Cost of scholarly publishing

The National Library monitors Swedish higher education institutions’ (HEIs) expenditure for scholarly literature and open access publishing in Sweden. It is important to overview the total cost of publishing incurred during the transition towards an open access scholarly publishing system.

The National Library started drafting the total cost of scholarly publishing in 2017. This year’s presented data covers 2021. The total cost of publishing is presented in diagrams and downloadable data to make it accessible and of practical use to many.

In 2021 the total cost of publishing for Swedish HEIs was at least 711 million Swedish kronor (SEK).

2021

Expenditure items and the cost of publishing in million Swedish kronor for each of these.

Expenditure item

Million Swedish kronor (SEK)

Subscriptions, Bibsam¹

32

Local subscriptions

161

Transformative agreements, Bibsam

380

Fully open access agreements, Bibsam

44

Open Access publishing

50

Acquisitions

45

Total cost of publication

711

Overview of the total cost of publishing 2021. The Swedish library Consortium, Bibsam, negotiates licence agreements on behalf of Swedish organisations.

Total cost of publishing 2017–2021 in Swedish kronor

Cost of scholarly publishing – background and methods 

The National Library has published reports on the cost of scholarly publishing for five years, starting in 2017. Only the first report is available in English. It covers the methodology and terminology and also a background is presented.

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