Universities ask EU to investigate competition in publishing

The European University Association has asked the European Commission to investigate the academic publishing market, saying it is “very concerned” that a lack of transparency and competition is harming research.

The academic publishing market is “neither fair, transparent nor competitive”, the EUA said in a statement submitted to the Commission’s competition unit. It said that the market is dominated by a few very large companies that use opaque pricing and make large profits from public funds.

“Every year, European universities spend in a conservative estimate some three-digit millions of euros to access research data and publications: to read information mainly created by themselves and their scientific peers at other universities,” the association said in its statement, published on 6 November. “At the same time, the big academic publishers seem to be able to maintain very large operating profits year after year.”