The goose that lays the golden egg!
27/01/2012

The enormous and sumptuous profits raked in by scientific and academic publishers are regularly commented on by the international research community. In the article entitled 'The enormous profits of STM scholarly publishers', Heather Morrison, with figures to back up her argument, once again illustrates their indecent nature:

  • Elsevier: 36% of net profit (after taxes), in other words €864 million out of sales figures of €2.386 million
  • Springer Science + Business Media: 33.9%, or €294 million out of revenue of €866 million
  • John Wiley & Sons: 42%, or €80 million out of an income of €193 million


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These figures are taken from chapter 2 of her thesis: Morrison, Heather (2011). Scholarly communication in crisis. Freedom for scholarship in the internet age. PhD Dissertation (in progress), which in turn cites a 2011 article published in The Economist.

Some recent and edifying articles on the subject!