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Report

SPARC Landscape Analysis

This report was commissioned in response to the growing trend of commercial acquisition of critical infrastructure in our institutions. It is intended to provide a comprehensive look at the current players in this arena, their strategies and potential actions, and the implications of these on the operations of our libraries and home institutions. It also outlines suggestions for an initial set of strategic responses for the community to evaluate in order to ensure it controls both this infrastructure and the data generated by/resident on it.

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APA

Aspesi, C., Allen, N. S., Crow, R., Daugherty, S., Joseph, H., McArthur, J. T., & Shockey, N. (2019, March 29). SPARC Landscape Analysis. , https://doi.org/10.31229/osf.io/58yhb

MLA

Aspesi, Claudio, et al. “SPARC Landscape Analysis.” , 29 Mar. 2019, https://doi.org/10.31229/osf.io/58yhb .

Chicago

Aspesi, Claudio, Nicole S. Allen, Raym Crow, Shawn Daugherty, Heather Joseph, Joseph T. W. McArthur, and Nick Shockey. 2019. “SPARC Landscape Analysis.” , March 29. https://doi.org/10.31229/osf.io/58yhb

  • The Academic Publishing Industry In 2018

    Elsevier, Pearson, and Cengage in particular are transforming themselves into data analytics companies built atop their content, effectively adding ways to monetize it.

  • Research Companies: Background

    The paradox of the STM publishing industry is that because of multi-year contracts there is very high visibility over its revenues for the next two to three years, but very little beyond this time frame.

  • Research Companies: Springer Nature

    Springer’s reluctance to enter the data analytics business may be driven by the $3.47 billion debt. The board and management team of are now in a tight spot.

  • Research Companies: Wiley

    Wiley is the smaller of the three main journal publishers. It publishes about 2,300 journals, so – in terms of titles – it is very close in size to Elsevier.

  • Research Companies: Clarivate

    Clarivate is the name the new private equity owners gave to the assets previously owned by Thomson Reuters. The company’s strategy is to be a neutral data analytics supplier to researchers and librarians.

  • Research Companies: Other publishers

    We view any publisher below the size of Wiley as unlikely to have the financial resources to mount a major challenge to the research data analytics businesses of Elsevier and Clarivate.

  • Research Companies: The Products

    Compiling a map of all the products and services that the three leading research data analytics vendors (Clarivate, Digital Science, Elsevier) market outside libraries is inherently a best effort exercise.

  • Education Companies: Background

    The continued decline of the higher education courseware business in the U.S. is driven by the interplay of three factors; student enrollment, pricing, and participation rates.

  • Education Companies: Pearson

    Pearson is the only leading textbook publisher that is publicly listed. The company aims at education sectors that it expects to transition to full digital delivery, positioning itself to add data analytics products on top of content.

  • Education Companies: McGraw-Hill Education

    McGraw-Hill is owned by Apollo, a private equity company. Apollo has hoped for a long time to IPO the business to exit the investment. The company exited the assessment business in 2015, effectively going in the opposite direction of Pearson.

  • Education Companies: Cengage

    Cengage is a pioneer in inclusive access and Cengage Unlimited, its full catalog subscription, was the first full offering of this kind. Cengage was also the first major publisher to offer a product branded as open educational resources (OER), although the content is still purchased by students enrolled in a course.

  • Education Companies: The Products

    Anecdotal evidence suggests that these systems built and maintained by publishers capture massive amounts of data about student and faculty behavior that go beyond what is necessary for accomplishing their core objectives (i.e. improving student outcomes). Institutions, faculty and students should think about the accumulation and use of data collected and retained by schools and commercial vendors.

  • Preliminary Recommendations

    Actively formulating and implementing solutions to these problems is complex but critically important, and something SPARC intends to work closely with the community on. It is worthwhile to recap of some of the options for action.

  • About the Report

    Commissioned in response to the growing trend of commercial acquisition of critical infrastructure in our institutions this report provides a comprehensive look at the current players in this arena, their strategies and potential actions, and the implications of these on the operations of our libraries and home institutions.