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 2024. The total cost of publishing is presented in diagrams and downloadable data to make it accessible and of practical use to many.

In 2024 the total cost of publishing for Swedish HEIs was at least 806 million Swedish kronor (SEK).

2024

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

Expenditure item

Million Swedish kronor (SEK)

Subscriptions, Bibsam¹

19

Local subscriptions

174

Transformative agreements, Bibsam

449

Open access publishing, Bibsam

30

Open access publishing, research funders

55

Open access publishing, local

28

Acquisitions

38

Infrastructures for open access publishing

12

Total cost of publication

806

Overview of the total cost of publishing 2024. The Swedish library Consortium, Bibsam, negotiates licence agreements on behalf of Swedish institutions.

Total cost of publishing

Cost of scholarly publishing – background and methods 

The National Library has published reports on the cost of scholarly publishing for eight 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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