Richard Poynder reports on the sale of BertelsmannSpringer to Candover and Cinven (C&C) in the May 27 Information Today. C&C plans to merge the giant publisher with Kluwer Academic Publishers (KAP), which it bought last year, creating the world's second-largest academic publisher, behind Elsevier. Observers expect journal price hikes, the usual result of publisher consolidation. After quoting Mark McCabe and Andrew Odlyzko on the subject, Poynder concludes, "Such views are based on the now widespread conviction that STM publishers have been systematically overcharging customers, leading researchers to respond by adopting alternative publishing models, not least through self-archiving their papers on the Web." He quotes me: "[Publisher price increases] are giving momentum to an alternative publishing paradigm that will undermine them. Scientists are increasingly taking their intellectual property and editorial labor to new 'open access' journals that serve knowledge rather than stockholders." But Simon Leefe of C&C defends the acquisition: "Based on our experience at KAP, which we have owned now for a few months, and from the research we did on Springer, we have no sense that [library] budgets are in decline." (PS: C&C are betting billions that libraries can absorb further price increases and that open access will be insignificant. Either that, or they concede that publishers face a new wave of library cancellations, and a publishing paradigm shift, but simply predict that somehow Springer journals will survive.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/27/2003 08:41:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
