New Report: SPARC Publishes Landscape Analysis of the Changing Academic Publishing Industry

From the SPARC Web Site, Report Abstract, and Introduction:

This report was commissioned in response to the growing trend of commercial acquisition of critical infrastructure in our institutions. It is intended to provide a comprehensive look at the current players in this arena, their strategies and potential actions, and the implications of these on the operations of our libraries and home institutions. It also outlines suggestions for an initial set of strategic responses for the community to consider building out in order to ensure community control of both this infrastructure and the data generated by/resident on it.

We are at a critical juncture where there is a pressing need for the academic community – individually and collectively – to make thoughtful and deliberate decisions about what and whom to support – and under what terms and conditions. These decisions will determine who ultimately controls the research and education process; and whether we meaningfully address inequities created by legacy players or simply recreate them in new ways. These decisions will shape libraries’ role in the scholarly enterprise, now and for the future.

To produce this analysis we were fortunate to secure the services of Claudio Aspesi, a respected market analyst with more than a decade of experience covering the academic publishing market for international investors. Between 2004 and 2016, Aspesi was the Senior Research Analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein covering European Media Stocks. The academic publishing market – and Reed Elsevier and Pearson in specific – was a key area focus for him during his tenure.

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Aspesi produced this comprehensive analysis in close collaboration with the SPARC team, after conducting interviews with dozens of key stakeholders including provosts, CIO’s, library leaders, and higher education administrators in a wide variety of North American institutions, as well publishers, and other market experts.

This document is designed to provide higher education leaders with an analysis of the leading commercial players’ strategies in this domain, the implications of those strategies, and a preliminary set of possible broad-stroke strategies that higher education institutions might consider taking to secure outcomes consistent with their own values and goals.

Direct to Full Text Report
53 pages; PDF.

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Data Files, Elsevier, Interviews, Libraries, News, Publishing