03/05/2019

Revisiting: Governance And The Not-for-profit Publisher

Most of the scholarly communications "big dogs" are commercial enterprises

At the beginning of Jared Diamond’s magisterial Guns, Germs, and Steel, the author recounts a conversation he had with a native of New Guinea. Why, the New Guinean asks, do the people of the West have so much more “cargo”? “Cargo” is his term for material wealth. Diamond’s answer is that Europe had the three elements of his book’s title on its side. With such advantages, the accumulation of “cargo” was almost inevitable.

I have often reflected on this passage when the question of the relative success of for-profit and not-for-profit (NFP) publishing enterprises comes up. Although there are some conspicuous exceptions, most of the big dogs in scholarly communications are commercial enterprises. What is it about the for-profit world of publishing that has enabled it to become dominant over its well-intended, hard-working fellows in the NFP camp?

On the face of it, you would have to say that the dominance (measured in market share and expressed in dollars) of the commercial firms is highly improbable. Publishing is not like most other industries; the NFP sector is large and often attached to other institutions (universities, government) that sit outside the roilings of the profit motive. NEJM, AAAS, ACS, OUP, and so on — try to find the equivalent of such NFPs in the auto or consumer electronics industries.  One would think that with such a strong group of NFP organizations, there would be stronger challengers to the for-profit leaders of Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, John Wiley, and their kin. The fact is, though, that for all the prestige of some of the NFPs, this is an industry dominated by commercial entities. The presence of NFP institutions and publishers serves as an offset to the influence of the for-profit firms, but there is no question who is the biggest kid on the block.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Scholarly Kitchen.