Elsevier
Elsevier (Dutch: [ˈɛlzəviːr]) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as The Lancet, Cell, the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, Trends, the Current Opinion series, the online citation database Scopus, the SciVal tool for measuring research performance, the ClinicalKey search engine for clinicians, and the ClinicalPath evidence-based cancer care service. Elsevier's products and services include digital tools for data management, instruction, research analytics, and assessment.[4][5] Elsevier is part of the RELX Group, known until 2015 as Reed Elsevier, a publicly-traded company. According to RELX reports, in 2022 Elsevier published more than 600,000 articles annually in over 2,800 journals;[1] as of 2018 its archives contained over 17 million documents and 40,000 e-books, with over one billion annual downloads.[6]
For other uses, see Elsevier (disambiguation).Researchers have criticized Elsevier for its high profit margins and copyright practices.[7][8] The company earned £942 million in profit with an adjusted operating margin of 37% in 2018.[9] Much of the research that Elsevier publishes is publicly funded; its high costs have led to accusations of rent-seeking,[10] boycotts, and the rise of alternate avenues for publication and access, such as preprint servers and shadow libraries.[11][12]
Company statistics[edit]
During 2018, researchers submitted over 1.8 million research papers to Elsevier-based publications. Over 20,000 editors managed the peer review and selection of these papers, resulting in the publication of more than 470,000 articles in over 2,500 journals.[6] Editors are generally unpaid volunteers who perform their duties alongside a full-time job in academic institutions,[31] although exceptions have been reported. In 2013, the five editorial groups Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, and SAGE Publications published more than half of all academic papers in the peer-reviewed literature.[32][33] At that time, Elsevier accounted for 16% of the world market in science, technology, and medical publishing.[34] In 2019, Elsevier accounted for the review, editing and dissemination of 18% of the world's scientific articles.[35] About 45% of revenue by geography in 2019 derived from North America, 24% from Europe, and the remaining 31% from the rest of the world. Around 84% of revenue by format came from electronic usage and 16% came from print.[6][36]
The firm employs 8,100 people.[36] The CEO is Kumsal Bayazit, who was appointed on 15 February 2019.[37] In 2018, it reported a mean 2017 gender pay gap of 29.1% for its UK workforce, while the median was 40.4%, the highest yet reported by a publisher in UK. Elsevier attributed the result to the under-representation of women in its senior ranks and the prevalence of men in its technical workforce.[38] The UK workforce consists of 1,200 people in the UK, and represents 16% of Elsevier's global employee population.[38] Elsevier's parent company, RELX, has a global workforce that is 51% female to 49% male, with 43% female and 57% male managers, and 29% female and 71% male senior operational managers.[38][39]
In 2018, Elsevier accounted for 34% of the revenues of RELX group (£2.538 billion of £7.492 billion). In operating profits, it represented 40% (£942 million of £2,346 million). Adjusted operating profits (with constant currency) rose by 2% from 2017 to 2018.[6] Profits grew further from 2018 to 2019, to a total of £982 million.[40] the first half of 2019, RELX reported the first slowdown in revenue growth for Elsevier in several years: 1% vs. an expectation of 2% and a typical growth of at least 4% in the previous 5 years.[41] Overall for 2019, Elsevier reported revenue growth of 3.9% from 2018, with the underlying growth at constant currency at 2%.[42] In 2019, Elsevier accounted for 34% of the revenues of RELX (£2.637billion of £7.874billion). In adjusted operating profits, it represented 39% (£982m of £2.491bn). Adjusted operating profits (with constant currency) rose by 2% from 2018 to 2019.[36]
In 2019, researchers submitted over two million research papers to Elsevier-based publications. Over 22,000 editors managed the peer review and selection of these papers, resulting in the publication of about 500,000 articles in over 2,500 journals.[36]
In 2020 Elsevier was the largest academic publisher, with approximately 16% of the academic publishing market and more than 3000 journals.[43]
Market model[edit]
Products and services[edit]
Products and services include electronic and print versions of journals, textbooks and reference works, and cover the health, life, physical, and social sciences.
The target markets are academic and government research institutions, corporate research labs, booksellers, librarians, scientific researchers, authors, editors, physicians, nurses, allied health professionals, medical and nursing students and schools, medical researchers, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and research establishments. It publishes in 13 languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese, Hindi, and Chinese.
Flagship products and services include VirtualE, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Scirus, EMBASE, Engineering Village, Compendex, Cell, Knovel, SciVal, Pure, and Analytical Services, The Consult series (FirstCONSULT, PathCONSULT, NursingCONSULT, MDConsult, StudentCONSULT), Virtual Clinical Excursions, and major reference works such as Gray's Anatomy, Nelson Pediatrics, Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary, Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy, and online versions of many journals[44] including The Lancet.
ScienceDirect is Elsevier's platform for online electronic access to its journals and over 40,000 e-books, reference works, book series, and handbooks. The articles are grouped in four main sections: Physical Sciences and Engineering, Life Sciences, Health Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities. For most articles on the website, abstracts are freely available; access to the full text of the article (in PDF, and also HTML for newer publications) often requires a subscription or pay-per-view purchase.[36]
In 2019, Elsevier published 49,000 free open access articles and 370 full open access journals. Moreover, 1,900 of its journals sold hybrid open access options.[36]
Pricing[edit]
The subscription rates charged by the company for its journals have been criticized; some very large journals (with more than 5,000 articles) charge subscription prices as high as £9,634, far above average,[45] and many British universities pay more than a million pounds to Elsevier annually.[46] The company has been criticized not only by advocates of a switch to the open-access publication model, but also by universities whose library budgets make it difficult for them to afford current journal prices.
For example, in 2004, a resolution by Stanford University's senate singled out Elsevier's journals as being "disproportionately expensive compared to their educational and research value", which librarians should consider dropping, and encouraged its faculty "not to contribute articles or editorial or review efforts to publishers and journals that engage in exploitive or exorbitant pricing".[47] Similar guidelines and criticism of Elsevier's pricing policies have been passed by the University of California, Harvard University, and Duke University.[48]
In July 2015, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands threatened to boycott Elsevier, which refused to negotiate on any open access policy for Dutch universities.[49] After a year of negotiation, Elsevier pledged to make 30% of research published by Dutch researchers in Elsevier journals open access by 2018.[50]
In October 2018, a complaint against Elsevier was filed with the European Commission, alleging anticompetitive practices stemming from Elsevier's confidential subscription agreements and market dominance. The European Commission decided not to investigate.[51][52]
The elevated pricing of field journals in economics, most of which are published by Elsevier, was one of the motivations that moved the American Economic Association to launch the American Economic Journal in 2009.[53]
Mergers and acquisitions[edit]
RELX Group has been active in mergers and acquisitions. Elsevier has incorporated other businesses that were either complementing or competing in the field of research and publishing and that reinforce its market power,[54] such as Mendeley (after the closure of 2collab), SSRN,[55] bepress/Digital Commons, PlumX, Hivebench, Newsflo, Science-Metrix,[56] and Interfolio.[57]
Shill review offer[edit]
According to the BBC, in 2009, the firm [Elsevier] offered a £17.25 Amazon voucher to academics who contributed to the textbook Clinical Psychology if they would go on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble (a large US books retailer) and give it five stars. Elsevier responded by stating "Encouraging interested parties to post book reviews isn't outside the norm in scholarly publishing, nor is it wrong to offer to nominally compensate people for their time. But in all instances the request should be unbiased, with no incentives for a positive review, and that's where this particular e-mail went too far", and that it was a mistake by a marketing employee.[59]
Blocking text mining research[edit]
Elsevier seeks to regulate text and data mining with private licenses,[60] claiming that reading requires extra permission if automated and that the publisher holds copyright on output of automated processes. The conflict on research and copyright policy has often resulted in researchers being blocked from their work.[61] In November 2015, Elsevier blocked a scientist from performing text mining research at scale on Elsevier papers, even though his institution already pays for access to Elsevier journal content.[60][62] The data was collected using the R package "statcheck".[63]
Fossil fuel company consulting and advocacy[edit]
Elsevier is one of the most prolific publishers of books aimed at expanding the production of fossil fuels. Since at least 2010 the company has worked with the fossil fuel industry to optimise fossil fuel extraction. It commissions authors, journal advisory board members and editors who are employees of the largest oil firms. In addition it markets data services and research portals directly to the fossil fuel industry to help "increase the odds of exploration success".[64]
Relationship with academic institutions[edit]
Colombia[edit]
For 14 years, Colciencias, now Minciencias, led negotiations with Elsevier, as a practical and effective response to the informative growth of presumptive problems, allowing a greater number of Higher Education Institutions to join this project, thanks to it saves the scale that is obtained. Colombia has converted in the fourth country with the largest number of documents indexed in Scopus in Latin America (except for Brazil), growing by 57% in the last five years, a rate visibly greater in neighboring countries.[132]
The Colombian National Consortium "Consorcio Colombia" managed by Consortia S.A.S. agreed in 2016 to have better prices for the Consortium members. The current agreement is that (Colombia National Ministry of Science and Technology) Minciencias and (Colombian National ministry of Education) Mineducación reintegrate money to institutions on the total payment of products, with the condition that money must be reinvested in academic and research resources.
Finland[edit]
In 2015, Finnish research organizations paid a total of 27 million euros in subscription fees. Over one-third of the total costs went to Elsevier. The information was revealed after successful court appeal following a denied request on the subscription fees, due to confidentiality clauses in contracts with the publishers.[133] Establishing of this fact lead to creation of tiedonhinta.fi petition demanding more reasonable pricing and open access to content signed by more than 2800 members of the research community.[134] While deals with other publishers have been made, this was not the case for Elsevier, leading to the nodealnoreview.org boycott of the publisher signed more than 600 times.[135]
In January 2018, it was confirmed that a deal had been reached between those concerned.[136][137][138]
France[edit]
The French Couperin consortium agreed in 2019 to a 4-year contract with Elsevier,[139] despite criticism from the scientific community.[140]
The French École Normale Supérieure has stopped having Elsevier publish the journal Annales Scientifiques de l'École Normale Supérieure[141] (as of 2008).[142]
Effective on 1 January 2020, the French Academy of Sciences stopped publishing its 7 journals Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences with Elsevier and switched to Centre Mersenne.[143]
Germany[edit]
Since 2018 and as of 2023,[144] almost no academic institution in Germany is subscribed to Elsevier.[145][146]
Germany's DEAL project (Projekt DEAL), which includes over 60 major research institutions, has announced that all of its members are cancelling their contracts with Elsevier, effective 1 January 2017. The boycott is in response to Elsevier's refusal to adopt "transparent business models" to "make publications more openly accessible".[147][148][149][150][151][152][153] Horst Hippler, spokesperson for the DEAL consortium states that "taxpayers have a right to read what they are paying for" and that "publishers must understand that the route to open-access publishing at an affordable price is irreversible".[149] In July 2017, another 13 institutions announced that they would also be cancelling their subscriptions to Elsevier journals.[154] In August 2017, at least 185 German institutions had cancelled their contracts with Elsevier.[155] In 2018, whilst negotiations were ongoing, around 200 German universities that cancelled their subscriptions to Elsevier journals were granted complimentary open access to them until this ended in July of the year.[156][157][158]
On 19 December 2018, the Max Planck Society (MPS) announced that the existing subscription agreement with Elsevier would not be renewed after the expiration date of 31 December 2018. MPS counts 14,000 scientists in 84 research institutes, publishing 12,000 articles each year.[159][160]
In 2023 Elsevier and DEAL reached a tentative agreement on a publish and read model, which would take effect until 2028 if at least 70 % of the eligible institutions opt into it.[144]
Hungary[edit]
In March 2018, the Hungarian Electronic Information Service National Programme entered negotiations on its 2019 Elsevier subscriptions, asking for a read-and-publish deal.[161] Negotiations were ended by the Hungarian consortium in December 2018, and the subscription was not renewed.[116]
Iran[edit]
In 2013, Elsevier changed its policies in response to sanctions announced by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control that year. This included a request that all Elsevier journals avoid publishing papers by Iranian nationals who are employed by the Iranian government.[162][163] Elsevier executive Mark Seeley expressed regret on behalf of the company, but did not announce an intention to challenge this interpretation of the law.[164]
Italy[edit]
CRUI (an association of Italian universities) sealed a 5-year-long deal for 2018–2022,[165] despite protests from the scientific community, protests focused on aspects such as the lack of prevention of cost increases by means of the double dipping.[166]
Netherlands[edit]
In 2015, a consortium of all of Netherlands' 14 universities threatened to boycott Elsevier if it could not agree that articles by Dutch authors would be made open access and settled with the compromise of 30% of its Dutch papers becoming open access by 2018. Gerard Meijer, president of Radboud University in Nijmegen and lead negotiator on the Dutch side noted, "it's not the 100% that I hoped for".[149][167][168][169]
Norway[edit]
In March 2019, the Norwegian government on behalf of 44 institutions — universities, university colleges, research institutes, and hospitals — decided to break negotiations on renewal of their subscription deal with Elsevier, because of disagreement regarding open-access policy and Elsevier's unwillingness to reduce the cost of reading access.[170]
South Korea[edit]
In 2017, over 70 university libraries confirmed a "contract boycott" movement involving three publishers including Elsevier. As of January 2018, whilst negotiations remain underway, a decision will be made as to whether or not continue the participating libraries will continue the boycott.[171] It was subsequently confirmed that an agreement had been reached.[172]
Sweden[edit]
In May 2018, the Bibsam Consortium, which negotiates license agreements on behalf of all Swedish universities and research institutes, decided not to renew their contract with Elsevier,[173][174] alleging that the publisher does not meet the demands of transition towards a more open-access model, and referring to the rapidly increasing costs for publishing.[175] Swedish universities will still have access to articles published before 30 June 2018. Astrid Söderbergh Widding, chairman of the Bibsam Consortium, said, "the current system for scholarly communication must change and our only option is to cancel deals when they don't meet our demands for a sustainable transition to open access".[176] Sweden has a goal of open access by 2026.[177] In November 2019 the negotiations concluded, with Sweden paying for reading access to Elsevier journals and open access publishing for all its researchers' articles.[178]
Taiwan[edit]
In Taiwan, more than 75% of universities, including the country's top 11 institutions, have joined a collective boycott against Elsevier. On 7 December 2016, the Taiwanese consortium, CONCERT, which represents more than 140 institutions, announced it would not renew its contract with Elsevier.[149][179][180][181]
United States[edit]
In March 2018, Florida State University's faculty elected to cancel its $2 million subscription to a bundle of several journals. Starting in 2019, it will instead buy access to titles à la carte.[174]
In February 2019, the University of California said it would terminate subscriptions "in [a] push for open access to publicly funded research."[182][183][14] After months of negotiations over open access to research by UC researchers and prices for subscriptions to Elsevier journals, a press release by the UC Office of the President issued Thursday, 28 February 2019 stated "Under Elsevier's proposed terms, the publisher would have charged UC authors large publishing fees on top of the university's multimillion dollar subscription, resulting in much greater cost to the university and much higher profits for Elsevier."[182][184] On 10 July 2019, Elsevier began restricting access to all new paywalled articles and approximately 5% of paywalled articles published before 2019.[185]
In April 2020, the University of North Carolina elected not to renew its bundled Elsevier package, citing a failure "to provide an affordable path".[186] Rather than extend the license, which was stated to cost $2.6 million annually, the university decided to continue subscribing to a smaller set of individual journals. The State University of New York Libraries Consortium also announced similar outcome,[187][188] with the help of estimates from Unpaywall Journals.[189] Similarly, MIT announced in June 2020 that it would no longer pay for access to new Elsevier articles.[190][191]
In 2022 Elsevier and the University of Michigan established an agreement to support authors who wish to publish open access.[192]
Awards[edit]
Elsevier has partnered with a number of organisations and lent its name to several awards.
Since 1987, Elsevier has partnered with the academic journal Spectrochimica Acta Part B to award the Elsevier / Spectrochimica Acta Atomic Spectroscopy Award. This award is given each year for a jury-selected best paper of the year. The award is worth $1000.[233][234]
Starting in 1987, the IBMS Elsevier Award was awarded in 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007 by the International Bone and Mineral Society in partnership with Elsevier, "for outstanding research and teaching throughout their career by an IBMS member in the fields of bone and mineral metabolism".[235]
From 2007, the Coordenação de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) in Brazil partnered with Elsevier to award the CAPES Elsevier Award, the award being restricted to women from 2013 to encourage more women to pursue scientific careers. Several awards were awarded each year, as of 2014.[236]
From 2011, the OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early-Career Women Scientists in the Developing World (OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards) have been awarded annually to early-career women scientists in selected developing countries in four regions: Latin America and the Caribbean, East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Central and South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), the Elsevier Foundation, and The World Academy of Sciences first partnered to recognize achievements of early-career women scientists in developing countries in 2011.[237][238]
In 2016, the Elsevier Foundation awarded the Elsevier Foundation-ISC3 Green and Sustainable Chemistry Challenge. From 2021 and as of 2024, the annual award is known as the Elsevier Foundation Chemistry for Climate Action Challenge. Two prizes have been awarded each year; until 2020, the first prizewinner was awarded €50,000, and the second prize was €25,000. Since then, €25,000 has been awarded to each winner, usually an entrepreneur who has created a project or proposal that aids the fight against climate change.[239]
