www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/article... Slightly arcane but rather important publishing news...

Many Happy Returns to Quentin Skinner, 85 today (and still seminar-ing this evening!)

Bought John Watt’s new book on The Wars of the Roses last week and it is without doubt one of the single most thoughtful, most interesting and best-expressed works of serious history I have read in a very long time. Seriously recommended, and not just if you spend time 400 yards from Harlech Castle.

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/11/18/a... This, and the comment thread below, is well worth reading. The author is a senior US university librarian.

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/11/12/t... This is a very good read, albeit inevitably North American scientistic in some of its driving presumptions...

Springer Research reported revenue of €1,112.6 million (9M 2024: €1,044.4 million) with underlying growth 7.0% driven by the Journals portfolio, with particular strength in Full Open Access (FOA). The number of published articles rose by more than 10% and over 25% in FOA journals. Bookbrunch today

Am increasingly worried by some of the very simplistic statements about ‘language’ being made in schol comm and OA contexts, and the notion that research content and the language in which it is expressed can be easily separated. Scientific Esperanto may be last ambition of the enlightenment project…

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/11/03/c... Very helpful post from Lisa H, although as always massive NB for scholars outside the US that 'Fair Use' is not a global copyright concept

And, lest we forget, it was this book which inspired the Coalition Government in its pursuit of Open Access and everything that led to the Finch Report. OA was going to be 'the steam' for a 2nd British Industrial Revolution, howsoever defined...

If the below turns out to be well-founded, then this is a pretty significant moment in the tangled history of North American schol comm and library infrastructure…

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/08/18/s... Rick Anderson on some of the stark fiscal realities, and misunderstandings thereof, in schol comm in 2025...

'Springer Nature revenue group rose by 6%, and adjusted operating profit by 10%. First half revenue increased to €926 million and AOP to €241 million, supported by a favourable revenue mix. Growth was driven by the Research segment.' From Bookbrunch this morning.

Probably the wisest thing said on social media about academic publishing this year. Up there with the other abiding, and related mantra: never, ever, underestimate in the worlds of schol comm what otherwise intelligent people don’t know…

Redcliffe Salaman's History and Social Influence of the Potato from the 1940s was famously described by Eric Hobsbawm as a 'magnificent monument of scholarship and humanity'. Salaman did many things including being Master of Fox Hounds...

Interesting that overall OUP numbers have now been pretty static for three years. Profitability of about 9% on £795m turnover seems about right for a UP which funds its parent university (very) significantly. Surplus of between 5 and 10% I always thought the UP sweetspot...

After T&F yesterday, RELX incl Elsevier posted FY25 results showing underlying growth of 7% and profit growth of 9% to 35% for the whole group (which includes exhibitions like London Book Fair and many non-publishing things). But Elsevier STEM shows ‘good growth and developing momentum’…

T and F (including Routledge) showing first-half global revenue growth of 12% in FY2025. Underlying growth of 4% when you strip out one-off data licensing agreements. Subscription income still doing just fine, in the main…

I would argue that this is a 'science' problem as much as a 'publishing' problem per se. Scale will be central to any enterprise in which e.g. American, Indian, Chinese scientific researchers see themselves as working on common problems, and this is bit different from more fragmented worlds of AHSS

Really strong and important piece from Karin Wolf on the SK. UK experience has obvious similarities, but also some important divergences. Ultimately every single thing that has happened in my time in the sector has accelerated the relative flow of research resource away from AHSS towards STEM.

thebookseller.com/comment/facing-north Interesting but what I always demur at in pieces of this kind are the implied assumptions about 'the South' which invariably mean simply 'London'. Cities like Plymouth are far more marginalised in cultural terms than e.g. Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle....

The demographic trends impacting BBC TV news audiences really show up in its current treatment of universities, and problems thereof, and contrast sharply with its treatment of e.g. NHS challenges. There is an inherent (and justified) assumption that those most impacted won’t be watching…

In Academic Markets Informa (owners of T&F/Routledge) report 'Underlying revenue growth of 13.7%, reflecting core like-for-like growth of 3-4%; Business is performing to plan and we continue to sign non-recurring licensing agreements with AI companies.' Still the most used book imprint for the REF.

This is a fundamental post on a fundamental topic. It’s always important to remember that UPs can differ in governance just as much as can universities themselves. But the nature of the good UPs can do remains elusive to (far) too many people within universities. Sadly.

Much to ponder here but at the same time this is 100% the US academy perspective: from outside the US, the market and readership dynamics are very different. Fundamentally most US UP publishing is about readers in the US, and fundamentally most UK UP publishing isn’t about readers in the UK…

This is vvvv well worth reading (and not just on a wet Bank Holiday!). Super to have this level of critical engagement from a leading UK humanities scholar/funder…

www.gov.uk/government/c... Tldr The government has decided to maintain the current IP exhaustion regime...

Dr Carla Hayden was a truly great Librarian of Congress. It is an outrage that she has been sacked - a national shame on the United States. I had the pleasure of knowing her and working with her - she’ll continue to do good in the next phase of her career whatever that is.

A proud trio of Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Booksellers Association (2016), ALPSP (2018) and, only last week, the IPG. Am a very lucky boy indeed, who has spent over 40 years working with some incredibly nice people in both publishing and the academy on something fundamentally v worthwhile.

I think this has to be the most enticing historical invitation currently extant! Inverary is an extraordinary place…

In the context of reports on AHSS book manuscripts, of which I must have seen literally 1000s down the years, this sort of engagement isn’t (happily) so unusual.One problem with discussing ‘peer review’ is that people can have a very different sense of what the end-product should, ideally, look like

A footnote from David Miller, expressing highly recognisable reservations about the rise of the journal article.

RELX incl Elsevier reporting 'continued good underlying revenue growth with underlying adjusted operating profit growth slightly exceeding underlying revenue growth' at its AGM today. Shares up 20% from this time last year...

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7KX44... A little thing but mine own, on the singularly rewarding experience of working with John Pocock over a quarter of a century

An absolutely central topic to schol comm discourse right now, to be read in conjunction with recent important blog post from @eve.gd on cognate themes. Worth reminding ourselves how internally divided individual HEIs are in their responses to AI: emphatically not 'a single university voice' here...

This is a vv interesting read, but also representative of that OA fragmentation described so well by @eve.gd this week. 80% comes from within highly theorised critical fields, broadly defined, and prob won’t therefore reach other big AHSS spheres like history or politics. Big OA challenge, still…

This blog post does a lot of very important things very quickly, and fwiw I think Martin is 100% right about the current OA ‘fragmentation’ - although I guess I would argue this is a fragmenting of a fragment across the academy as a whole. (1/2)

www.thebookseller.com/news/monisha... Interesting appointment of the current chair of AHRC to chair the PLS

Really important post from Karin Wolf on the SK today. Very important for Brits to understand both the similarities and the significant differences between AHSS crises in the UK and North America, even if the outcomes are in both instances very malign.

Many congratulations to Niko Pfund, something of a legend in the UP world, on his appointment to succeed John Donatich as Director of Yale University Press. V best wishes to all of my Yale friends for the next phase!

www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/article... The end of an era as WH Smith is sold to Modella Capital for £76m. The WH Smith brand will survive in the successful WHS travel business, whilst the remaining high street outlets will gradually be rebranded under the new owners to TGJones.

Trenchant stuff from Rob here. By no means all colleagues in the sector will agree, but as Rob says the financial mis-steps of numerous HEIs over the past two decades have to be reckoned with, somewhere...

An important survey of a still deeply intractable problem, which shows little sign of resolution at scale (underlined) across all of AHSS any time soon, despite pockets of progress. And the current transatlantic financial crisis for HEIs are only compounding the challenges. Sadly.

Can I just gently remind everyone today that the academic turnover of CUP is about £150m per annum (not £1bn!) and that the large majority of revenues at CUP&A comes from ELT/ESL and the International Schools business- and that the Assessment/exams side is well over half of the whole.

In further ‘traditional model of academic publishing is collapsing’ news today Springer announced FY24 profits of E512m on t/o of E1847m (28%). Whether we like it or not, the behemoths just rumble on…

Good luck to all but I remain sceptical that the (lack of ) resource available to these institutions, with the signal exception of UCLP, will make systemic change very hard to achieve, and in the financial crisis for UK HE that is only going to get harder. Sorry to be candid but I do worry, a lot…

Over 11 000 responses to the government AI consultation, incl that of the IPG, and apparently AI will NOT be used in their digestion (as outwith the original document). Work for the civil service and relevant SPADs to do here!

'Pearson has released its annual results for 2024 this morning, recording an operating profit of £541m, up from £498m in 2023, with sales up 3% on an underlying basis to £3,552m.' from BookBrunch

This is such an important subject. Some slightly glib assumptions can be made about what university libraries ought to be doing, often by those who have never actually worked in one...the feisty comment exchanges confirm what contested terrain this now is scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/02/13/d...

RELX (which includes Elsevier and also a big exhibitions business inter alia) full-year revenues up 7% to £9,434m, and adjusted operating profit up 10% to £3,199m. Excited predictions of its imminent demise continue to be a trifle optimistic.

insights.uksg.org/articles/10.... Very interesting and generous text from the Lancaster stable + friends, albeit explicitly not targeting those in the middle of the academic pyramid, which is where I think most Open Access attention still needs to be directed and where knowledge gaps are greatest