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 a couple of years ago. The cost is reported with a one year delay to include a full year’s data. Therefore, this year’s presented data covers 2019. The total cost of publishing is presented in diagrams and downloadable data to make it accessible and of practical use to many.
In 2019 the total cost of publishing for Swedish HEIs was at least 504 million Swedish kronor (SEK). The reported total cost is lower than the actual expenditure incurred since not all data is available.
2019
Expenditure item | Million Swedish kronor (SEK) |
|---|---|
Subscriptions, Bibsam¹ | 121 |
Local subscriptions | 148 |
Transformative agreements, Bibsam | 93 |
Fully open access agreements, Bibsam | 17 |
Open Access publishing | 74 |
Acquisitions | 51 |
Total cost of publication | 504 |
Overview of the total cost of publishing 2019. The reported total cost is lower than the actual expenditure incurred since not all data is available. The Swedish library Consortium, Bibsam, negotiates licence agreements on behalf of Swedish organisations.
Total cost of publishing 2017–2019 in Swedish kronor
Cost of scholarly publishing – background and methods
The National Library has published reports on the cost of scholarly publishing for three years, starting in 2017. The second and third reports are only available in Swedish. In the first report, covering the expenditures for 2017, the methodology and terminology are discussed and a background is presented.