Global STM Publishing Valued at $35 Billion Annually

Research from International STM and Outsell values the STM publishing market at approximately $25 billion, plus $10 billion in additional journal revenues.

By Paula Gantz

Michael Mabe is CEO of STM International

Michael Mabe, CEO of the International STM, and Deni Auclair from Outsell Inc., both reviewed the recent performance of the STM market. Auclair estimated the global STM market at $35 billion in 2014, while Mabe pointed to a market of approximately $25 billion, with $10 billion in journal revenues from 28,100 active scholarly peer-reviewed journals.

The number of published articles is growing by 3.5% per year and currently stands at 2.5 million articles, according to Mabe. The United States leads with 36% of published articles. China published 6% of the articles. Mabe maintained that since the beginning of journal publishing 350 years ago, the growth has been about 3 to 4% per annum. Research output is solely dependent on the number of research workers in the world, he observed.

The full report on the industry’s performance is available at the STM website: Download the report here.

Paula Gantz is the owner of the Paula Gantz Publishing Consultancy, which provides business analysis, strategic planning and product development to the science, medicine, technical and academic publishing communities.

About the Author

Paula Gantz

Paula has worked for more than 20 years in the scientific, technical and medical publishing fields. Prior to working for STM publishers, she spent more than 15 years in consumer magazine and newspaper publishing, holding financial and marketing roles. She has an MBA in marketing from The Wharton School and a BS from Cornell University.