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 last year. The cost is reported with a one year delay to include a full year’s data. Therefore, this year’s presented data covers 2018. The total cost of publishing is presented in diagrams and downloadable data to make it accessible and of practical use to many.

In 2018 the total cost of publishing for Swedish HEIs was at least 491 million Swedish kronor (SEK). The reported total cost is lower than the actual expenditure incurred since not all data is available.

2018

Expenditure item	Million Swedish kronor (SEK)
Subscriptions, Bibsam¹	180
Local subscriptions	138
Transformative agreements, Bibsam	75
Open Access publishing	46
Acquisitions	52
Total cost of publication	491

Overview of the total cost of publishing 2018. The reported total cost is lower than the actual expenditure incurred since not all data is available. ¹The Swedish library Consortium, Bibsam, negotiates licence agreements on behalf of Swedish organisations.

Click here to view diagrams per expenditure item, per HEI or publisher.

Total cost of publishing 2017 and 2018