Academic journal market estimated at $10bn a year

English-language scientific, technical and medical journals generated revenues of about $10 billion (€8.7bn) in 2017, according to an industry report.

The valuation was reported in the fifth report of the International Association for Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, which was published on 9 October. The association claims to represent more than 150 publishers in 21 countries who together publish 66 per cent of all journal articles. This is despite there being about 10,000 journal publishers globally, according to the report.

Just over 33,000 peer-reviewed, English-language academic journals existed in mid-2018, collectively publishing more than three million articles a year, the report’s authors said. Publishing activity has been growing steadily for more than 200 years, they said, as seen in a steady increase in journal numbers of about 3.5 per cent a year and in article numbers of 3 per cent a year. But in the past decade, journal numbers have grown by more than 5 per cent a year and article numbers by 4 per cent a year.