Delta Think Releases 2023 Open Access (OA) Scholarly Journals Market Sizing Update

From a Delta Think Post by Dan Pollock and Ann Michael:

Each year, Delta Think’s Market Sizing analyzes the value of the OA scholarly journals market. This is the revenue generated by providers or the costs incurred by buyers of content.

We estimate the OA segment of the market to have grown to just over $2bn in 2022. This is strong growth over the previous year, although it is significantly lower than the year before. The overall scholarly journals market showed very little growth during the same period.

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Headline Findings

• We estimate that the OA market grew to just over $2bn in 2022.
• 2022’s OA market grew by a little over 24% from 2021. This is around two thirds of the growth we saw in 2021.
• We estimate the total scholarly journals market to have increased by 0.4% in 2022, compared with its long-term low single-digit growth of 2%-4%.
• Given the exceptionally high growth in 2020 and 2021, a correction in 2022 was expected. We saw this in the whole market. It is less obvious in the OA segment as its growth remains strong; however, OA’s growth was significantly lower than it had been previously.

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Trends

• We have seen a slow-down in growth in 2022, although underlying drivers of the market remain strong.
• COVID-19 led to a significant increase in publishing activity, showing above-average volumes and growth rates in 2020 and 2021.
• Last year, results from our survey and anecdotal feedback gave mixed messages about the outlook for 2022. Low growth in 2022 was expected by many, as things corrected towards underlying trends. 2022 did show markedly lower growth compared with the previous year. However, as the underlying growth of OA remains strong, 2022’s lower growth numbers seem high when taken in isolation.

Learn More, Read the Complete Post (about 1300 words), View Chart

Filed under: News, Open Access, Publishing