Source U.S. Department of Education (Education). National Center for Education Statistics NCES); https://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_325.10.asp N.B. All numbers were rounded off and may not always equal 100%

Table 6.7 Number of STM doctor’s degrees awarded selected years: 2013– 2015–2017–2019–2020 Degrees Agriculture and natural resources Biological and biological sciences Computer and information sciences Engineering Health professions Mathematics and statistics Chemistry Geology and earth sciences Physics

2013

2015

2017

2019

2020

4,264 7,939 1,834 9,467 61,339 1,823 2,617 657 1,740

4,870 8,053 1,998 10,362 67,695 1,801 2,792 681 1,840

4,800 8,087 1,982 10,523 74,454 1,925 2,887 737 1,826

5,064 7,978 2,224 11,351 79,446 2,003 3,044 807 1,873

4,886 7,885 2,414 11,284 82,492 2,020 2,828 806 1,800

Source U.S. Department of Education (Education). National Center for Education Statistics NCES); https://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_325.10.asp N.B. All numbers were rounded off and may not always equal 100%

categories jumped dramatically: mathematics and statistics (+102.61%); engineering (+103.43%); the health professions (+125%); and the tremendous +214.32 surge in doctor’s degrees in the computer and information sciences. Getting accurate data for medical degrees and dentistry degrees has proven to be somewhat of a challenge for the years 2000 to 2020, and

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only recently released data from the Statistical Abstract of the United States 2023 filled in some but not all of the gaps. Data was not available for 2001–2004 and 2006–2007. Clearly, the growth in the medical and dentistry sectors impacted the need for individuals, interested in a teaching or a research position, to publish research articles in major STM journals, preferably with high impact citations. The number of medical schools increased +16.1% between 2000 (118) and 2020 (137), and the number of M.D. degrees grew +29.35% during those same years (2000: 15,286; 2020: 19,773). The total number of dental schools also posted an increase (+18.52%; 2000: 54; 2020: 64); however, the number of D.D.S. degrees and D.M.D. degrees, while much smaller than the number of M.D. degrees, grew an impressive +53.81% (2000: 4,250; 2020: 6,537). Table 6.8 has the available details.

Table 6.8 Number of first professional degrees: medicine (M.D.) and dentistry (D.D.S. and D.M.D.) selected years: 2000–2005–2008–2009 and 2010–2020 Year

Medicine

Dentistry

Number of institutions conferring degrees 2000 2005 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

118 120 120 120 120 120 120 122 124 127 128 131 133 134 137

Number of degrees conferred 15,286 15,461 15,646 15,987 16,356 16,863 16,927 17,264 17,604 18,302 18,409 18,698 19,142 19,423 19,773

Number of institutions conferring degrees 54 53 55 55 55 55 55 56 57 60 61 63 63 63 64

Number of degrees conferred 4,250 4,454 4,795 4,918 5,062 5,071 5,109 5,219 5,407 5,816 5,951 6,388 6,267 6,321 6,537

Source Statistical Abstract of the United States 2023; https://statabs-proquest-com.avoserv2.library. fordham.edu/ftv2/4c4e000002b244ea23; and other years 2013 through 2022 N.B. Data not available for all years

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The Average Paid Subscription Price for Printed STM Journals Overall, printed STM journal subscription prices continued to increase in the years 2013–2017; however, a −4.78% decline was recorded for astronomy journals (2013: $1,947; 2017: $1,854). All of the other journals posted increases, including: biology (+21.27%; 2013: $1,951; 2017: $2,366); botany (+20.54%; 2013: $1,227; 2017: $1,479); and chemistry (+14.26%; 2013: $3,612; 2017: $4,127). The military and naval (engineering) science category, with the lowest subscription rates, generated a +20.28% increase, growing from $424 (2013) to $510 (2017). Table 6.9 has the details. Fortunately, STM journal subscription data was available in April 2023 for 2021 and 2022. The increases posted for the years 2018 through 2022 were higher than those in 2013–2017, probably a reflection of the impact of inflation on plant costs (editorial; art; design; layout; and page makeup), PPB (printing, paper, and binding), warehouse and distribution Table 6.9 Average prices of printed scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2013–2017 ($ U.S.) Category

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Agriculture Astronomy Biology Botany Chemistry Engineering Food science General science Geology Health science Mathematics and computer science Military and naval science Physics Technology Zoology

876 1,947 1,951 1,227 3,612 1,604 1,150 1,109 1,494 983 1,231 424 3,072 1,300 1,186

866 1,771 2,081 1,356 3,708 1,551 1,093 1,109 1,390 1,054 1,251 480 3,083 1,068 1,279

844 1,653 2,105 1,324 3,883 1,590 1,111 1,207 1,487 1,113 1,293 452 3,012 1,123 1,171

930 1,763 2,240 1,399 3,939 1,643 988 1,175 1,563 1,166 1,327 489 3,110 1,077 1,177

988 1,854 2,366 1,479 4,127 1,750 1,198 1,255 1,665 1,241 1,394 510 3,266 1,220 1,337

Source American Library Association. The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS); https://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/spi N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%

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costs, and the other expenses listed in Table 3.4. In addition, there were unusual expenses associated with the Covid-19 lockdown and the disruption in the global transportation system that gripped the world in early 2020. The smallest increases were in zoology (+13.04%; 2018: $1,856; 2022: $2,098); astronomy (+13.35%; 2018: $1,962; 2022: $2,224); and food science (+14.41%; 2018: $1,962; 2022: $2,224). Larger changes were recorded by agriculture (+22.27%); biology (+19.28%); botany (+17.79%); chemistry (+19.59%); engineering (+23.82%); general science (+20.78%); geology (+22.18%); health science (+24.06%); mathematics and statistics (+21.29%); military and naval science (+27.34%); physics (+18.35%); and technology (+17.12%). Table 6.10 has the details. A comparison between the 2000 average prices for printed journals (in Table 4.7) and the 2022 tallies in Table 6.10 revealed significant changes. The following contains the percentage changes for all of the 15 STM journal categories for 2000–2022: agriculture (+825.58%); astronomy (+158%); biology (+212.81%); botany (+509.48%); chemistry (+295.01%); engineering (+290.04%); food science (N/A; data not Table 6.10 Average prices of printed scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2018–2022 ($ U.S.) Category

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

Agriculture Astronomy Biology Botany Chemistry Engineering Food science General science Geology Health science Mathematics and computer science Military and naval science Physics Technology Zoology

1,302 1,962 2,764 1,692 4,763 2,183 1,853 1,492 2,027 1,492 1,545 673 3,723 1,916 1,856

1,385 2,059 2,924 1,787 5,048 2,331 1,956 1,584 2,162 1,583 1,634 735 3,942 2,041 1,953

1,466 2,180 3,073 1,876 5,294 2,480 2,064 1,669 2,293 1,692 1,735 781 4,149 2,160 2,031

1,527 2,139 3,174 1,931 5,448 2,574 2,160 1,732 2,378 1,765 1,789 818 4,271 2,244 2,035

1,592 2,224 3,297 1,993 5,696 2,703 2,120 1,802 2,476 1,851 1,874 857 4,406 2,244 2,098

Source American Library Association. The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS); https://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/spi N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%

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available for 2000–2005; so no comparison could be made with 2000– 2022); general science (+409.04%); geology (+347.74%); health science (+439.65%); mathematics and statistics (+137.82%); military and naval science (+1,763.04%); physics (+192.18%); technology (+451.35%); and zoology (+122.72%).

The Average Paid Subscription Price for Digital Online STM Journals Data was not available for the paid subscription prices for the 15 digital STM journals before 2010; however, recently released tallies for 2010– 2022 were available. Between 2010 and 2014, prices were available in the combined mathematics and computer science segment (−12.65%) and physics (−6.43%). Small increases were posted for chemistry (+9.4%), food science (+5.1%), and technology (+9.68%). The biggest gains were in astronomy (+108.18%), geology (+92.83%), and zoology (+78.77%). The other categories basically hovered in double digit range (e.g., biology +26.79%; botany +19.46%; engineering +21.47%; and health science +24.87%). Military and naval science again generated a significant increase (+41.58%). Table 6.11 has the details for the years 2010–2014. By 2015–2019, the paid digital STM journal subscription increases were in the solid double digit range with no journal posting a decline. While 4 journals had increases in the “20% range” (astronomy +25.04%; botany +24.9%; general science +24.6%; and physics +26.52%), 8 topped “30%” (agriculture +38.65%; biology +33.45%; chemistry +30.72%; engineering +36.83%; food science +34.31%; geology +38.62%; health science +33.36%; and mathematics and computer science +34.34%). The remaining 3 categories posted larger increases (military and naval science +62.5%; technology +68.07%; and zoology +58.81%). Table 6.12 lists the 2015–2019 data. Since only data for 2020–2022 was listed in Table 6.13, the average price increases ranged from a small decline (−0.57% in food science) to 3 very small increases (astronomy +0.66%; technology +2.65%; and zoology +2.75%). All of the other categories were in the single digit range (e.g., biology +7.99%; chemistry +8.59%; health science +8.66%; and physics +6.57%). The only category to reach a double digit number was the military and naval science category (+10.67%). Table 6.13 has the data. A complete review of the annual changes for all 15 digital online STM journals for 2010–2022 revealed very large increases. Mathematics and

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Table 6.11 Average prices of digital online scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2010–2014 ($ U.S.) Category

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Agriculture Astronomy Biology Botany Chemistry Engineering Food science General science Geology Health science Mathematics and computer science Military and naval science Physics Technology Zoology

798 990 1,609 1,326 3,521 1,481 1,451 1,206 711 957 1,455 404 3,533 1,580 796

711 523 1,439 911 3,437 1,427 1,386 847 721 848 1,290 442 3,311 1,510 603

867 1,764 1,698 1,188 3,413 1,568 1,491 1,322 1,354 1,003 1,145 492 3,018 1,939 1,085

767 1,702 1,602 1,087 3,277 1,349 1,308 1,229 1,215 896 1,107 506 3,011 1,511 983

1,135 2,061 2,040 1,584 3,852 1,799 1,525 1,438 1,371 1,195 1,271 572 3,306 1,733 1,423

Source American Library Association. The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS); https://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/spi. N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%.Digital online STM journals were first available for 2010

computer sciences (+32.1%) and physics (+31.7%) were in the “30%” range. All of the others posted larger increases, which certainly caught the attention of librarians and industry analysts, including: botany +52.64%; food science +55.13%; chemistry +64.1% general science +66.58%; technology +76.27%; engineering +81.16%; biology +88.07%; health science +97.91%; and agriculture +98.37%. The remaining 4 STM journals were in the triple digit range, including: military and naval science +138.86%; astronomy +146.97%; zoology +181.66%; and geology +197.89%.

Criticism About Journal Publisher Profits Most of the analysts that presented concerns and/or criticism about scholarly journal publishing concentrated on the library and the journal subscription fees as well as the costs for someone not affiliated with a university or a research facility to access journals because of costs. George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian, viewed the scientific publishing business as a “rip-off.” While he provided an intriguing history of the

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Table 6.12 Average prices of digital online scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2015–2019 ($ U.S.) Category

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

Agriculture Astronomy Biology Botany Chemistry Engineering Food science General science Geology Health science Mathematics and computer science Military and naval science Physics Technology Zoology

991 1,825 2,005 1,454 3,864 1,689 1,603 1,435 1,336 1,217 1,220 504 3,258 1,594 1,306

1,194 2,305 2,177 1,585 4,051 1,791 1,695 1,506 1,559 1,308 1,353 603 3,436 1,551 1,472

1,259 2,436 2,301 1,670 4,295 1,918 1,684 1,612 1,661 1,392 1,430 634 3,634 1,826 1,538

1,283 2,174 2,514 1,727 4,712 2,154 2,049 1,687 1,735 1,532 1,537 746 3,868 2,400 1,950

1,374 2,282 2,677 1,816 5,051 2,311 2,153 1,788 1,852 1,623 1,639 819 4,122 2,563 2,074

Source American library Association. The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS); https://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/spi N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%

development of journals, with an emphasis on the Robert Maxwell years along with material about Elsevier, he insisted that research funded by public organizations (either the state or a public university) was “trapped” behind paywalls. He praised the efforts of Alexandra Elbakyan whom he described as having “done more than any government to tackle one of the biggest rip-offs of the modern era…”1 Monbiot also supported the open access (OA) movement and Plan S which he argued would “from 2020 [onward] research that we have already paid for through our taxes will no longer be locked up. Any researcher receiving money from these funders [e.g., a consortium of European funders] must publish her or his work only in open access journals…”.2 Stephen Buranyi, also writing in The Guardian, discussed the role Robert Maxwell and Elsevier played in the development of scientific journal publishing, and he also supported the developing OA movement in Europe. He maintained that scientists conducted the research and wrote an article about the results “under their own direction— funded largely by governments—and give it to publishers for free… The

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Table 6.13 Average prices of digital online scientific, technical, and medical serials: 2020–2022 ($ U.S.) Category

2020

2021

2022

Agriculture Astronomy Biology Botany Chemistry Engineering Food science General science Geology Health science Mathematics and computer science Military and naval science Physics Technology Zoology

1,454 2,429 2,802 1,893 5,321 2,466 2,264 1,871 1,963 1,743 1,757 872 4,366 2,713 2,182

1,530 2,345 2,897 1,947 5,504 2,567 2,376 1,940 2,033 1,811 1,826 919 4,504 2,822 2,184

1,583 2,445 3,026 2,024 5,778 2,683 2,251 2,009 2,118 1,894 1,922 965 4,653 2,785 2,242

Source American library Association. The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS); https://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/spi N.B. All numbers rounded off and may not always equal 100%

publishers then sell the product back to government-funded institutional and university libraries, to be read by scientists—who, in a collective sense, created the product in the first place.”3 At the end of his long article, Buranyi addressed Elbakyan and Sci-Hub (“the most radical opposition to the status quo”), and he argued that “scientific research should be freely available for anyone to use is a sharp departure, even a threat, to the current system…”.4 One of the most highly cited and influential articles about scientific publishing was “The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era” by Vincent Lariviere, Stefanie Haustein, and Philippe Mongeon. The authors addressed a myriad of substantive issues including consolidation in the scientific journal industry, which they viewed as an “oligopoly,” and the economics of scholarly publisher. They wrote that consolidation increased the market shares of the major publishers (i.e., Elsevier; Springer Nature; Wiley; the American Chemical Society; Taylor & Francis; Sage; and others) was due to “the creation of new journals and existing journals

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being acquired of these publishers,” trends that deeply concerned the 3 authors.5 As for the economics of scholarly publishing, the authors focused primarily on profits and somewhat on journal expenses. They addressed Elsevier. “Between 1991 and 1997, both the profits and profit margins increased steadily for the company [Elsevier] as a whole. While profits more than doubled over that period—from 665M USD to 1451M USD—profit margins also rose from 17 to 26%. Profits margins decreased, however, between 1998 and 2003, although profits remained relatively stable.”6 The authors also focused on “fixed costs.” “Regarding academic journals, fixed or first-copy costs comprise manuscript preparation, selection and reviewing as well as copy-editing and layout, writing of editorials, marketing, and salaries and rent, the two most substantial of which, manuscript writing and reviewing, are provided free of charge by the scholarly community.”7 The authors also commented on “variable costs.” These costs “are paid by the publisher and, as long as journals were printed and distributed physically, these costs were sizable… The digital era exacerbated this trend and increased the potential revenues of publishers…”8 They insisted that “a single journal issue that has been uploaded by the publisher on the journal’s website can be accessed by many researchers from many universities at the same time.”9 The digital journal environment, they believed, “reduces the marginal cost of additional subscriptions to 0…”.10 While persuasive, the authors of this article could have considered the other costs associated with a digital journal as listed in Table 3.5. There were real and sizable costs associated with the creation, constant uploading, and maintenance of a large journal website (e.g., staff wages and fringe benefits; insurance; utility costs; legal fees; etc.). In addition, one could argue that the authors fell into the “marketing myopia” mindset. They addressed successfully the “product,” that is the digital scholarly journal but not the total “market” that a publisher operates in on a daily basis. A review of RELX’s annual report revealed some rather intriguing facts. First, RELX has 4 strategic business units (SBUs): risk, which “combines data and analytics with deep industry expertise to help customers make better decisions and manage risk”; scientific, technical, and medical; legal, which helps “lawyers win cases, manage their work more efficiently, serve their clients better, and grow their practices”; and exhibitions, which allows “a company leverage’ industry expertise.”11

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Second, profit margins varied significantly among the various RELX SBUs. In 2021, the profit margin in the risk SBU was +36.98%; scientific, technical, and medical: +37.79%; legal: +20.54%; and exhibitions: + 1.87%.12 Third, in the scientific, technical, and medical SBU: 11% of the revenues came from print with 89% in the digital category; and 26% of the revenue came from transactional fees; and 74% from subscriptions.13 Fourth, an effective executive of any enterprise must be concerned about the total profit margins of every SBU. When one unit is successful, RELZ had to use some of the profits from the successful SBUs to support the exhibition’s activities. Fifth, a review of RELX’s total market, and not just a single product line (STM journals), is what Ted Levitt argued in his exceptionally important article about the “marketing myopia”—that is, looking at the product and not paying attention to the market.14

The Movement Toward Open Access Journals Many of the critics of the scholarly publishing sector called for the elimination of paid subscriptions and the universal adoption of OA policies, although a few seemed to accept Sci-Hub’s blatant piracy of intellectual property. Interest in and support for OA were influenced by a number of issues including journal subscription fees and the size of many of the STM publishers, but OA was not a new idea. The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory provided a useful history of OA, which started in 1990 with the creation of the first web page, and this was followed in 1991 with the creation of the preprint operation at Los Alamos by Paul Ginsparg; Ginsparg later named this operation arXiv in 1993.15 There were some important OA developments in the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially: the launch of BioMed Central in 2000 “the self-described largest OA publisher; and PubMed Central, a free digital repository for biomedical and life sciences [in 2006]… The Public Library of Science (PLOS) was founded as an alternative to traditional publishing [in 2001]…”16 Other important developments included: the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002 and the important 2008 decision of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) “mandate that research papers resulting from NIH funding must be freely and publicly available through PubMed Central within 12 months of publication.”17 PeerJ was created and launched in 2012. And that year the American Society of Cell Biology issued the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (known as DORA). A number of recommendations were made at the conference

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including “the need to capitalize on the opportunities provided by online publication (such as relaxing unnecessary limits on the number of words, figures, and references in articles, and exploring new indicators of significance and impact… Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact factors… Whether a journal is open-access or subscription-based, remove all reuse limitations on reference lists in research and make them available under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication…”.18

Plan S and Open Access Plan S was launched in 2018 in Europe, and the publicity that this rather detailed plan received impacted the entire journal sector.19 The substantive issues raised in Plan S in 2018 included the following. “Universality is a fundamental principle of science (the term ‘science’ as used here includes the humanities)… Science, as an institution of organized criticism, can therefore only function properly if research results are made openly available to the community so that they can be submitted to the test and scrutiny of other researchers. Furthermore, new research builds on established results from previous research… Publication paywalls are withholding a substantial amount of research results from a large fraction of the scientific community and from society as a whole… Monetizing the access to new and existing research results is profoundly at odds with the ethos of science… There is no longer any justification for this state of affairs to prevail and the subscription-based model of scientific publishing, including its so-called ‘hybrid’ variants, should therefore be terminated. In the twenty-first century, science publishers should provide a service to help researchers disseminate their results. They may be paid fair value for the services they are providing, but no science should be locked behind paywalls! In 2016, the EU Ministers of Science and Innovation, assembled in the Competitiveness Council, resolved that all European scientific publications should be immediately accessible by 2020. As major public funders of research in Europe, we have a duty of care for the good functioning of the science system (of which we are part), as well as a fiduciary responsibility for the proper usage of the public funds that we are entrusted with… We feel that a decisive move towards the realization of Open Access and the complete elimination of publication paywalls in science should be taken now… We have developed Plan S whereby research funders will mandate that access to research publications that are generated through research grants that they allocate,

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must be fully and immediately open and cannot be monetized in any way… The subscription-based model of scientific publishing emerged at a certain point in the history of science, when research papers needed extensive typesetting, layout design, printing, and when hardcopies of journals needed to be distributed throughout the world. While moving from print to digital, the publishing process still needs services, but the distribution channels have been completely transformed. There is no valid reason to maintain any kind of subscription-based business model for scientific publishing in the digital world, where Open Access dissemination is maximizing the impact, visibility, and efficiency of the whole research process….” Obviously, our call for immediate Open Access is not compatible with any type of embargo period. We acknowledge that ‘transformative’ type of agreements, where subscription fees are offset against publication fees, may contribute to accelerate the transition to full Open Access. Therefore, it is acceptable that, during a transition period that should be as short as possible, individual funders may continue to tolerate publications in ‘hybrid’ journals that are covered by such a ‘transformative’ type of agreement….20

Plan S called for the implementation of an OA system by 2021, and an important component of the OA movement was the adoption of Creative Commons licenses related to attribution, share-alike, non-commercial, and no derivative works.21 “cOAlition S,” created in September 2018, is an international consortium of funders dedicated to making the complete and full transition to OA a reality. It worked with a number of important organizations, including: the Luxembourg National Research Fund; the Research Council of Norway; U.K. Research and Innovation; the World Health Organization; and a number of private institutions (e.g., The Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).22

The Response of the U.S. Government to the OA Movement In 2013, the U.S. Government responded to the growing OA movement. John P. Holdren, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, released the Holdren Memo to Federal agencies. “The [Obama]

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Administration is committed to ensuring that, to the greatest extent and with the fewest constraints possible and consistent with law and the objectives set out below, the direct results of federally funded scientific research are made available to and useful for the public, industry, and the scientific community. Such results include peer-reviewed publications and digital data. Scientific research supported by the Federal Government catalyzes innovative breakthroughs that drive our economy. The results of that research become the grist for new insights and are assets for progress in areas such as health, energy, the environment, agriculture, and national security…To achieve the Administration’s commitment to increase access to federally funded published research and digital scientific data, Federal agencies investing in research and development must have clear and coordinated policies for increasing such access… The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) hereby directs each Federal agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government. This includes any results published in peer-reviewed scholarly publications that are based on research that directly arises from Federal funds… It is preferred that agencies work together, where appropriate, to develop these plans. Each agency plan must be consistent with the objectives set out in this memorandum. These objectives were developed with input from the National Science and Technology Council and public consultation in compliance with the America Competes Reauthorization Act of 2010…”.23 The Holdren Memo generated interest in the U.S. Yet it was not until 2022 that a new memo was released by Alonda Nelson, then the Deputy Director for Science and Society Performing the Duties of Director, issued a more sweeping document, known as the Nelson Memo, regarding the Federal funding of research. The Nelson Memo contained the following important points regarding “ensuring free, immediate, and equitable access to Federally funded research…This memorandum provides policy guidance to federal agencies with research and development expenditures on updating their public access policies. In accordance with this memorandum, OSTP recommends that federal agencies, to the extent consistent with applicable law: (1) Update their public access policies as soon as possible, and no later than December 31, 2025, to make publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research publicly accessible without an embargo on their free and public release; (2) Establish transparent procedures that ensure scientific and

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research integrity is maintained in public access policies; and, (3) Coordinate with OSTP to ensure equitable delivery of federally funded research results and data…”.24 The Nelson Memo sparked a great deal of interest. David Crotty, writing in The Scholarly Kitchen, stated that the Nelson Memo “is not publishing policy. There is no relevant direct relationship between those implementing the policy (Federal research funders) and publishers— rather the relationship is between the funder and the funding recipient (and their institution)… Unlike Plan S, this is not a policy intended to regulate (or radically reshape) an industry… What it does is to regulate the conditions required for a researcher to receive Federal research funding…”25 However, it remains to be seen what short-term or long-term impact the Nelson Memo can or will have on academic publishing firms and the OA movement in the U.S.

STM Publishing Confronts a Series of Exceptional Events Since 1665, a series of major and unsettling events impacted STM publishing including: wars; plagues and the deaths of millions of individuals; concentration camps and the deaths of millions of innocent people; discrimination policies; financial and editorial crises; the development of the internet; disruption in the channels of distribution; and copyright infringement issues. However, the events and problems of 2020 were, clearly, a disaster for millions of individuals, publishers, authors, and readers. It started, apparently (although this is the subject of some debate), in mid-December 2019 in China’s Hubei Province when a cluster of patients experienced “the symptoms of an atypical pneumonia-like illness…”26 This illness was later termed Covid-19. By late January 2020, Covid-19 was evident in Washington State and Illinois; in mid-February, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) declared that the Covid-19 outbreak in the U.S. was a public health emergency. By early March, there were new cases of Covid-19 in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, New York, and more than 6 other states. On March, the U.S. administration declared a nationwide emergency.27 Various states then issued shutdowns of schools and retail establishments to prevent the spread of Covid-19, and face masks were mandated for individuals

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going outside their homes.28 Globally, millions of individuals died from Covid-19. Lauren Bauer, Kristen Broady, Wendy Edelberg, and Jimmy O’Donnell, writing in “Ten Facts About Covid-19 and the U.S. Economy” for The Brookings Institution, addressed both the health and economic impact of Covid-19 and the national lockdown. “While voluntary social distancing and lockdowns that took effect in March 2020 worked initially to isolate and drive down infections, these actions precipitated a severe economic downturn. The shock resulting from quarantine, unemployment, and business closures dealt a blow to consumer services… Lockdown measures and social distancing reduced the economy’s capacity to produce goods and services…”29 These authors also reviewed how the Covid-19 crisis “damaged industrial production… This decline poses a host of challenges for the U.S. manufacturing sector, on workers whose jobs cannot be carried out remotely…”30 In addition, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) announced in its “U.S. Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions” document that the U.S. economy entered a recession in February 2020 which ended a period of economic growth in this nation.31 Starting in early to mid-March 2020, American colleges and universities, as well as the majority of research facilities, closed and went remote, and many of these institutions remained remote (often using Zoom or similar services for class instruction and meetings) for the rest of 2020. The impact of closings on students has been analyzed by Kesong Hu, Kaylene Godfrey, Qiping Ren, Shenlian Wang, Xuemei Yang, and Qi Li in “The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on College Students in the U.S.: Two Years Later.” Their research indicated the following. “There was a high prevalence of mental problems among college students, with 95.7% of the sample [of 151 college students; female 76; male 75] experiencing moderate or severe mood disorders… Respondents’ education was severely affected by the pandemic, averaging a score of 7.6 on a scale of 10 when asked how much their learning quality was affected. They showed increased fear, stress, and decreased happiness…”.32 The lockdown also impacted scientific research. Catrin Sohrabi, Ginimol Matthew, Thomas Franchi, Ahmed Kerwan, Michelle Griffin, Jennick Soleil C. Del Mundo, Syed Ahsan, Ali Maliha Agha, and RiazAgha wrote a detailed article addressing the “Impact of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) Pandemic on Scientific Research and Implications

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for Clinical Academic Training.” The authors remarked that the Covid19 pandemic “led to an unprecedented impact on research activities worldwide… Moreover, the introduction of travel restrictions and strict lockdown measures have forced the closure of many institutions and laboratories working on research unrelated to the pandemic. The lockdown has similarly stifled supply chains and slowed research and development endeavors…”33 Regarding scientific research, this article pointed out a significant number of substantive points. First, “as a direct consequence of lockdown measures and the closure of most university research facilities, all research activities and clinical trials unrelated to COVID-19 came to a halt… [and] much of research within the basic sciences involves wet laboratory work, making it difficult for research scientists to transition toward working from home.”34 Second, “many clinical trials have been paused with the exception of those focused on COVID-19.”35 Third, “researchers may be unable to complete essential experiments required for the submission of scientific research… Since research output is often used to make funding decisions, researchers may struggle to obtain the necessary funding to complete their planned research programs, leading many academic contributions to go unrecognized… Many researchers may lose important career development opportunities…”36 Their most important observation related to the problem of gender discrimination. “Lockdown orders have also imposed new challenges for mothers in academia, highlighting the persistence of gender inequality in science alongside the need for equity for all… Researchers have been compelled to work from home; however, female researchers are more likely to shoulder the added responsibilities of childcare and home-schooling.”37 Lastly, the authors commented on the issue of academic publishing.38

The STM Publishing Responses to the Problems Confronting the Industry Michael E. Porter’s “The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy” is one of the most important business articles published in the last 50 years. In this Harvard Business Review article, originally published in 2008, Porter developed what he called a 6 point “methodology” or a “framework” that any strategic manager in any industry could follow in order to gain a competitive advantage in a constantly changing and evolving marketplace. This meant that a manager needed to: (1) evaluate existing economies of scale; (2) determine the firm’s product differentiation in

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order to offer a unique value proposition to current or future customers; (3) ascertain the capital requirements a firm needed to develop and offer a superior product or service; (4) analyze cost disadvantages independent of the size of the enterprise; (5) consider and evaluate existing and new distribution channels; and (6) address current industry regulatory agency rules along with any relevant local, state, and U.S. laws.39 Porter believed that an effective manager, utilizing any or all of the ideas in his framework, needed to develop a competitive edge, a unique value proposition, over rival firms by understanding and addressing what Porter called the “5 Forces,” which included: (1) understanding and coping with supplier power; (2) evaluating any existing barriers to entry; (3) addressing constantly any threat of substitutes of the product or the service then offered by the company; (4) measuring and understanding the constantly changing buyer power of consumers of the firm’s products or services; and (5) measuring and analyzing the existing or future degree of rivalry in the industry or the sector.40 So, the ability of a firm offering an innovative product or service and entering a sector posed a substantial threat to an established firm. However, Porter pointed out that some sectors have developed effective defensive strategies to minimize the impact of new firms entering a market, including: utilizing economies of scale; taking advantage of switching costs to customers; and launching new, innovative restricted distribution channels.41 While not every STM publisher studied with Porter at Harvard, Porter’s ideas about developing a competitive advantage in a marketplace permeated strategy, management, and marketing courses at the vast majority of business schools and influencing several generations of scholars and their writings.42 So what did the STM publishing firms and their executives do to address the problems and issues that emerged since 2012 (and a few that predated 2012)? Drawing on Porter’s framework and the “5 Forces,” it was clear that they crafted a number of different strategies, and apparently, a number of these strategies worked in what was a rather complex and at times a hostile marketplace. The following is not a ranked list of the strategies utilized by some of the major STM publishers. Because of the “legal” impact of the Plan S decisions in Europe, and the recommendations in the Holdren Memo, the vast majority of traditional paid STM subscription journals were converted to “hybrid” journals offering authors an OA option. John Wiley’s website description of a “hybrid” was very similar to ones issued by other firms (e.g., Elsevier; Taylor & Francis; etc.). Wiley offered to an author(s) of an accepted

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journal article the option of: conveying the copyright to Wiley, the traditional method; or allowing the author(s) to utilize the OA option, keep the copyright, and pay an article publishing charge (APC, sometimes called the article processing charge) to publish openly the article in the journal that accepted it for publication. Wiley listed the usual benefits of OA: high visibility of the freely available article; the author(s) can deposit the article in the author(s)’s website or repository; an automatic export of the article to PubMed Central/Europe when appropriate; and Wiley will provide excellent production and peer review. In order to address the financial issues and the capital requirements of a firm involved in the hybrid OA model, Wiley wrote that once the corresponding author (i.e., representing him/her/self or the other author(s) select the OA option on the Wiley website (called the “author service dashboard)) completes the OA transaction, then the OA icon and the Creative Commons license would be listed. So, any reader will know that the article is an OA one. Wiley also provided information about OA and their process.43 Wiley listed all of the APCs for Wiley’s journals, and the APCs varied rather significantly. The APC for their journal Cancer was $4,740.00, and Alzheimer’s & Dementia had a lower APC of $3,000.00.44 Elsevier’s APCs included: The Lancet was $6,500.00; Advances in Integrative Medicine was $1,920.00; and Cell Metabolism had a $8,900.00 APC.45 The STM publishers also monitored the impact of the “publish or perish” policies utilized by many universities and research institutions, and they noticed the steady increase in the annual number of published articles. In 2013, 2,830,367 articles were published; in the following years, the tallies increased sharply, including: 2014: 2,985,367; 2015: 3,142,454; 2016: 3,329,470; 2017: 3,495,294; 2018: 3,841,483; 2019: 4,006,923, 2020: 4,464,142; 2021: 4,640,329; 2022: 4,597,273; the increase between 2013 and 2022 was +62.43%.46 This prompted some publishers to increase the number of issues for a journal, publish special issues, and launch megajournals. The first important megajournal was Plos One in 2003, which was a “new channel of distribution” and a harbinger of the future of journal publishing. John P.A. Ioannidis, Angelo Maria Pezzullo, and Stefania Boccia’s article “The Rapid Growth of Megajournals: Threats and Opportunities” listed some of the major STM publishers offering megajournals, including: Springer Nature (Nature Communications ); BMJ (BMJ Open); Elsevier (Chemosphere; Heliyon); Wolters Kluwer (Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results ); and Lippincott (Medicine US; N.B., Lippincott is a Wolter Kluwer journal operation).

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MDPI, based in Switzerland and founded in the late 1990s, became a major megajournal publisher with almost 400 (e.g., International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health; International Journal of Molecular Sciences ; Journal of Clinical Medicine).47 These authors mentioned that “megajournals, that publish large numbers of articles per year, are growing rapidly across science and especially in biomedicine. In 2022, there were 55 megajournals… totaling more than 30,000 articles (almost a quarter of the biomedical literature that year).”48 These authors also mentioned that many megajournals had high impact factor indices.49 However, some analysts wondered about the future of megajournals. Justin Jackson in “The Death of Open Access Megajournals?” remarked that “open access scientific journals came along with the promise of free access to information. No longer would the availability of research papers be hidden behind paywalls… Instead of subscription fees, these journals charged researchers [APCs] for submitting papers on an individual basis. Megajournals took the open access model and ran with it…”50 Stephen Pinfield, in The Times Higher Education, wrote that in 2013 Plos One published 31,509 articles, and he questioned if megajournals were a “stepping stone” to the future or merely a leap into the abyss?51 Once arXiv became an important preprint repository at Cornell University offering researchers the ability to disseminate their research in a prompt manner, a number of STM publishers became active in this distribution channel. Some of the publishers offering preprint options included: Elsevier (Cell Sneek Peek; created in 2018; SSRN; 1994); the American Chemical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the German Chemical Society (ChemRxiv; 2017); Springer Nature (Research Square; 2018); and the American Geophysical Union, Atypon, and John Wiley (ESSOAr; 2018).52 Another variation of the open access journal model was the “diamond journal,” sometimes referred to as “platinum open access,” or a “noncommercial open access,” or a “cooperative open access.” Regardless of the various names, the basic premise was that a “diamond journal” had no charges or fees for an author(s) submitting an article or a reader(s) of an article. Instead, the “diamond journal” relied on institutional support from perhaps a university, a society, or grants from private foundations to publish and archive the articles. Reiner Kallenborn, in “Towards a New Era of Journal Publishing: The Coalition of Diamond,” argued for the creation of “an international network for the publication of Diamond Open Access journals at universities. As a cooperation of

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scientists, academic associations, and libraries, the Coalition of Diamond Open Access Publishing creates the necessary technical and organizational conditions, infrastructures, and standards for the publication of diamond [that is free] open access jornals.”53 The “diamond journal” concept triggered responses. Jan Erik Frantsvag wrote an interesting article “Diamond is a Scholar’s Best Friend” (which is a slight variation of a famous song written in 1949 by Jule Styne and Leo Robbins’ “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”; Marilyn Monroe sang this song in a 1953 movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ). Frantsvag wrote that “diamond OA journals are 73% of journals in DOAJ.”54 DOAJ, the Directory of Open Access Journals, is a website that hosts a community-curated list of open access journals, and it is maintained by Infrastructure Services for Open Access. It was launched in 2003 with 300 open access journals; by 2020, it hosted about 19,000 OA journals with about 13,000 journals that did not require an APC.55 His “diamond journal” project was called DIAMAS (i.e., Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication), and he either approached or received support or funding from a variety of organizations, including: the University of Barcelona; Science Europe; and the Aix-Marseille Universite (which was coordinating the DIAMAS movement).56 Perhaps the most traditional STM journal strategy employed by publishers was to increase revenues from existing journal operations and mergers and acquisitions. For example, BMJ (an OA journal in the medical sector) reevaluated its total product advertising revenues in 2017. That year their total product advertising revenues were (in £ 000) £3,316. The journal believed that this category could be increased; so they developed a series of models designed to attract more revenues (and ultimately profits) in this important category. By 2000, their efforts worked, and BMJ posted product advertising revenues of £3,867 (+16.62% since 2017).57 Another strategy centered on evaluating the possibility of acquiring either an existing competitor or a smaller niche operation in the STM sector. For example: Wolters Kluwer purchased Lippincott (1990) and Little, Brown’s medical division (1996); Taylor & Francis acquired Bios Scientific Publishers (2003); Elsevier bought BioMedNet, ChemWeb, and Engineering Information (1998).58 Why did publishers buy companies? Jon Treadway and Sarah Greaves wrote in Scholarly Kitchen (a daily email blog from the Society for Scholarly Publishing) that “the story

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of mergers and acquisitions in scholarly communications is one dominated in the last 10 to 15 years [i.e., basically after 2000] by a series of eye-catching vertical acquisitions by publishers, content aggregators, and database providers which have expanded their services. These mergers have blurred traditional roles and reflected a strategy of traditional players moving to become broader providers of analytics and workflow.”59 With the movement toward hybrid and gold OA journals (with APCs), the authors insisted that “Plan S favors scale. Larger entities are better placed to handle the regulation and administrative compliance required…”60 This is why, they believed Taylor & Francis purchased F1000 Research and Wiley acquired Hindawi (which included a number of gold OA journals including Advances in High Energy Physics ). Some STM journals also developed several other innovative marketing strategies. One included the highly publicized “read and publish” agreements. For example, Oxford University Press (OUP) signed “read and publish” agreements with dozens of institutions and consortia. OUP announced that these agreements enabled “the academic publishing community to provide sustainable open access (OA) publishing in [OUP] journals, without limiting author choice… [This will] allow affiliated researchers at participating institutions to: publish accepted articles open access in OUP journals, with their institution covering the open access publication charge.”61 The phrase “read and publish” agreements have also been called “transformative agreements,” an issue discussed by Lisa Janicke Hinchcliff, in the Scholarly Kitchcn, where she also addressed the sometimes confusing phrase “publish and read”; “in contrast a publishand-read agreement is an agreement in which the publisher receives payment only for publishing and reading is included for no additional cost. Again, the library goal is typically a cost-neutral contract.”62 Andrew Albanese in Publishers Weekly used the phrase “transformative agreement” when analyzing an agreement between the University of California and Springer Nature.63

Conclusion The years after 2012 were momentous ones for the entire STM sector. Serious threats emerged that had the potential to undermine, or at least transform, basic business models. While many publishers crafted new, innovative strategies to respond to the various OA rules and regulations, a

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number of substantive issues were either too quickly or perhaps too superficially addressed, including concerns related to the future of scholarly communications, society and university press publishing, gender disparity, as well as diversity issues.

Notes 1. George Monbiot. “Scientific Publishing Is a Rip-off. We Fund the Research—It Should Be Free;” https://www.theguardian.com/com mentisfree/2018/sep/13/scientific-publishing-rip-off-taxpayers-fundresearch. Also see The Guardian Editorial. “The Guardian View on Academic Publishing: Disastrous Capitalism;” https://www.theguardian. com/commentisfree/2019/mar/or/the-guardian-view-on-academic-pub lishing-disastrous-capitalism. 2. Ibid. 3. Stephen Buranyi. “Is the Staggering Profitable Business of Scientific Publishing Bad for Science?” https://theguardian.com/science/2017/ jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science. 4. Ibid. Also see Stephen Curry. “It’s Time for Academics to Take Back Control of Research Journals;” https://www.theguardian.com/highereducation-network/2017/may/25/its-time-for-academics-to-take-backcontrol-of-research-journals. Richard Smith. “The Business of Academic Publishing: A ‘Catastrophe’;” https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/jou rnals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(18)32353-5.pdf. Mark W. Neff. “How Academic Science Gave Its Soul to the Publishing Industry;” https:/ /issues.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Neff-How-Academic-Sci ence-Gave-Its-Soul-to-the-Publishing-Industry-Winter-2020.pdf. Asghar Ghaseni, Parvin Mirmiran, Khosrow Kashfi, and Zagra Bahadoran. “Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine: A Brief History of Scientific Journals;” https://doi.org/10.5812/ijem-131812. 5. Vincent Lariviere, Stefanie Haustein, and Philippe Mongeon. “The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era,” PloS One 10 (6): e0127502; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. Also see Vincent Lariviere, Benoit Macaluso, Philippe Mongeon, Kyle Siler, and Cassidy R. Sugimoto. “Vanishing Industries and the Rising Monopoly of Universities in Published Research;” https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202120. Richard Horton. “Offline: The Crisis in Scientific Publishing,” The Lancet 388 (23 July 2016): 322.

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Marjolein Bot, John Burgemeester, and Hans Roes. “The Cost of Publishing an Electronic Journal;” https://www.dlib.org/dlib/novemb er98/11roes.html. RELX. “RELX Annual Report 2022: Market Segments;” https://www. relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/reports/annualreports/2022-ar-sections/relx-2022-market-segments.pdf. Ibid. Ibid. Rupert Steiner. “How Comic Con’s Owner Is Harnessing Tech to Power Its Stock;” https://www.barrons.com/articles/relx-shareshave-room-to-rise=51553265735?mod=article_inline. Rupert Steiner. “Comic Con’s Owner Is No Joke. How This Publisher Is Morphing into a Data Powerhouse;” https://www.barrons.com/article/comic-consowner-is-no-joke-this-publisher-is-morphing-into-a-data-powerhouse51 672300803. RELX is the owner of Comic Con. Ted Levitt. “Marketing Myopia,” Harvard Business Review 82 (7/8) (July–August 2004): 138–149. Also see Robert H. Hayes & William J. Abernathy. “Managing Our Way to Economic Decline,” Harvard Business Review 85 (7/8) (July–August 2007): 138–149. The New England Journal of Medicine. “Issue Index;” https://www.nejm.org/medicalindex. Every issue of this journal is available back to January 1812, Vol. 1 Number 1. The decision of this journal to understand the needs of the market prompted the journal to allocate the substantial costs to digitize, upload, and maintain this exceptionally important collection of articles. Other publishers have also digitized their entire collections including the Royal Society’s decision to offer readers every issue of Philosophical Transactions back to March 1665 (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/ rstl). Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. “Open Access: History and Policies;” https://cshl.libguides.com/open_access/history_policy. Ibid. Ibid. San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment; https://sfdora.org. Also see John Bohannon. “Hate Journal Impact Factors? New Study Gives You One More Reason;” https://www.science.org/content/article/hatejournal-impact-factors-new-study-gives-you-one-more-reason. Jonathan Gray and Stuart Lawson. “It’s Time to Stand Up to Greedy Academic Publishers;” https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/ 2016/apr/18/why-academic-journals-expensive. Mikael Laakso, Patrik Welling, Helena Bukvova, Linus Nyman, Bo-Christer Bjork, and Turid Hedlund. “The Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from 1993 to 2009;” https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020961. Plan S. “Why Plan S?” https://www.coalition-s.org/why-plan-s. Also see Adam Tickell. “Open Access to Research Publications—2018;”

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https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/774956/Open-access-to-research-public ations-2018. The implementation of Plan S was scheduled to start on January 1, 2021, for all research funded by cOAlition S members. For journal publishers following a “Transformative Arrangements” compliance route, there was a “transition” timeline for journals to still receive article funding by cOAlition S members. Ibid. Also see Rob Johnson. “‘Plan S’ Aims to Transform Scholarly Communication—Will Publishers Be Ready?” https://www.publisherswe ekly.com/pw/by-topic/international/international-book-news/article/ 78432-plan-s-could-transform-scholarly-communication-are-publishersready.html. Robert-Jan Smits, and Rachael Pells. Plan S for Shock; https:/ /library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/52946. Dan Strempel. “STM Publishing and the Rising Threat of Open Access Journals;” https:// blog.marketresearch.com/stm-publishing-and-the-rising-threat-of-openaccess-journals. Plan S. “Principles and Implementation: Part 1: The Plan S Principles;” https://www.coalition-s.org/addendum-to-the-coalition-s-guidelines-onthe-implementation-of-plan-s/principles-and-implementation. This document listed detailed guidance to implement “Plan S.” Creative Common. “Creative Common Licenses;” https://guides.lib.umich.edu/creativec ommons/licenses. Also see Jan De Boer. “Open Access Potential and Uptake in the Context of Plan S—A Partial Gap Analysis;” https://doi. org/10.5281/zenodo.3543000. The Lancet Group. “Plan S: The Final Cut,” The Lancet 393 (8 June 2019): 2276. Bo-Christer Bjork and David Solomon. “Open Access Versus Subscription Journals: A Comparison of Scientific Impact;” https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10. 1186/1741-7015-10-73. cOAlition S. “What Is cOAlition S?” https://www.coalition-s.org/about. Also see European Research Council. “ERC Scientific Council Joins New Effort to Push for Full Open Access;” https://erc.europa.eu/news/ercsupports-full-open-access. Kunal K. Sindhu, Jared P. Rowley, William H. Smith, Anthony D. Nehlsen, Andrew W. Smith, Eric J. Lehrer, Brianna M. Jones, Michael Buckstein, Stanislav Lazarev, and Kenneth E. Rosenzweig. “The Rise of Open Access Journals in Radiation Oncology: Influence on Resident Research, 2015–2019;” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adro. 20220101121. Carol Brayne, Paul O’Mahoney, Joanne Feeney, and Rose Anne Kenny. “The Challenge of Open Access Data,” The Lancet 399 (5 February 2022): 517. John P. Holdren. “Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: February 22, 2013;” https://obamawhitehouse.arc hives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_ 2013.pdf. Holdren’s office was known as the Office of Science and

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25.

26. 27. 28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

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Technology Policy or OSTP. Also see Heather Morrison. “Open Access Legislation in the U.S. and Canada Looks to Prioritise Post-Publication Archiving, Not Publishing Profits;” https://blogs.Ise.ac.uk/usappb log/2013/10/26/open-access-legislation-in-the-us-and-canada-looksto-prioritise-post-publication-archiving-not-publishing-profits. Michael Stebbins. “Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research;” https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/02/22/ expanding-public-access-results-federally-funded-research. Alonda Nelson. “Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: August 25, 2022;” https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-con tent/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSPT-Public-Access-memo.pdf. Also see MIT Libraries. “Ivy Plus Libraries Weigh in on OSTP Guidance on Access to Federally Funded Research;” https://libraries.mit.edu/news/ libraries-support-3/34036. David Crotty. “Speculation on the Most Likely OSTP Nelson Memo Implementation Scenario and the Resulting Publishing Strategies;” https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/10/27/speculations-on-themost-likely-ostp-nelson-memo-implementation-scenario-and-the-result ing-publisher-strategies. Also see Brittany Trang. “White House’s Open Access Research Directive Scrambles Long-Entrenched Models, Raising New Questions;” https://www.statnews.com/2022/10/03/whitwhouse-open-access-directive-scrambles-long-entrenched-models/?utm_ campaign=rss. Virginia Barbour, Dimity Flanagan, and Kim Tairi. “No Turning Back on Global Open Access;” https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj. o2334. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Covid-19 Timeline;” https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html. Ibid. Ibid. Also see Kristian G. Andersen, Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes, and Robert F. Garry. “The Proxinal Origin of SARSCoV-2,” Nature Medicine 26 (2020): 450–452. The Brookings Institution. “Ten Facts About Covid-19 and the U.S. Economy;” https://www.brookings.edu/research/ten-facts-about-covid19-and-the-u-s-economy. Ibid. Also see Elsevier. “First of Its Kind Global Study Finds the Pandemic Widely Increased Public Scrutiny, but Not Understanding, of Scientific Research;” https://www.yahoo.com/now/first-kind-globalstudy-finds-000100332.html. National Bureau of Economic Research. “U.S. Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions;” https://www.nber.org/research/data/us-bus iness-cycle-expansions-and-contractions. Kesong Hu, Kaylene Godfrey, Qiping Ren, Shenlian Wang, Xuemei Yang, and Qi Li. “The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on College Students

6

33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44.

45.

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in the U.S.: Two Years Later;” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020. 114685. Catrin Sohrabi, Ginimol Matthew, Thomas Franchi, Ahmed Kerwan, Michelle Griffin, Jennick Soleil C. Del Mundo, Syed Ahsan Ali, Maliha Agha, and RiazAgha. “Impact of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) Pandemic on Scientific Research and Implications for Clinical Academic Training;” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsu.2020.12.008. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Also see Jocalyn Clark. “How Covid-19 Bolstered an Already Perverse Publishing System;” https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.p689. Holly Else. “How a Torrent of Covid Science Changed Research Publishing—In Seven Charts;” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03564-y. Charles W. Fox and Jennifer Meyer. “The Influence of the Global Covid-19 Pandemic on Manuscript Submissions and Editor and Reviewer Performance at Six Ecology Journals;” https://doi.org/10.1111/13652435.13734. Michael E. Porter. “The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy,” Harvard Business Review 86 (1)(January 2008): 78–93. Ibid. Ibid. Kathryn Rudie Harrigan. “The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Strategic Management: Porter, Michael E. (Born 1947);” https://link.springer. com/referenceworkentry/10.1057/978-1-137-007728_649#:~:text=Por ter’s%20major%20contribution%20to%20strategic,for%20thinking%20a bout%20strategy%20formulation. John Wiley. “Make Your Article Open Access in Hybrid Journals;” https:/ /authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-acc ess/hybrid-open-access.html. Ibid. Also see Elisabeth Shook and Amy Vecchione. “Faculty Perceptions of Open Access Publishing: Investigating Faculty Publishing Habits to Evaluate Library Collection Alignment;” https://www.iastatedigitalp ress.com/jlsc/article/13216/galley/14442/view. Olivier Pourret, David William Hedding, Daniel Enrique Lbarra, Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Halyan Liu, and Jonathan Peter Tennant. “International Disparities in Open Access Practices in the Earth Sciences;” https://doi.org/10.3897/ese. 2021.e63663. Elsevier. “Article Publishing Charges (APC) Price List;” https://www. elsevier.com/about/policies/pricing. Also see Steffen Bernius, Mathias Hanauske, Wolfgang Konig, and Berndt Dugall. “Open Access Models

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47.

48. 49.

50.

51.

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and Their Implications for the Players on the Scientific Publishing Market,” Economic Analysis & Policy 39 (1)(March 2009): 103–115. SCLIT. “Articles per Year;” [email protected]. Also see Heather Morrison, Luan Borges, Xuan Zhao, Tanoh Laurent Kakou, and Amit Nataraj Shanbhoug. “Change and Growth in Open Access Journal Publishing and Charging Trends 2011–2021;” https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24717. John P.A. Ioannidis, Angelo Maria Pezzullo, and Stefania Boccia. “The Rapid Growth of Magejournals: Threats and Opportunities;” https://doi. org/10.1001/jama.2023.3212. Ibid. Ibid. Also see Mike Thelwall and Pardeep Sud. “Scopus 1900–2020: Growth in Articles, Abstracts, Countries, Fields, and Journals;” https:/ /doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00177. Ricardo Jorge Dinis-Oliveira. “OpenAccess Megajournals in Health and Life Sciences: What Every Researcher Needs to Know About This Publishing Model;” https://www.eurekasel ect.com/public/article/120763. Kyle Siler, Vincent Lariviere, and Cassidy R. Sugimoto. “The Diverse Niches of Megajournals: Specialism Within Generalism;” https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24299. Diana Hicks, Matteo Zullo, Ameet Doski, and Omar I. Asensio. “Widespread Use of National Academies Consensus Reports by the American Public;” https://doi.org/ 10.1073/pnas.2107760119. Justin Jackson. “The Death of Open Access Megajournals?” https://phys. org/news/2023-03-death-access-mega-journals.html. Also see Alexander M. Petersen. “Megajournal Mismanagement: Manuscript Decision Bias and Anomalous Editor Activity at Plos One;” https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.joi.2019.100974. Peter Heneberg. “The Troubles of High-Profile Open Access Megajournals,” Scientometrics 120 (November 2019): 733–746. Stephen Pinfield. “Mega-Journals: The Future, a Stepping Stone to it or a Step Into the Abyss?” https://www.timeshighereducation. com/blog/mega-journals-future-stepping-stone-it-or-leap-abyss. Also se Valerie Spezi, Simon Wakeling, Stephen Pinfield, Claire Creaser, Jenny Fry, and Peter Willett. “Open-Access Megajournals: The Future of Scholarly Communication or Academic Dumping Ground? A Review;” https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD06-2016-0082/full/html. Bo-Christer Bjork. “Evolution of the Scholarly Megajournal, 2006–2017;” https://www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov/pmc/art icles/PMC5808309. ASAPbio. “ASAPbio’s List of Preprint Servers;” https://asapbio.org/pre print-servers. Also see Roger C. Schonfeld and Oya Y. Rieger. “Publishers Invest in Preprints;” https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2020/05/27/ publishers-invest-in-preprints. Oya Y. Rieger. “Preprints in the Spotlight;” https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/preprints-in-the-spotlight.

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53. Reiner Kallenborn and Tamara Froehler. “Towards a New Era of Journal Publishing: The Coalition of Diamond;” https://docs.lib.purdue.ed/ iatul/2022/clr/3. 54. Jan Erik Frantsvag. “Diamond is a Scholar’s Best Friend: Diamond Journals and the DIAMAS Project;” https://munin.uit.no/bitstream/han dle/10037/27380/article.pdf?sequence=2. 55. Directory of Open Access Journals. “About DOAJ;” https://doaj.org/ about. 56. Jan Erik Frantsvag. “Diamond is a Scholar’s Best friend: Diamond Journals and the DIAMAS Project;” https://munin.uit.no/bitstream/ handle/10037/27380/article.pdf?sequence=2. Also see Alessia Bardi, Margo Bargheer, Paolo Manghi. “A Discovery Hub for Diamond Open Access Publishing;” https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3365/short12.pdf. Clare Fiala and Eleftherios P. Diamandis. “The Emerging Landscape of Scientific Publishing;” Clinical Biochemistry 50 (12)(August 2017): 651–655. 57. BMJ. “Sources of Revenues;” https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/sou rces-of-revenue. Also see Sumiko Asai. “Changed in Revenue Structure of a Leading Open Access Journal Publisher: The Case of BMC;” https:/ /doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03200-1. 58. Northern Illinois University Libraries. University Libraries Publishers;” https://ulib.niu.edu/publishers/index.htm. 59. Jon Treadway and Sarah Greaves. “Guest Post—One Publisher to Rule Them All? Consolidation Trends in the Scholarly Communications and Research Sectors;” https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/08/03/ guest-post-one-publisher-to-rule-all-consolidation=trends-in-the-schola rly-communications-and-research-sectors. 60. Ibid. Also see Jim Milliot. “Wiley Buys Open Access Publisher for $298 https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by=topic0industryMillion;” news/industry-deals/article/85242-wiley-buys-open-access-publisher-for298-million. 61. Oxford University Press. “Read and Publishing Agreements;” https://aca demic.oup.com/pages/open-research/read-and-publish-agreements. 62. Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe. “Transformative Agreements: A Primer;” https:/ /scholarlkitchen.sspnet.org/2019/04/23/transformative=agreements. 63. Andrew Albanese. “University of California, Springer Nature Sign Groundbreaking Open Access Deal;” https://www.publishersweekly. com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/83601-iniversity-ofcalifornia-springer-nature-announce-groundbreaking-open-access-deal. html.

CHAPTER 7

The Future of STM Journals

Abstract The transformation of science, technology, and medical (STM) journals from a print orientation to a hybrid to a digital only format, along with increased open access (OA) regulations, and criticism about journal prices, taxed the resilience of many STM publishers. However, the purpose of a business has not changed since the dawn of time. It is to understand and satisfy the wants and needs of consumers. Most STM publishers have been doing this successfully since 1665, and it is likely that they will continue to understand and respond effectively to the constantly changing STM marketplace in the years to come. Keywords Student enrollments · Open Access · Publish or perish · APCs · Covid lockdown · ChatGPT · Gender disparity · DEI · Societies · Predatory publishers

Student Enrollments The latest statistical data (available in April 2023) on enrollment projections from the U.S. Department of Education (Education), National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for U.S. undergraduate and graduate and professional schools indicated uneven, and, in some ways unsettling, projections. On the undergraduate level, NCES anticipated declines © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. N. Greco, The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31964-8_7

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Table 7.1 Projected number of U.S. undergraduate and graduate and professional school students: 2021–2030 Year

Undergraduate students

Graduate and professional school students

2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030

17,014,000 16,799,000 16,682,000 16,730,000 16,775,000 16,828,000 16,947,000 17,022,000 17,092,000 17,147,000

3,314,000 3,232,000 3,168,000 3,152,000 3,158,000 3,186,000 3,222,000 3,260,000 3,301,000 3,336,000

Source U.S. Department of Education (Education). National Center for Education Statistics (NCES); https://nces.edu.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cha; and https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indica tor/chb/postbaccalaureate-enrollment. N.B. The totals for 2021–2030 were student projections from NCES for both full-time and part-time undergraduate and graduate and professional school totals

through the end of the 2023 academic year with an upturn starting in 2024. Yet the total gain in enrollment between 2021 (17,014,000) and 2030 (17,147,000) was a minuscule 0.73%. The graduate and professional school enrollment projections from NCES anticipated declines through 2024, with a modest increase in 2025. However, the total increase between the years 2021 (3,314,000) and 2030 (3,336,000) was even a smaller increase (+0.66%) than the projection for undergraduates. Table 7.1 has the NCES projections. Unfortunately, NCES did not release any projections for the number of colleges, faculty members, or the number of undergraduate, graduate, or professional degrees in the STM sectors for the year through 2030.

The Future of Scholarly Research and Publishing Scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journal publishing began rather quietly in January 1665, and, for more than 300 years, the scholarly journal publishing process was well established and, at times, rather predictable. An author conducted research, wrote an article, and submitted it to a journal. The editor and peer reviewers analyzed the article, and, if they found it acceptable, the article was published. Libraries, societies, research institutions, and individuals purchased the

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journal, thereby allowing the publisher to re-coup some of its expenses in publishing a journal. Related to this publishing process, indeed a pivotal feature, were the emergence and wide acceptance of the “publish or perish” (in reality it was a “publish in certain journals or perish”) policy that became the fundamental policy at many universities, research institutions, and funding agencies. If someone published an article in a high impact journal, for example, Chemical Reviews or the Review of Modern Physics , that individual might get hired, tenured, promoted, and/or the recipient of research grants and laboratory facilities.1 The STM publishing world was rather predictable until concerns and criticism emerged that were wide-reaching and basically well-received about a number of substantive issues, including: the size, scope, and finances of the major STM publishing operations (primarily the commercial publishers); the subscription fees charged to libraries and individuals; the fees charged to read a single copy of an article; the idea that all research supported by public taxpayer funds should be free for anyone in the world and not located behind paywalls, in essence a free global open access (OA) model; and governmental and/or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) units needed to issue rules, decrees, policies, and laws stipulating that OA must become the accepted policy in certain jurisdictions. Even if every scholarly journal, in STM, the humanities and the social sciences (HSS), or in the legal, tax, and regulatory (LTR) sector went completely OA today, it is not likely that the “publish or perish” policy will disappear in the foreseeable future. However, a number of important critics have written about: abolishing “publish or perish”2 and/or the wide acceptance of impact factors (and to a degree h-indices) used to determine the importance of a journal and, therefore, the relevance and significance of an author’s article.3 There are many reasons for the presumed longevity of “publish or perish.” It has become a pivotal part of the academic-research fabric; it was easy for deans, department chairs, tenure and promotion committees, and funding organization to evaluate an individual’s significance as a researcher in the STM community. And lastly, but also a relevant fact, some researchers, as described by Clare Fiala and Eleftherios P. Diamandis in Clinical Biochemistry, learned to “play the game” of scientific publishing, that is how to get as many articles published in important high impact journals as fast as possible.4 Davide Castelvecchi’s “Physics

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Paper Sets Record With More Than 5,000 Authors” caught the attention of a number of individuals inside and outside the STM world. He wrote that “a physics paper with 5,154 authors has—as far as anyone knows— broken the record for the largest number of contributors to a single research article. Only the first 9 pages in the 33-page article, published on 14 May [2015] in Physical Review Letters described the research itself—including references. The other 24 pages list the authors and their institutions.”5 The article that Castelvecchi referred to was√“Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in pp Collisions at s= 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS Experiments”; and the first author listed in alphabetical order was G. Aad.6

The Rapid Movement Toward Open Access A number of major steps were initiated and implemented to achieve the publication of STM research supported by tax payer payments. Many of these developments were widely supported by a large and growing number of researchers, librarians, government or NGO personnel, and funding organizations; and many journal publishers, either eager or willing to follow the various OA mandates, announced that some or all of their journal would go OA. For example, in October 2022, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) announced “that it aims to make all fully RSC-owned journals Open Access within 5 years, making it the first chemistry publisher and one of the first society publishers to commit to a fully Open Access future… Free, unrestricted global access to all of the cutting-edge research published in Royal Society of Chemistry journals is a key component of this, aligning with the RSC’s organizational strategy, which highlights the crucial role of collaboration and the open sharing of scientific knowledge in addressing global challenges…”7 The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) announced that “all journals published by the Society will be Open Access (OA) from January 2024… All articles published in the RAS journals portfolio, from the very first volumes published in 1827 to the latest articles, will be free to read in their entirety.”8 The large commercial STM publishers paid a great deal of attention to the various OA guidelines and mandates. By early 2023, the 5 largest commercial publishers published 12,248 journals. Table 7.2 has the ranked list of the 20 largest journal publishers with their journals.

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Table 7.2 List of the 20 largest scientific journal publishers and the number of their journals: 2023

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Publisher

Number of scholarly journals

Springer Taylor & Francis Elsevier Wiley SAGE DeGruyter Oxford University Press Interscience Brill Cambridge University Press Thieme Medknow Emerald MDPI Lippincott, Williams, &Wilkins BioMedCentral IEEE Philosophy Documentation Center Hindawi IGI Global

3,763 2,912 2,674 1,691 1,208 513 500 472 461 422 407 386 377 376 375 306 294 249 243 238

Source Andreas Nishikawa-Pacher. “Who are the 100 largest scientific publishers by journal count? A webscraping approach,” Journal of Documentation 78, 7(2022): 450–463. Also see Yale University Library Research Guides. “Choosing a journal for publication of an article: List of suspicious journals and publishers,” https:// guides.yale.edy/c.php?g=296124&p=1973764. John D. Bowman. “Predatory Publishing, Questionable Peer Review, and Fraudulent Conferences;” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC4315198/pdf/ajpe7810176.pdf. The Yale guide and the Bowman article were utilized to ascertain peer reviewed publishers. N.B. Wiley purchased Hindawi in 2021 for $298 million; however, separate journal counts were listed in this table

Data was available for the citation indices of these top 20 STM journals. While the indices were utilized to determine the top 20, indices were not listed in the following table. The commercial publishers published 8 of the top 10 STM journals. Table 7.3 has the details. So when any of the top 5 commercial publishers moved actively or completely into hybrid or OA, these decisions triggered a seismic change in the entire STM world. For example, as of April 2023, Springer Nature, the largest scholarly publisher with 3,763 journals, offered 622 fully

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Table 7.3 Top 20 science journals based on citation indices: 2022 Rank

Journal Title

Publisher

1

CA- A Cancer Journal for Clinicians

2 3

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology New England Journal of Medicine

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery Lancet Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology Nature Reviews Materials Nature Energy Nature Reviews Cancer Nature Reviews Microbiology Chemical Reviews

12

MMWR Surveillance Summaries

13

JAMA-Journal of the American Medical Association

14

MMWR Recommendations and Reports

15 16

Nature Biotechnology Chemical Society Reviews

17

Reviews of Modern Physics

18 19 20

Nature Medicine Nature Reviews Genetics Nature Reviews Immunology

American Cancer Society Springer Nature Massachusetts Medical Society Springer Nature Elsevier Springer Nature Springer Nature Springer Nature Springer Nature Springer Nature Frontline Medical Communications Center for Disease Control and Prevention American Medical Association Center for Disease Control and Prevention Springer Nature Royal Society of Chemistry American Physical Society Springer Nature Springer Nature Springer Nature

Source SCI Journals List 2022; https://journalrw.org/sci-journal-list, and publisher websites

OA journals (with APCs), and the vast majority of their other journals were hybrid journals.9 Their efforts in the hybrid journal sector indicated that OA articles were downloaded in significant numbers, reaching the 1 million mark in 2021, by individuals inside and outside academic institutions.10 RELX (Elsevier), in April 2023, had 2,674 journals; they offered more than 600 fully OA journals, and all of the rest of their journals were

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hybrid. This publisher indicated that they calculated article processing (or publishing) charges (APCs) on a per journal basis. For example, The Lancet’s APC was $6,500.00.11 Thomas Shaw and Andrew Barker looked at the developments in OA as a “rebalancing of power,” and that a “significant wave across U.K. universities is following, particularly across northern England… So in the arc of the last decade, and, during 2022 particularly, the tectonic plates have shifted towards full and immediate open access, with considerable success.”12 To Chris Bulock, the RSC decision, along with other journals deciding to go OA, meant OA had a bright future, and these OA developments meant that the end of the “big deal” was occurring.13

The Impact of APCs Free and global access became the intellectual bedrock of the OA movement. However, the journal publishers had to generate revenues in the OA world to pay their expenses, which were formidable if they planned to upload old and new articles and maintain functioning computer systems so individuals could read an article. So APCs were required to get an article published, and, as it turned out, the APCs in the most important STM journals, that is the ones with the highest citation indices, cost a lot of money. And articles emerged dealing with the costs of APCs. Juliet Hannay, writing in Phys Org , remarked that “statistics showing 67% of early career researchers [in physics] want to publish open access, but 70% lack the [OA APC] funds to do so from a new global study from IOP [Institute of Physics]…”14 A growing number of analysts also expressed concerns about the impact of APCs. Gunnar Sivertsen and Lin Zhang wrote that STM “publishing is an inextricable part of the research process. As such, we consider the mainstreaming of APCs as a ‘paywall’ to perform research.”15 Aditya M. Limaye believed that “open access publishing is a noble goal that will increase the accessibility of research and concomitantly improve research productivity … The current APCbased OA publishing model has driven increased publishing costs and imposed greater burdens on the already stretched budgets of individual research teams.”16 There were a number of articles about the impact of APCs on the “global south,” including the research of Juan Pablo Alperin in October 2022 in Nature and Diana Kwon in February 2022 also in Nature.17

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A number of “solutions” to the APCs costs emerged. Jeffrey Brainard wrote that “one model for sustaining open access without relying on perarticle [APC] publishing fees comes from Latin America. Brazil and other countries have funded the creation of free open-access journals and article repositories, and the region in 2019 had the world’s highest percentage of scholarly articles available open access, 61%, according to the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative.”18 Sara Rouhi’s answer was the creation of “Community Action Publishing” (CAP). “At its core Community Action Publishing functions similarly to a co-op. Institutional members at each journal community share an equitable portion of the journal’s total publishing costs, based on the publication activity of their authors… The model is currently also supported by non-member fees for publication.” Rouhi believed that “CAP moves Open Access beyond the APC to ensure the sustainability of highly-selected Open Access publishing for all of its stakeholders.”19 Jeffrey Pooley also believed that APCs were “author paywalls in place of reading paywalls…Most scholars cannot afford the steep [APC] fees, a fact masked by the privileged segment who can.” Pooley’s “solution” to the APC situation, somewhat similar to Sara Rouhi’s ideas, centered “on direct support for publishing, drawn from funds currently allotted to subscriptions and APC spending. Call this the collective funding model…” In Pooley’s model, “there is nothing utopian about this premise…It’s a practical mechanism for connecting nonprofit funders with nonprofit publishers—a community-governed coordination tool for a system of many participants…”20 Concerns about APCs prompted many organizations and publishers to provide information about funding opportunities.21 Why did the proponents of open access, and there were literally thousands of them, fail to realize that the commercial, society, and university press journal publishers would have to create a system to finance their OA journals? Rob Anderson looked to the ideas of Richard Poynder for possible answers to this pretty basic business question. “As I understand it, Poynder is making 2 fundamental points, each of which is summed up conveniently in a sentence that can be quoted directly. First, we have re-discovered the truth that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Providing free content and services inevitably requires some form of revenue from somewhere.” Poynder’s second point was equally perceptive albeit somewhat controversial. “We have learned that openness is by no means an unmitigated good… An open and online world creates

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new tasks and costs to obviating old tasks and costs…”22 John Frank, Rosemary Foster, and Claudia Pagliari, writing in Social Science and Medicine, echoed many of Poynder’s ideas regarding OA. Their article was “Open Access Publishing—Noble Intentions, Flawed Reality”; and they wrote that “most research institutions have no funds of their own to pay APC charged by OA journals, when researchers have a paper accepted after peer review; they can act as conduits for research agency funds for that purpose… [And] early career researchers, including graduate students publishing elements of their dissertations… are often not funded by external grants, especially those who have paid their own tuition fees during training, without support from a research funding agency fellowship, and whose supervisor did not hold a grant for that work…”23

Predatory Publishing Nature hates a void, and a large and growing number of unscrupulous individuals launched what were alleged “scholarly journals” that preyed on far too many researchers. Their “publications” were clearly an example of “predatory publishing.” Pulikottil Wilson Vinny, Venugopalan Y. Vishnu, and Vivek Lal’s article in the Journal of Neurological Sciences maintained that predatory publishing was an insidious threat to science, and too many young scientists were an “easy prey to predatory publishing.” They insisted that more awareness within the STM community was needed to address these predatory publishers.24 These serious concerns were addressed by other analysts including: Declan Butler’s Nature article “The Dark Side of Publishing”and Richard Van Noorden’s “The True Cost of Science Publishing” also in Nature.25 Public attention to the menace of predatory publishing emerged with the famous “Beall’s List of Predatory Journals and Publishers.” Jeffrey Beall was a librarian at the University of Colorado, and his list, which he launched in 2008, listed alphabetically a large number of publishers that he believed were predatory operations. The list became controversial, and one firm on the list indicated it would sue Beall and the University of Colorado for $1 billion. Under a great deal of pressure, and facing the specter of major litigation and its related costs, in 2017 Beall removed his list. He then wrote a well-received and highly cited article “What I Learned From Predatory Publishers.” He described the development

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of these predatory journals, and that they “were largely enabled and condoned by the open access social movement, the scholarly publishing industry, and academic librarians…” Beall also listed the attempts of some predatory publishers to get his list removed.26 Fortunately, Beall’s efforts sparked outrage about predatory publishing. Scopus is Elsevier’s abstract and citation database that was launched in 2004. By 2023, Scopus covered about 36,377 journal titles. Because of concerns about predatory publication, it stopped adding content from what it deemed were “flagged titles.27 Other organizations also raised red flags about predatory operations. Bridget C. Conlogue, Neyda V. Gilman, and Louisa M. Holmes wrote “Open Access and Predatory Publishing: A Survey of the Publishing Practices of Academic Pharmacists and Nurses in the United States.” They wanted to “investigate the motivations and rationales of pharmacy and nursing academics in the U.S. to publish in open access journals that may be considered ‘predatory’.” They hoped that their detailed statistical results (they surveyed 4,500 academics generating demographic data, information about academic titles and tenure, and research productivity) “can help administrators, department chairs, faculty mentors, and librarians in raising awareness at their institutions and addressing the problems at the root,” which was the compelling need to “publish or perish.”28 Holly Else outlined the attempts by the World Health Organization (WHO) to monitor published articles about Covid-19 from “more than 380 papers from hijacked journals…”29 Else also reported that “in recent years, journals have retracted hundreds of [STP scholarly] papers over fears that the work contained fabricated data and images…Several private companies have sprung up offering software that can spot potentially manipulated images or flag characteristics that suggest paper-mill-activity… Since 2020, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM)… has been working with publishing companies [including Elsevier, Taylor & Francis] to develop shared standards for software that can detect potential problems with images during peer review…”30 There have always been liars and thieves. All of the efforts to deal with predatory journals were laudatory, but it will take the concerted efforts of the entire STM sector, along with certain governmental organizations, to eradicate the latest version of what is just another confidence game.

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Gender Disparity in STM Publishing Gender disparity existed in STM journal publishing before the impact of the pandemic. Lea Merrone, Komla Tsey, Darren Russell, and Cate Nagle undertook a search of the literature in PubMed, ScienceDirect , PsychINFO, and Google Scholar between the years January 1, 2009, to December 31, 2019. They concluded, based on their review of various articles, that “the gender gap and misogynistic studies remain present in the contemporary literature.”31 Paul Serbo, Sylvain de Lucia, and Nathalie Vernaz, also utilizing a bibliographic analysis of the literature, investigated the “level of gender inequalities in Swiss academic medical research… Our data suggest a ‘leaky pipeline’ phenomenon (a lower proportion of women moving up the academic ladder). In addition, with the exception of the proportion of publications as first author, all bibliographic indices were lower for female than male physicians.”32 Jocalyn Clark analyzed the impact of the pandemic on female researchers. She wrote that “the biases in scientific publishing during the pandemic damaged women’s visibility, recognition, and career advancement… Of the 3 million submissions to major health and medical journals in the first half of 2020, just 36% were from women… The MBJ , for example, recorded a notable reduction in articles from women among 9 specialized journals and 2 large general medical journals it publishes: just 22.9% of the corresponding authors of Covid-19 research manuscripts, submitted from January to May 2020 were women, down from 38.9% of pre-pandemic submissions.”33 Vanessa Bohm, looking at the astronomy academic area, listed many of the concerns and problems female researchers faced during the pandemic. They included: closed research laboratories and offices; “workplace discrimination; lack of encouragement to advance their careers; lack of support in balancing work and family; and lack of role models—might have been amplified during Covid-19.”34 Once researchers returned to universities, research offices, and facilities, probably some time in either mid-to-late 2020 or early 2021, analysts began to investigate gender disparity. Ana-Catarina Pinho-Gomes and Mark Woodward wrote in late 2020 that “the underrepresentation of women at multiple levels of the publishing system has been systematically and compellingly documented across diverse scientific fields over the

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years. Overall, women account for about 1 in 3 first authors and about 1 in 4 last authors of scientific papers… The majority (64%) of tenuretrack faculty are still men… Women’s representation has been consistently lowest in mathematics and computing, and natural sciences…” 35 Janice Hopkins Tanne, writing in BMJ in 2022, stated that “white men predominate as authors of research and original articles in the New England of Journal Medicine (NEJM ), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and The Lancet —a glass ceiling that persists.”36 There are no easy solutions to the problem of gender disparity and discrimination. A number of researchers wrote perceptive and very useful suggestions. Natasha Loder maintained correctly that gender discrimination posed a serious threat to science. She listed the percentage of female members of various national scientific organizations, and her suggestions included the “integration of equal opportunities into policies, systems, structures, programs, and ways of thinking.”37 Kim Eggleton, writing in 2022, believed that an improved system of peer review was needed. “One such approach is double-anonymous peer review, where the identities of authors as well as reviewers are concealed. The Institute of Physics was the first STM publisher to offer double-anonymous peer review across all our propriety journals. The move is part of our dedication to tackle inequality in the scholarly publishing process.”38 Sara Berg was concerned about inequality in medical research. Her suggestions included: getting more women to “participate in clinical research” since women account for 51% of the U.S. population; “colleagues and medical students need mentorship from experienced [female] physicians and health care professionals”; and “sponsorship, mentorship, and scholarship are all interrelated. But little progress will be made on the issue unless this information is seen in [female] scholarship.”39 Laura Norton and Ale Palermo studied the academic field of chemistry. They wrote that “it is now generally recognized that, to achieve the very best outputs, the scientific community requires diverse inputs and talents; however, progress is still slow [in 2021]. Whilst collectively the chemical sciences have made some progress to improve equality, diversity, and inclusion in relation to gender, there is still a long way to go. Today chemistry does not yet welcome everyone.”40

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STM Publishing McKinsey & Co. is a global firm that provides strategy and management consulting services, including advice on crafting an acquisition, developing a plan to restructure a sales force, creating a new business strategy, or providing guidelines on downsizing. They defined diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as “three closely linked values held by many organizations that are working to be supportive of different groups of individuals, including people of different races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, genders, and sexual orientations.”41 While gender disparity issues have been a major concern in the STM sector, implementing effective DEI guidelines, programs, and procedures also has been the focus of attention in the entire publishing industry, in the various professional organizations, and in the scientific, technical, and medical fields. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) issued reports in 2020 and 2022 concerning racism in science and their efforts to address this problem.42 The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) created a DEI committee to “raise awareness around the issues of DEI” in order to “help build a more inclusive community for all SSP members and their workplaces.”43 The Council of Science Editors believed that “journals can take steps towards achieving the important goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”44 The Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC), comprised of 10 trade and professional associations, “was formed to discuss and address issues of diversity and inclusion within our industry.”45 Medical organizations also addressed DEI issues and concerns. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) issued a well-received and useful DEI toolkit of resources.46 The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) created working DEI groups of students and professionals and a detailed list of resources available to ASA members.47 The large STM publishers created a variety of guidelines. Elsevier outlined its steps to promote and advance “diversity, equity, and inclusion through the research and publishing process, in collaboration with our editors, society partners, the research community, and other publishers, via the joint commitment for action and inclusion and diversity in publishing.”48 Springer Nature’s mission “is to open doors to discovery, enabling millions of researchers, teachers, clinicians, and other professions to access, trust, and make sense of the latest insights…We believe that DEI are essential to achieving this mission.”49 Wiley also crafted policies

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to “advance DEI initiatives to achieve long-term organizational success,” a position that paralleled the efforts of Taylor & Francis.50

Learned Societies, Academic Libraries, and the Future of STM Publishing Societies have been the lynch-pin in STM publishing since 1665. They produced some of the most important journals and published immensely important research papers, in the history of STM publishing, and, for decades, their place was secure. But Aileen Fyfe in 2023 wondered if societies need journals. “As journal publishing has become a global undertaking and moreover, an undertaking that is increasingly mediated through online digital interactions… [Fyfe] asks do we need to rethink the structure of the learned societies that underpin them?”51 However, concerns emerged in recent years about the future of societies publishing journals because of: the rapid acceptance of Plan S; the U.S. Government’s Nelson’ Memo; and the announcement of John Wiley (among others) to create what it called “Wiley Partner Solutions.” Jeffrey Brainard, writing in Science, remarked that “by 2024, Plan S will allow grantees to publish papers only on platforms that offer immediate open access and cap the fee that open access publishers can charge a paper’s authors.” Brainard maintained that “Plan S requirements will disproportionately hurt the selective journals that many societies publish.”52 Roger Schonfeld wrote that the Nelson “policy guidance should provide the major expansion in open access that many U.S. libraries have sought through advocacy and lobbying efforts via SPARC and other organizations.”53 Robert Harington, from the American Mathematical Society (AMS), wrote that AMS performs its “own production, operate our own digital platform, provide in-house customer service, and—amazingly—even have own print shop and warehouse.”54 Both Schonfeld and Harington wondered how societies will handle the “zero embargo” provision of the Nelson Memo, and they were not alone in pondering this pithy question. The answer for some societies, for example the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), was to transfer all production and back-office functions to utilize the services of Wiley.55 The Royal Society, and some other societies, may be able to handle both Plan S and the Nelson Memo requirements. However, the scale (e.g., front-office and back-office functions) offered by many of the large commercial publishers was a viable answer to the inherent costs, and

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possibly burdens, of a society publishing a journal. At the end of the day, it is possible that Plan S and the Nelson Memo might not be the panacea many individuals hoped for, and it is equally possible that the large commercial publishers might actually increase their presence in the STM sector because of Plan S and/or the Nelson Memo. Academic libraries are another important institution beseeched by financial and managerial concerns. W. Lee Hisle, writing in the Association of College and Research Library’s (ACRL) College & Research Libraries News , listed the major issues confronting academic libraries in the U.S. His list included: “the recruitment, education, and retention of librarians; the role of the library in the academic enterprise; the impact of information technology on library services; the creation, control, and preservation of digital resources; chaos in scholarly communications (i.e., the need for fair scholarly communication models as copyright laws change or are reinterpreted and challenges to fair-use in a digital context); the support of new users; and higher education funding.”56 These basic concerns were also listed in a series of major library reports from The Library Journal ,57 the Association of Research Libraries,58 and the Library Journal’ s “College Student Library Usage Survey 2022.”59 The ACRL’s “2021 ACRL Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey” provided detail data about academic library budget allocations at 1,533 libraries, and the news was not uplifting. For example, budget allocations for salaries at these 1,533 libraries declined from an average of $1,711,588 in 2019 to $1,592,965 in 2021 (−6.93%); materials and services in 2019 stood at $1,586,424, dropping to $1,554,980 in 2021 (−1.98-%); operations and maintenance in 2019 $435,986 to $341,675 in 2021 (−21.63%).60 Based on data from various library associations, the problems plaguing academic libraries will only be exacerbated in the coming years.

ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence, and the Rise of the Machines Rockwell Anyoha wrote a perceptive article about “The History of Artificial Intelligence.”61 He addressed Alan Turing’s pivotal question that has haunted computer science research, and other fields, since 1949. “Can machines think?”62 It took several decades, and a number of substantive developments in computer technology, before artificial intelligence (AI) emerged from computer labs into use in business and industry. Most

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individuals viewed AI as a useful tool to make sense of large batches of data, perhaps consumer purchases of consumer package goods or credit card purchases. Yet out of the blue on November 30, 2022, something called “ChatGPT,” a chatbot, emerged as another version of the “butterfly effect” that has whipsawed STM publishing since January 1665, and it generated a sizable amount of attention because of its alleged ability to create responses, sometimes detailed responses, about many different fields of knowledge. Ethan Mollick, in the Harvard Business Review on December 14, 2022, (just 2 weeks after the launch of ChatGPT), described ChatGPT “a powerful chatbot that can communicate in plain English using an updated version of its AI system… This model has crossed a threshold; it’s genuinely useful for a wide range of tasks, from creating software to generating business ideas to writing a wedding toast… [and]writing weight-loss plans and children’s books…”63 That comment about “writing children’s books” certainly turned out to be true if not an upsetting prediction. By January 18, 2023, just about 6 weeks after its debut, Chris Stokel-Walker in Nature remarked that ChatGPT “has taken the world by storm… racking up at least 4 authorship credits on published papers and preprints…Journal editors, researchers, and publishers are now debating the place of such AI tools in the published literature, and whether it’s appropriate to cite the bot as an author.”64 Brian Lucey and Michael Dowling on January 27, 2023, in Phys Org , wrote that “some of the world’s biggest academic journal publishers have banned or curbed their authors from using the advanced chatbot ChatGPT.”65 It was perhaps inevitable that other concerns would emerge regarding ChatGPT. Carol Mullins Hayes, on December 15, 2022, in an SSRN paper, addressed the copyright issues.66 Michael Liebrenz, Roman Schliefer, Anna Boadze, Dinesh Bhugra, and Alexander Smith believed that using ChatGPT posed ethical issues in the medical publishing field.67 By February 9, 2023, Chris Stokel-Walker and Richard Noorden addressed what they viewed as the serious problems of ChatGPT and STM publishing.68 These issues were also stipulated in an editorial in Nature on January 26, 2023. “As researchers dive into the brave new world of advanced AI chatbots, publishers need to acknowledge the tools’ legitimate uses and lay down clear guidelines to avoid abuse.”69 The uses and misuses of ChatGPT are a history yet to be written.

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Conclusion Since January 1665, journal publishers and editors confronted a series of unbelievable opportunities and depressing setbacks and events. Clearly, this industry has been resilient in adopting new technologies, channels of distribution, and business models. Yet certain problems and concerns remain in addition to the ones listed in this chapter. They include, for example, the following. How will the journal sector address the issue that Holly Else called, the “Multimillion-Dollar Trade in Paper Authorship Alarms Publishers.”70 Should journals pay reviewers?71 How can authors “reclaim control over scholarly Publishing?72 How will the STM community deal with issues related to open science and open data?73 What role will “overlay” journals play in the changing landscape?74 The “poet laureate” of the Bronx, NY, Yogi Berra, once said “the future isn’t what it used to be.”75 As usual, Yogi Berra was correct. The future of STM publishing is not what it used to be because of the serious “butterfly effects” it confronted since 2000, but it has a pretty secure future in spite of the herculean problems, and some interesting opportunities, that it will confront and address in the coming years.

Notes 1. Meredith T. Niles, Lesley A. Schimanski, Erin C. McKiernan, and Juan Pablo Alperin. “Why We Publish Where We Do: Faculty Publishing Values and Their Relationship to Review, Promotion, and Tenure Expectations;” https://journals.plos.org/olosone/article?id=10.1371/journal. pone.0228914. Also see. Seema Rawat and Sanjay Meena. “Publish or Perish: Where Are We Heading?” https://www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC3999612/pdf/JRMS-19-87.pdf. Phil Clapham. “Publish or Perish;” BioScience 55, 5(May 2005): 390–391. 2. Editorial in Phys Org. “Principles to Enhance Research Integrity and Avoid ‘Publish or Perish’ in Academic;” https://phys.org/news/202007-principles-perish-academic.html. Also see Thomas Lemberger, Bernd Pulverer, Kelly Sheehan-Rooney, and Fiona M. Watt. “Funding: End ‘Publish or Perish’ for Postdocs;” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41 586-022-01541-1. Jigisha Patel. “Research in Progress Blog;” https:/ /blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2015/05/28/publish-perish-alt ernative. Richard Vedder. “Publish or Perish Can Become Publish and https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardvedder/2021/05/10/ Perish;” publish-or-perish-can-become publish-and perish/?sh = 6ee78d553af2.

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5. 6.

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Mohammed Gad-el-Hak. “Publish or Perish—An Ailing Enterprise?” https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1712503. Chris Woolston. “Grants and Hiring: Will Impact Factors and H-Indices Be Scrapped?” https://nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02984-2.m Also see Chris Woolston. “Impact Factor Abandoned by Dutch University in Hiring and Promotion Decisions;” https://www.nature.com/art icles/d41586-021-01759-5. May R. Berenbaum. “Impact Factor Impacts on Early Career Scientist Careers;” https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10. 1073/pnas.1911911116. Alan Fersht. “The Most Influential Journals: Impact Factor and Eigenfactor;” https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10. 1073/pnas/1509912112. Bernard Becker Medical Library. “Tools for Authors: What is the H-Index?” https://beckerguides.wustl.edu/aut hors/hindex#:~:text=The%20h%20index%20is%20a%20metric%20for% 20evaluating%20the%20cumulative,have%20not%20yet%20been%20cited. “The h-index is a metric for evaluating the cumulative impact of an author’s scholarly output and performance; measures quantity with quality by comparing publications to citations. The h-index corrects for the disproportionate weight of highly cited publications or publications that have not yet been cited.” Clare Fiala and Eleftherios P. Diamandis. “Playing the Game of Scientific https://www-sciencedirect-com.avoserv2.library.fordham. Publishing;” edu/sdfe/pdf/download/eid/1-s2.0-S0009912019307593/first=pagepdf. Also see Stuart Quan and Jonathan Frederick Borus. “Publish or Perish: Tools for Survival;” https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/321 17012. Davide Castelvecchi. “Physics Paper Sets Record With More Than 5,000 Authors;” https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.17567. G. Aad, et al. “Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in √ pp Collisions at s = 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS Experiments;” https://journals.aps.prg/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett,114. 191803. Also see Andrew Plume and Daphne van Weijen. “Publish or Perish? The Rise of the Fractional Author;” https://blog.scielo.org/en/ 2014/10/02/publish-or-perish-the-rise-of-the-fractional-author-origin ally-published-on-the-elsevier-newsletter-research-trends-issue-38. Royal Society of Chemistry. “Royal Society of Chemistry Commits to 100% Open Access;” https://www.rsc.org/news-events/articles/2022/ oct/rsc-oa-commitment. Royal Astronomical Society. “Royal Astronomical Society Announces All Journals to Publish as Open Access From 2024;” https://ras.ac.uk/ news-and-press/news/royal-astronomical-society-announces-all0journals 0publish-open-access-2024. Also see The Royal Society. “Royal Society Open Science;” https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos. 171511.

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9. Springer Nature. “Open Access Journals;” https://www.springernature. com/gp/open-research/journals-books/journals. 10. Springer Nature. “Assessing the Open Access Effect for Hybrid Journals;” https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/about/oa-effecthubrid. Also see Porter Anderson. “The Open Access Race: Springer Nature Announces One Million Articles;” https://publishingpersectives. com/2021/12/the-open-access-race-springer-nature-announces-one-mil lion-articles. Porter Anderson. “Berlin’s Springer Nature: Open Access Up 40% in Transformative Journals;” https://www.publishingperspect ives.vom/2022/06/springer-nature-open-access-up-40-percent-in-transf ormative-journals. 11. Elsevier. “Article Publishing Charge (APC) Price List;” https://www.els evier.com/authors/open-access. Also see Elsevier. “Pricing;” https://Els evier.com/search-results. 12. Thomas Shaw and Andrew Barker. “Open Access in Scholarly Publishing: Where Are We Now;” https://www.researchinformation.info/feature/ open-access-scholarly-publishing-where-are-we-now. 13. Chris Bulock. “Open Access and the End of a Big Deal;” https://doi. org/103.1080/00987913.2022.2082237. 14. Juliet Hannay. “Majority of Early Career Researchers in Physical Science Want to Publish Open Access, But Face Financial Barriers;” https:// phys.org/news/2022-07-majority-early-career-physical-science.html. Also see Chris Woolston. “U.S. Faculty Members Support Open Access Publishing in Broad Survey;” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586022-02070-7 15. Gunnar Sivertsen and Lin Zhang. “Article Processing Charges (APCs) and the New Enclosure of Research;” https://blogs. ise.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2022/08/11/article=processingcharges-apcs-and-the-new-enclosure-of-research. Also see Thomas Klebel and Tony Ross-Hellauer. “The APC-Effect: Stratification in Open Access,” file:///C:/Users/angre/Downloads/ Klebel-Ross-Hellauer%20-%20APC%20Effects%2,020,221,014.pdf. 16. Aditya M. Limaye. “Article Processing Charges May Not Be Sustainable for Academic Research;” https://sciencepolicyreview.org/wp-content/ uploads/securepdfs/2022/08/MITSPR-v3-191618003003.pdf. Also see Faranah Osman and Johan Rooryck. “Research: Professional Notes;” https://researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-views-of-europe2022–9-a-fair-pricing-model-for-open-access. 17. Juan Pablo Alperin. “Article-Processing Charges Weaken Open Access;” file:///C:/Users/angre/Downloads/d41586-022–03,201-w.pdf. Diana Kwon. “Open -Access Publishing Fees Deter Researchers in the Global South;” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00342-w. Also see Andrea Powell, Rob Johnson, and Rachel Herbert. “Achieving An

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Equitable Transition to Open Access for Researchers in Lower and Middle-Income Countries;” https://www.elsevier.com/icsr/perspectives/ equitable=transition-to-open-access. Jeffrey Brainard. “Open Access Takes Flight;” https://www.science. org/content/article/new-mandate-highlights-costs-benefits- making-allscientific-articles-free-read. Also see Jessica Lange. “Removing Author Fees Can Help Open Access Journals Make Research Available to Everyone;” https://phys.org/news/2022-08-author-fees-access-journals. html. Sara Rouhi. “Open Access Doesn’t Need APCs Part 1: Charting a New Course With Community Action Publishing;” https://theplosblog.plos. org/2022/01/open-access-doesn’t-need-apcs-part-1. Jeffrey Pooley. “Can We Use Collective Funding to Reclaim Scholarly Publishing?” https://science.thewire.in/the-science/collective-fun ding-reclaim-scholarly-publishing. Roy Kaufman. “Guest Post—Missing Revenue in the Global Flip: Getting the Open Access Math Right;” https://scholarlykitchen.ssp net.org/2022/09/28/guest-post-missing-revenue-in-the-global-flip-get ting-the-oa-math-right/?informz=1&nbd=cacObdb3-a45d-4b94-970353ed3dc77df6&nbd_source=informz. Also see Bo-Christer Bjork. “Why Is Access to the Scholarly Journal Literature So Expensive?” https:// preprint.press.jhu.edu/portal/sites/ajm/files/21.2editorial.pdf. Springer Nature. “Funding & Support Services:” https://www.springernature. com/gp/open-research/funding. Rick Anderson. “The Tyranny of Unintended Consequences: Richard Poynder on Open Access and the Open Access Movement;” https://sch olarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/11/25/the-tyranny-of-unintended-conseq uences-richard-poynder-on-open-access-and-the-open-access-movement. John Frank, Rosemary Foster, and Claudia Pagliari. “Open Access Publishing—Noble Intention—Flawed Reality;” https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.socscimed.2022.115592. Also see Leigh-Ann Butler, Kisa Matthias, Marc-Andre Simard, Philippe Mongeon, and Stefanie Haustein. “The Oligopoly’s Shift to Open Access: How For-Profit Publishers Benefit from Article Processing Charges;” https://docdrop.org/download_ann otation_doc/OligopolyOA-preprintsv1-tf03t.pdf. Pulikottil Wilson Vinny, Venugopalan Y. Vishnu, and Vivek Lal. “Trends in Scientific Publishing: Dark Clouds Loom Large;” Journal of Neurological Sciences 363 (April 2016): 119–120. Declan Butler. “The Dark Side of Publishing;” https://www.nature. com/articles/495433a. Ricrard Van Noorden. The True Cost of Science Publishing:” https://www.nature.com/articles/495426a.

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26. Jeffrey Beall. “What I Learned From Predatory Publishers;” https://doi. org/10.11613/BM.2017.029. Also see Declan Butler. “Sham Journals Scam Authors;” Nature 495 (March 2013): 421–422. 27. Dalmeet Singh Chawla. “Hundreds of ‘Predatory’ Journals Indexed on Leading Scholarly Databases;” http://www.nature.com/articles/d41586021-00239-0. 28. Bridget C. Conlogue, Neyda V. Gilman, and Louisa M. Holmes. “Open Access and Predatory Publishing: A Survey of the Publishing Practices of Academic Pharmacists and Nurses in the United States;” Journal of the Medical Library Association 110, 3(July 2022): 294–304. 29. Holly Else. “Hijacked-Journal Tracker Helps Researchers to Spot Scam Websites;” www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01666-3. 30. Holly Else. “Paper-Mill Detector Put to Test in Push to Stamp Out Fake Science;” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04245-8. Also see L. Simon Linacre. “The Predatory Effect: Understanding the Past, Present, and Future of Deceptive Academic Journals.” www.http:// doi.org/10.2998/mpub.12739277. Xiaoying Shi, Alison Abritis, Rujeev P. Patel, Milcas Grewal, Ivan Oransky, Joseph S. Ross, and Joshua D. Wallach. “Characteristics of Retracted Research Articles About Covid19 vs. Other Topics;” http://jamanetwork.com/journalls/jamanetworko pen/fullarticle/2797029. Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA). “About OASPA;” https://oaspa.org/about. Open Scholarly Publishing Association. “Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing;” https://oaspa.org/principles-of-transparency-andbest-practice-in-scholarly-publishing-4. 31. Lea Merrone, Komla Tsey, Darren Russell, and Cate Nagle. “Sex Inequalities in Medical Research: A Systematic Scoping Review of the Literature;” Women’s Health Reports 3, 1(2022): 49–59. 32. Paul Sebo, Sylvain de Luca, and Nathalie Vernaz. “Gender Gap In Medical Research: A Bibliographic Study in Swiss University Hospitals;” https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03741-w. 33. Jocalyn Clark. “How Pandemic Publishing Struck a Blow to the Visibility of Women’s Expertise;” https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj.p788. 34. Vanessa Bohm. “Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Publishing in Astronomy in the Initial Two Years;” https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550022-01830-9. 35. Ana-Catarina Pinho-Gomes. “How Long Are We Going to Accept Stark Gender Imbalance Across the Publishing System?” https://www.csescienc eeditor.org/article/how-long-are-we-going-to-accept-stark-gender-imbala nces. 36. Janice Hopkins Tanne. “While Male Authors Still Dominate Top Academic Medical Publishing, Two Studies Report;” https://www.bmj. com/content/377/bmj.o1044.

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37. Natasha Loder. “Gender Discrimination ‘Undermines Science’;” file:// C:/Users/angre/Downloads/46379.pdf. 38. Kim Eggleton. “Can Offering Choice to Researchers Reduce Researcher Bias?” https://phys.org/news/2022-09-choice-bias.html. 39. Sara Berg. “There’s Gender Bias in Medical Research. Here Are 3 Keys to Fix it;” https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care-health-equity/there-sgender-bias-medical-research-here-are-3-keys-fix-it. 40. Laura Norton and Ale Palermo. “Breaking the Barriers—Toward a More Inclusive Chemical Sciences Community;” https://doi.org/10.1515/pac2021-0502. 41. McKinsey & Co. “What is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?” https:// www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-divers ity-equity-and-inclusion. 42. American Association for the Advancement of Science. “2022 Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Report;” https://www.aaas.org/diversity-equity-inc lusion. 43. Society for Scholarly Publishing. “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Commitment;” https://www.sspnet.org/about-us/deia-com mitment. 44. Council of Science Editors. “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Scholarly Publishing;” https://www.coincilscienceeditors.org/2-7-diversity-equ ity-and-inclusion-in-scholarly-publishing. 45. Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Publishing. “About the Coalition;” https://c4disc.org. This Coalition includes + 120 members including: the Association of University Presses; the genetics Society of America; the Manchester University Press; Elsevier; Springer Nature; and Wiley. 46. American Association of Medical Colleges. “Diversity And Inclusion Toolkit Resources;” https://www.aamc.org/professional-development/ affinity-groups/cfas/diversity-inclusion-toolkit/resources. 47. American Society of Anaesthesiologists. “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion;” https://www.asahq.org/education-and-career/asa-medical-student-com ponent/diversity-equity-and-inclusion. Also see Angel Mendez. “What Does DEI in Research Look Like?” https://med.umn.edu/news/whatdoes-dei-research-look. Elizabeth Mamo, Hemant Kalia, and Richard Alweis. “How Are We DEI-ing?’ Advances in Clinical Medical Research and Healthcare Delivery 2, 1(2022): 1–5. 48. Elsevier. “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Publishing at Elsevier: An Author Guide;” https://www.elsevier.com/authors/policies-and-gui delines/edi. 49. Springer Nature Group. “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion:’ https://group. springernature.com/gp/group/taking-responsibility/diversity-equity-inc lusion.

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50. John Wiley. “The Future of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 2021;” https://beyond.wiley.com/hubfs/Wiley_The-Future_of_Diversity_ Equity_and-Inclusion_2021_ResearchReport_hrdotcom_.pdf. Also see Taylor & Francis. “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion;” https://taylorand francis.com/about/corporate-responsibility/diversity-and-inclusion. 51. Aileen Fyfe. “Do Journals Need Societies, and Do Societies Need Journals;” https://www.recentiprogressi.it/archivio/3981/articoli/39639. 52. Jeffrey Brainard. “Scientific Societies Worry Plan S Will Make Them Shutter Journals, Slash Services;” https://www.science.org/content/ article/scientific-societies-worry-plan-s-will-make-them-shutter-journalsslash-services. 53. Roger Schonfeld. “How Will Academic Handle the Zero Embargo?’ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet/2022/09/27/academic-zero-embargo. 54. Robert Harington. “Equity, Inclusiveness, and Zero Embargo Public Access;” https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/10/04/equity-inclus iveness-and-zero-embargo-public-access/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet. org/2022/10/04/equity-inclusiveness-and-zero-embargo-public-access. 55. Angela Cochran. “The Beginning of the End of Publisher-Society Partner Contracts;” https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/10/24/the-beg inning-of-the-end-of-publisher-society-partner-contracts. Also see Porter Anderson. “Springer Nature Partners With Germany’s EMBO Journals;” https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/03/springer-nature-partnerswith-germanys-embo-journals. 56. W. Lee Hisle. “Top Issues Facing Academic Libraries: A Report of the Focus on the Future Task Force;” https://crin.acrl.org/index.php/cri news/article/view/18396/20767. 57. Amy Rea. “LJ’s State of Academic Libraries Survey Reveals Challenges, Priorities;” https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/LJs-State-ofAcademic-Libraries-Survey-Reveals-Challenges-Priorities. Also see Lisa Peet. “The Price of Pandemic: Budgets and Funding 2021;” https://lib raryjournal.com/?detailStory=The-Price-of-a-Pandemic-Budgets-and-Fun ding-2021. 58. Cynthia Hudson Vitale and Judy Ruttenberg. “Investments in Open: Association of Research Libraries U.S. University Member Expenditures on Services, Collection, Staff, and Infrastructure in Support of Open Scholarship;” https://www.arl.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/ 11/investments-in-open. 59. Library Journal. “College Student Library Usage Survey Report 2022;” https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/ljs-college-student-library-usagesurvey-reveals-positive-views-inconsistent-egagement. 60. Laura Rose Taylor. “2021 ACRL Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey;” https://crin.acrl.org/index.php/crinews/article/view/25850/ 33784.

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61. Rockwell Anyoha. “The History of Artificial Intelligence;” https;// sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/history-artificial-intelligence. 62. Alan M. Turing. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence;” https://red irect.cs.umbc.edu/courses/471/oaoers/turing.pdf. 63. Ethan Mollick. “ChatGPT Is A Tipping Point For AI;” https://hbr.org/ 2022/12/chatgpt-is-a-tipping-point-for-ai. 64. Chris Stokel-Walker. “ChatGPT Listed As Author on Research Papers: Many Scientists Disapprove;” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586023-00107-z. 65. Brian Lucey and Michael Dowling. “ChatGPT: Study Shows AI Can Produce Academic Papers Good Enough for Journals–Just As Some Ban It;” https://phys.org/news/2023-01-chatgpt-ai-academic-papers-good. html. Also see Ian Sample. “Science Journals Ban Listing ChatGPT As CoAuthor on Papers;” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/kan/ 26/science-journals-ban-listing-of-chatgpt-as-co-author-on-papers. 66. Carol Mullins Hayes. “Did A Robot Write This Title? Creativity, Ownership, Justice, and Copyright Law;” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers. cfm?abstract_id=4304470. 67. Michael Liebrenz, Roman Schliefer, Anna Boadze, Dinesh Bhugra, and Alexander Smith. “Generating Scholarly Content With ChatGPT: Ethical Challenges for Medical Publishing;” https://doi.org/10.1016/S25897500(23)00019-5. 68. Chris Stokel-Walker and Richard Van Noorden. “The Promise and Peril of Generative AI;” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-003 40-6. 69. Nature Editorials. “Tools Such As ChatGPT Threaten Transparent Science; Here Are Our Ground Rules;” https://www.nature.com/art icles/d41586-023-00191-1. 70. Holly Else. “Multimillion-Dollar Trade in Paper Authorship Alarms Publishers,” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00062-9. 71. Jeffrey Brainard. “The $450 Question: Should Journals Pay Per Reviewers;” https://www.science.org/content/article/450-question-sho uld-journals-pay-perr-reviewers. 72. Wilhelm Peekhaus. “A Call to Reclaim Control Over Scholarly Publishing;” Journal of Information Ethics 25, 2(Fall 2016): 20–41. 73. Joshua M. Pearce. “Why We Need Open-Source Science Innovation— Not Patents and Paywalls;” https://phys.org/news/2022-12-open-sci ence-innovationnot-patents-paywalls.html. Digital Science. “The State of Open Data 2022;” file:///C:/Users/angre/Downloads/Rge-State-ofOpen-Data-2022-Report_%20(1).pdf.

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Index

A Abernathy, William J., 44 Academic libraries, 141 2021 ACRL Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey, 141 ACS, 85 Advances in High Energy Physics , 118 Advances in Integrative Medicine, 115 Advertising rates, 43 Agha, Ali Maliha, 112 Agriculture, 56, 101–103 Agriculture and natural resources, 19, 52, 97 Ahsan, Syed, 112 Aix-Marseille Universite, 117 Albanese, Andrew, 118 Alperin, Juan Pablo, 133 Alvarado, Frances M., 39 Alzheimer’s Association, 23 Alzheimer’s & Dementia, 23, 24, 115 America Competes Reauthorization Act of 2010, 110

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 15, 20, 139 American Cancer Society, 12 American Chemical Society (ASC), 12, 85, 105, 116 American Geophysical Union, 116 American Heart Association, 12, 23 American Mathematical Society (AMS), 140 American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), 139 American Society of Cell Biology, 107 American Society of Civil Engineer, 12 Anderson, Chris, 80 Anderson, Rob, 134 Anna’s Archive, 86 Anyoha, Rockwell, 141 APC, 115, 117, 118, 133 Article 1 §8, 70 Article publishing charges (APCs), 32, 62 Article repositories, 134

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. N. Greco, The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31964-8

165

166

INDEX

Artificial intelligence (AI), 141 ArXiv, 33, 62, 85, 107, 116 Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), 139 Association of American Publishers (AAP), 80 Association of College and Research Library (ACRL), 141 Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), 140 Association of Research Libraries (ARL), 55, 141 Astronomy, 56, 57, 100–103, 137 Atlantic, The, 60 Atomic bombs, 17 Atypon, 116 Average subscription prices, 56

B Bachelor’s degrees, 34, 48, 51, 94, 95, 97 Bahadoran, Zagra, 15 Bahnik, Stepan, 85 Barker, Andrew, 133 Bauer, Lauren, 112 Beall, Jeffrey, 135 Beall’s List of Predatory Journals and Publishers, 135 Bepress, 71 Berg, Sara, 138 Bergstrom, Theodore C., 43, 58 Berra, Yogi, 143 Bhugra, Dinesh, 142 Big deal, 32, 54–56, 58, 59, 63, 133 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 109 Biographical Memories , 15 Biological and biological sciences, 51, 95, 97 Biology, 38, 56, 100–103

Biology Letters , 15 Biology Open, 63 BioMed Central, 107 BioMedNet, 117 Bios Scientific Publishers, 117 Biostatistics , 81 Bjorn, Bo-Christer, 62 Blackwell, 18 Bletchley, 17 BMC Research Notes, 63 BMJ, 115, 117, 138 BMJ Open, 63 Boccia, Stefania, 115 Bohm, Vanessa, 137 Botany, 57, 100–103 Brainard, Jeffrey, 134, 140 Brazil, 80 Breslauer, George, 60 Brill, 15 British Medical Journal , 15 Broady, Kristen, 112 Brookings Institution, The, 112 Brown, Patrick, 62 Budapest Open Access Initiative, 107 Bulock, Chris, 133 Bundling of journals, 54, 59, 64 of services, 54 Buranyi, Stephen, 104, 105 Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), 48 Business expenditures, 49 Butler, Declan, 135 Butterfly effect, 13, 33, 44, 55, 64, 142

C CA—A Cancer Journal for Clinicians , 12, 54 Callaos, Nagib, 39 Cancer, 115

INDEX

Capturing Discrete Latent Structures: Choose LDs Over PCs, 81 Case conferences, 32 Case reports, 32 Castelvecchi, Davide, 129 CD-ROMs, 33 Cell Metabolism, 115 Cell Sneek Peek, 116 Chaos theory, 13 ChatGPT, 142 Chawla, Navin, 86 Chemical Reviews , 12, 129 Chemical Society Reviews , 12 Chemistry, 38, 51, 52, 56, 57, 97, 100–103, 138 ChemRxiv, 116 ChemWeb, 117 China, 80 China’s Hubei Province, 111 Christensen, Clayton M., 44, 64 Christmas Carol, A, 86 Chronicle of Higher Education, The, 59 Circulation, 12 Circulation Research, 23, 24 Clark, Jocalyn, 137 Clinical Biochemistry, 129 CNN, 54 Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC), 139 Coalition of Diamond Open Access Publishing, 117 cOAlition S, 109 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 107 Cold War, 17 College & Research Libraries News , 141 College Student Library Usage Survey 2022, 141 Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in pp Collisions at



167

s = 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS Experiments, 130 Commercial academic publishers, 53 Commercial publishers, 56 Community Action Publishing (CAP), 134 Competitive advantage, 54 Competitiveness Council, 108 Computational Mechanics , 12 Computer and information sciences, 52, 95, 97, 98 Computer and information technology, 19 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 82 Congress, 18, 70 Conlogue, Bridget C., 136 Constitution of the United States, 70 Cooperative open access, 116 Copyright infringement, 78, 82, 86 Copyright issues, 142 Copyright piracy, 78, 81 Cornell Law School, 70 Cornell University, 62 Correa, Juan, 85 Council of Science Editors, 139 Courant, Paul N., 58 Covid-19 lockdown, 101 Covid-19 pandemic, 111, 113, 136, 137 Creative Commons, 115 Creative Commons licenses, 109 Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication, 108 Creative Law Center, 86 Crotty, David, 111 Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative, 134

D Dark Side of Publishing, The, 135

168

INDEX

Dark website, 81 Das, Anup Kumar, 60 Deaking, Elizabeth, 60 Death of Open Access Megajournals, The, 116 Defense, 20 Delhi High Court, 86 Del Mundo, Jennick Soleil C., 112 de Lucia, Sylvain, 137 Dental schools, 99 Dentistry degrees (D.D.S. and D.M.D.), 20, 98, 99 Dentistry schools, 20 de Sallo, Denis, 13 Design patents, 71 Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication (DIAMAS), 117 Diamandis, Eleftherios P., 129 Diamond is a Scholar’s Best Friend, 117 Diamond journal, 116 Dickens, Charles, 86 Digimarc, 81 Digital journal, 39 Digital transformation, 94 Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, 109 Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), 117 Disruption, 64 Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), 139 Doctor’s degrees, 20, 34, 48, 52, 94, 97 Domestic subscribers, 43 Dowling, Michael, 142

E Eastern District of Virginia (EDV), 85

Economic Espionage Act (EEA) of 1996, 73 Edelberg, Wendy, 112 Editorials, 32 Eggleton, Kim, 138 Einstein, Albert, 16 Eisenstein, Elizabeth, 15 Elbakyan, Alexandra, 63, 83, 84, 86, 104, 105 Electronic serial expenditures, 48 Else, Holly, 136, 143 Elsevier, 34, 71, 72, 82–85, 104–106, 114–117, 132, 136, 139 Elsevier v. Sci-Hub, 82 Energy, 20 Engineering, 19, 51, 52, 95, 97, 98, 101–103 Engineering Information, 117 Engineer, The, 15 Enrollment projections, 127 E-serial subscriptions, 95 ESPN, 54 ESSOAr, 116 Estelami, Hooman, 43 EU Ministers of Science and Innovation, 108 Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles, 58

F F1000 Research, 62, 118 Faculty Advisory Council to the [Harvard University] Library, 61 Faculty members, 34, 48, 94 Fair use, 75 Federal Government, 110 Fermi, Enrico, 16 Fiala, Clare, 129 Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy, The, 113 5 Forces, 114

INDEX

Fixed costs, 106 Flint, Joe, 54 Food science, 57, 101–103 Forbes , 80 Foreign subscribers, 43 Foster, Rosemary, 135 “4Ps” of marketing, 44 France, 80 Franchi, Thomas, 112 Frank, John, 135 Frantsvag, Jan Erik, 117 Future of the Library, 60 Fyfe, Aileen, 140

G Garfield, Eugene, 23, 24 Gender disparity, 137 General science, 20, 56, 57, 101–103 Geology, 57, 101–103 Geology and earth sciences, 51, 95, 97 German Chemical Society, 116 Ghasemi, Asghar, 15 G.I. Bill, 18, 19 Gilman, Neyda V., 136 Ginsparg, Paul, 107 Global south, 133 Gnanaraj, Jesudian, 85 Godfrey, Kaylene, 112 Gold OA journals, 118 Good Reader, 81 Google, 33 Google Scholar, 137 Graduate and professional school enrollment, 128 Greaves, Sarah, 117 Greco, Albert N., 43 Green Open Access model, 33 Griffin, Michelle, 112 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 48, 49

169

Groves, Leslie, 17 Guardian, The, 60, 64, 103, 104 H Hannay, Juliet, 133 Harnard, Steven, 33 Harvard Business Review, 113, 142 Harvard Business School case study, 63 Harvard Library, 61 Harvard University Library, 60 Hayes, Carol Mullins, 142 Hayes, Robert H., 44 Health, 20 Health professions, 51, 52, 95, 97, 98 Health sciences (medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy), 17, 19, 57, 95, 101–103 Heliyon, 115 Higher education institutions, 94 libraries, 48, 55, 94 R&D expenditures, 49 Hijacked journals, 136 Hindawi, 118 Hisle, W. Lee, 141 History of Artificial Intelligence, The, 141 Holdren, John P., 109 Holdren Memo, 109, 110, 114 Holmes, Louisa M., 136 Home computers, 33 Houghton, John, 59 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The, 109 Howard, Jennifer, 59 Hprints, 62 Hu, Kesong, 112 Humanities and the social sciences (HSS), 129 Hybrid, 118, 131 Hybrid journals, 32, 114, 132

170

INDEX

I IEEE Access, 63 IIPA 2023 Special 301 Report on Copyright Protection and Enforcement: Submitted January 30, 2023, to the United States Trade Representative by the International Intellectual Property Alliance, 79 Impact of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) Pandemic on Scientific Research and Implications for Clinical Academic Training, 113 Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on College Students in the U.S.: Two Years Later, The, 112 India, 85 Infrastructure Services for Open Access, 117 Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business, The, 64 Inside Higher Education, 60 Institute of Physics, 138 Instructional and departmental research, 20 Intellectual property (IP), 70 patent, copyright, trademark and trade secrets, 70 Interface, 15 International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, 136 International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), 79, 80 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 116 International Journal of Molecular Sciences , 116 Internet Archive, 86

Internet browsers, 33 Ioannidis, John P.A., 115 IOP (Institute of Physics), 133 IP Litigation in the United States, 81 IP losses, 80 Iron Curtain, 18

J Jackson, Justin, 116 JAMA—Journal of the American Medical Association, 54 JMIR Preprints, 62 Jones, Robert F., 43 Journal citation, 24 Journal des Scavans , 4, 13, 32 Journal impact factor, 23 Journal of Clinical Medicine, 116 Journal of Neurological Sciences , 135 Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results , 115 Journal of Structural Engineering , 12 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 12, 138 Journals, 12

K Kallenborn, Reiner, 116 Kashfi, Khostow, 15 Kazakhstan, 83 Kerwan, Ahmed, 112 King, Donald W., 39 Kozlowski, Michael, 80 Kwon, Diana, 133

L Lal, Vivek, 135 Lancet, The, 12, 72, 85, 115, 133, 138 Lanham Act, 72 Lariviere, Vincent, 105

INDEX

Laverde-Rojas, Henry, 85 Legal, tax, and regulatory (LTR), 129 Letters to the editor, 32 Levitt, Ted, 107 Libgen Domains, 82 Libgen.org, 82 Librarian’s budget, 55 Libraries, 43 Library funding, 55 Library Genesis Project (Libgen), 80, 82 Library Journal, The, 141 Library of Congress, 34 Life sciences, 19, 51 Limaye, Aditya M., 133 Lin Zhang, 133 Lippincott, 117 Lippman, Thomas W., 63 Ljungman, David, 85 Loder, Natasha, 138 Lorentz, Edward N., 13 Los Alamos, 62, 107 Los Alamos National Laboratory, 33 Lucey, Brian, 142 Luxembourg National Research Fund, 109 M Mabe, Michael, 16, 24 MacKie-Mason, Jeffrey, 39 Manhattan Project, 17 Mark, 72 Marketing myopia, 106 Marketing strategy, 24 Market power, 54 Marmolejo-Ramos, Fernando, 85 Massachusetts Medical Society, 12 Master’s degrees, 20, 34, 48, 51, 94, 97 Mathematics, 19, 51 Mathematics and computer science, 102, 103

171

Mathematics and computing, 138 Mathematics and statistics, 51, 52, 57, 97, 98, 101, 102 Matthew, Ginimol, 112 Maxwell, Ian Robert, 18 Maxwell, Robert, 104 MBJ , 137 McAfee, R. Preston, 58 McKinsey & Co., 139 MDPI, 116 Media piracy websites, 80 Medical degrees (M.D.), 20, 98, 99 Medical Essays and Observations , 15 Medical journals, 12 Medical schools, 20, 99 Medicine US, 115 Megajournals, 62, 115, 116 Mendeley, 71 Merriam-Webster, 78 Merriman-Webster’s dictionary, 70 Merrone, Lea, 137 Michalak, Sarah, 59 Military and naval science, 57, 100–103 Mining Journal , 15 Mirmiran, Parvin, 15 Mirror websites, 80, 82, 86 Mollick, Ethan, 142 Monbiot, George, 103, 104 Mongeon, Philippe, 105 Multimillion-Dollar Trade in Paper Authorship Alarms Publishers, 143 Muso, 80 N Nagle, Cate, 137 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), 112 National Cancer Institute, 12 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 48, 51, 127

172

INDEX

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 95 National Institutes of Health (NIH), 107 National Resources Planning Board, 18 National Science and Technology Council, 110 Natural resources, 20 Natural sciences, 138 Nature, 133, 135, 142 Nature Communications , 115 Nature Energy, 12 Nature Materials , 12 Nature Medicine, 54 Nature Nanotechnology, 12 Nature Neuroscience, 23 Nature Review of Clinical Oncology, 12 Nature Reviews Chemistry, 12 Nelson, Alonda, 110 Nelson Memo, 110, 111, 140 New England of Journal Medicine (NEJM ), 12, 138 Newton’s Third Law, 55 New York University copyright infringement case, 63 Nielsen, 81 Non-commercial open access, 116 Non-defense, 20 Non-profit college, 20 Noorden, Richard Van, 135, 142 Norton, Laura, 138 Notes and Recommendations , 15 Notorious Markets List (NML), 79 Number of libraries, 94 Number of students, 94

O Obama Administration, 110 O’Donnell, Jimmy, 112

Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), 110 Off-prints, 32 Oldenburg, Henry, 14 Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era, The, 105 Open Access and Predatory Publishing: A Survey of the Publishing Practices of Academic Pharmacists and Nurses in the United States, 136 Open access (OA), 15, 32, 33, 60, 62, 84, 104, 107–109, 115, 118, 129–134, 136, 140 journal publishing, 60 Open Access Publishing—Noble Intentions, Flawed Reality, 135 Open Biology, 15 Open data, 143 Open science, 143 Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 16, 17 Other, 20 Overlay journals, 143 Oxford University Press (OUP), 15, 118

P Pagliari, Claudia, 135 Paid subscriptions, 32, 54 Palermo, Ale, 138 Panitch, Judith M., 59 Patent Office, 70 Pay reviewers, 143 Peer review, 62 Pergamon Press, 18 Pezzullo, Angelo Maria, 115 PhilArchive, 62 Philip Young, the, 59 Philosophical Transactions , 13, 32, 33 Philosophical Transactions A, 14 Philosophical Transactions B, 14

INDEX

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 14 Physical journals, 95 Physical Review Letters , 130 Physical sciences, 19, 51 Physics, 38, 51, 52, 97, 102 Physics Paper Sets Record With More Than 5,000 Authors, 130 Phys Org , 133, 142 Pinfield, Stephen, 116 Pinho-Gomes, Ana-Catarina, 137 Piracy, 81 Plan S, 104, 108, 109, 111, 114, 118, 140 Plant patents, 71 Platinum open access, 116 PLOS, 62 Plos One, 63, 115, 116 Pooley, Jeffrey, 134 Porter, Michael E., 44, 113, 114 Poynder, Richard, 58, 134 Predatory journals, 136 Predatory publishing, 135 Preprints, 61, 62 Price elasticity, 37 Price inelasticity, 37 Proceedings of the Royal Society, 14 Profit and loss (P&L), 39 PsychINFO, 137 Public Law 104-294, 73 Public Library of Science (PLOS), 107 Publish and read, 118 Publishers Weekly, 80, 118 Publish in certain journals or perish, 129 Publish or perish, 22, 84, 115, 129 PubMed, 137 PubMed Central, 107 PubMed Central/Europe, 115

173

R Rapid Growth of Megajournals: Threats and Opportunities, The, 115 Read and publish, 118 Recession of 2007–2009, 55, 57 RELX, 12, 18, 33, 71, 82, 106, 107 Ren, Qiping, 112 RePEc, 62 Representative printed journal, 39 Research, 21 Research and development (R&D), 36, 49, 95 Research articles, 32 Research Council of Norway, The, 109 ResearchGate, 86 Research libraries, 54 Research Square, 116 Revenue streams, 32 Review articles, 32 2022 Review of Notorious Market for Counterfeiting and Piracy, 78, 79 Reviews of Modern Physics , 54, 129 RiazAgha, 112 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 18 Rosbaud, Paul, 18 Rouhi, Sara, 134 Rowe, Adam, 80 Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), 130 Royal Society, 14, 33, 140 Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), 12, 116, 130, 133 Royal Society of Edinburgh, 15 Royal Society’s Publishing Board, 33 Rudolfsant, Niclas, 85 Russell, Darren, 137 Russia, 83 Russian Federation, 80

174

INDEX

S Sage, 105 Saluja, Saurabh, 85 Samad, Lubna, 85 Sample, Ian, 64 San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), 107 Scale, 118 Schliefer, Roman, 142 Scholarly Kitchen, The, 111, 117, 118 Scholarly Publishing and Academic Research Coalition (SPARC), 59 Schonfeld, Roger C., 140 Schrime, Mark, 85 Science, 15, 140 Science Citation Index, 36 ScienceDirect, 71, 82, 85, 137 Science Europe, 117 Science Index Citation (SCI ), 23 Sciences, 52 Scientific scholarly journal, 12 Scientific, technical, and medical journals (STM), 12 bachelor’s degrees, 19 degrees, 51, 95 funding, 22 journal subscription prices, 100 publishers, 53 publishing community, 48 research, 20 research articles, 18 research during the war, 19 research projects, 18 Sci-Hub, 63, 80, 83, 85, 86, 105, 107 Sci-hub.org, 82 Scopus, 71, 136 Second Sci-Hub case, 85 Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), 111 Serial expenditures, 48

Serials crisis, 43, 59, 63 Serial subscriptions, 48 Service, 21 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, 18 Shadow library(ies), 63, 81 Shaw, Thomas, 133 Sher, Irving H., 23 Sivertsen, Gunnar, 133 Smith, Alexander, 142 Social Science and Medicine, 135 Societies, 56, 140 Societies publishing, 140 Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), 117, 139 Sohrabi, Catrin, 112 Solla Price, Derek J., 15 Southern District of New York, 82 Space, 20 Springen, Karen, 80 Springer, 18 Springer Link, 34 Springer Nature, 12, 15, 34, 105, 115, 116, 118, 131 SSRN, 62, 71, 116, 142 Statista, 80 Statistical Abstract of the United States 2023, 99 STM journals, 12, 17, 18, 24, 32 categories, 37 developments and publications, 16 Stokel-Walker, Chris, 142 Strategic business units (SBUs), 106 Subscription prices, 43, 57 Sweet, Judge, 84

T Tanne, Janice Hopkins, 138 Taylor & Francis, 18, 55, 105, 114, 117, 118, 136, 140 TBS, 54 Teaching load, 21

INDEX

Technical journal, 12 Technology, 57, 101–103 Tejada, Julian, 85 Ten Facts About Covid-19 and the U.S. Economy, 112 301 Report, 79 Till, Brian M., 85 Times Higher Education, The, 116 Title 15 U.S.C. §1052, 72 Title 15 U.S.C. §1114(1), 72 Title 17 U.S.C., 73 §101. Definitions, 74 §102. Subject Matter of Copyright, 74 §105. Subject Matter of Copyright, 75 §106. Exclusive Rights in Copyrighted Works Subject to Sections 107 Through 122, 75 §107. Limitations on Exclusive Rights, 75 §108. Limitations on Exclusive Rights, 76 §109. Limitations on Exclusive Rights, 77 §121 Limitations on Exclusive Rights, 77 Title 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq., 82 Title 17 U.S.C. § 106, 84 Title 18 U.S.C. § 1030, 82 Title 18 U.S.C. § 1839, 73 Title 35 U.S.C. (United States Code), 70 Towards a New Era of Journal Publishing: The Coalition of Diamond, 116 Trademarks, 72 Trade secrets, 73 Transformative agreements, 118 Treadway, Jon, 117 True Cost of Science Publishing, The, 135

175

Tsey, Komla, 137 Turing, Alan, 17, 141 Turkey, 80 U Ukraine, 80 U.K. Research and Innovation, 109 Undergraduate and graduate and professional schools, 127 Unique value proposition, 54 United Kingdom, 80 United States Department of Education, 48 United States District Court Southern District of New York (SDNY), 82, 85 United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), 70, 71 United States Trade Representative (USTR), 78, 80 University Licensing Project (TULIP), 34 University of Barcelona, 117 University of California, 60, 118 University of Colorado, 135 University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Library, 59 University presses, 53, 56 USA, 54 U.S. Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions, 112 U.S. cable television industry, 54 U.S. Congress, 86 U.S. copyright law, 73 U.S. Copyright Office, 77 U.S. Department of Commerce, 48, 70 U.S. Department of Education (Education), 127 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), 73 U.S. Government, 17, 20, 95 U.S. Government R&D, 49

176

INDEX

U.S. higher education, 19, 34 libraries, 36 Utility patents, 71 V Variable costs, 106 Vernaz, Nathalie, 137 Vietnam, 80 Vinny, Pulikottil Wilson, 135 Virginia Tech, 59 Vishnu, Venugopalan Y., 135 ViXra, 62 W Wall Street Journal, The, 54 Waltham, Mary, 43 Wang, Shenlian, 112 Washington Post, The, 63 Wharton, Robert M., 43 What I Learned From Predatory Publishers, 135

Wiley, 18, 85, 105, 118 Wiley, John, 114, 116, 140 Wiley Partner Solutions, 140 Williams, Michael A., 58 Wolters Kluwer, 115, 117 Woodward, Mark, 137 World Bank, 12 World Health Organization (WHO), 109, 136

X Xuemei Yang, 112

Y Yoon, James C., 81

Z Z-Library, 86 Zoology, 57, 101–103