Skip to main content
2021 STM Report Focuses on OA Transformation

2021 STM Report Focuses on OA Transformation

October 2021

Information Community News

October 19, 2021

STM (the Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers) has today published the latest edition of ‘The STM Report’, the organization’s comprehensive overview of the scientific and scholarly publishing market. The revised report, which adopts a new supplement format to be issued in regular thematic updates, reveals significant publisher-driven growth in Open Access (OA) and continued dynamism in the scholarly communication ecosystem.

For the past 15 years, the STM Report has provided data and analysis for all involved in the global activity of research, highlighting and exploring the trends, issues and challenges facing scholarly publishing. The latest edition in the series: ‘STM Global Brief 2021 – Economics and market size’ provides an update on the size and shape of scholarly publishing and offers the latest global market values for the industry across scientific and technical, medical, and social sciences and humanities fields.

The latest report shows that recent strong growth in OA publishing is projected to continue. Around a third of all global research articles are now published OA with some countries, such as the UK on track for 90% of their researchers’ output to be published OA within a year due to business model and operational innovations.

The new report reveals emerging trends across journal publishing and article growth, the market dominance of formats and disciplines, whilst also exploring the variances across the different markets of the global economy. It details that China remains the world’s most prolific producer of publishable research output, but that, India, Russian Federation, Spain, Italy, Brazil and Australia all have shown strong growth since 2018.

Speaking of the publication of the 2021 STM Report, Philip Carpenter Interim CEO of STM said: “Despite the challenges presented both before and during COVID-19, there are multiple indications of growth and resilience across the scholarly publishing sector. 2020 will likely be a record year for submissions due to the increase in research and articles related to COVID-19 – many of which publishers provided free access to, ensuring that relevant and timely research and data reached the widest possible audiences as quickly as possible.”

He added “Despite unprecedented world events, scholarly publishing is clearly rising to the challenges of our rapidly changing world, offering sustainable solutions underpinned by 2 technology and innovation whilst striving towards our fundamental mission to advance trusted research worldwide.”

Lucy Derges, Policy and Research Manager at STM compiled the report. She commented: “It is exciting to see the first of this new series of STM Reports published and I am looking forward to preparing the next supplement which will focus purely on Open Access and will be launched in Spring 2022. STM is delighted to have worked with leading experts from across the industry to create what we hope will be a useful, free to access, summary of the global market in 2021”.

The supplement is available on the STM website from 19th October 2021. The report is based on data from Outsell, Delta Think, AAP, and others, who are gratefully acknowledged for their support. 

About This Organization

STM is the leading trade association for academic and professional publishers worldwide. At STM we support our members in their mission to advance global research. We have over 140 members based in over 20 countries around the world who collectively publish 66% of all journal articles and tens of thousands of monographs and reference works. As academic and professional publishers, learned societies, university presses, start-ups and established players we work together to serve society by developing standards and technology to ensure research is of high quality, trustworthy and easy to access.