The World is Yours: Globalization Trends in Scholarly Publishing

by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Globalization is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a new trend. For decades, our world has steadily become more interconnected and, without doubt, this is a pattern that is set to continue long into the future. In scholarly publishing, this pattern is no different. But journal publishers are increasingly noting that globalization is progressively affecting every facet of the business—from editorial and production right through to financial and sales and marketing.

This is why at this year’s KGL PubFactory Virtual Series we dedicated a special session to the topic. Hosted by Kevin Lomangino, KGL’s Director of Consulting, platform customers were led through a fascinating presentation on how globalization is currently impacting scholarly publishing and how journal publishers can best position themselves to capitalize on this trend. The following highlights some of the most striking takeaways from the session.

A more collaborative environment

The days of academics operating strictly within institutional silos, or even within the confines of their country’s borders, are long gone. During the last decade, and across all the major territories in academia, we have witnessed a notable rise in international author teams connecting and collaborating on published research.

The UK and Germany are currently leading the way as the countries with the highest share of internationally authored papers in their markets, according to data from SCImago. In 2020, 60% (UK) and 55% (Germany) of the research papers published in those markets came from international author collaborations. In the US, international team-led research grew 10 percentage points between 2015 and 2020 to make up over 40% of its research output. And finally, as the Chinese market continues its relentless growth trajectory, so too did its global research collaborations, making up 25% of its total output in 2020.

This clear upward trend in global author teams and multinational collaborations is no doubt a product of globalization and an ever-more interconnected world where academics feel free to partner up with likeminded experts in their field, no matter how far away they might be geographically.

Global output accelerating, market leaders changing

Global research output has been on the rise for decades. However, with Open Access coming to the fore and online publishing taking precedence, in the last 10-20 years we have seen output levels accelerate substantially. Across the board, every major territory is now publishing more research with markets as far afield as Latin America, Asia Pacific and the Middle East all expanding output and contributing to this global trend.

Significantly, annual article output from China has surpassed that of the US and the EU in recent years, up by an astonishing 51% between 2016 and 2020. This has led to a dramatic change in the relative share of global publishing output, with China now publishing over 25% of the world’s research, the US falling below 25% and the EU share declining to 32%.

All eyes on China

In addition to this eye-catching rise in Chinese publishing output, one of the most important developments has been the major shift in the quality of the nation’s research. Defying popular western preconceptions, China has really shifted gears and started to deliver quality content at the top end of the publishing spectrum.

And there are plenty of statistics to help reinforce this point. Chinese research comprised 27% of the top 1% most cited papers, compared to 25% for the US. Furthermore, China’s Field Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) rose to 1.12 in 2020—12% above the world average—and during the same year Chinese authors contributed 29% of articles published in the world’s highest impact journals.

A truly global workforce

By nature, scholarly publishing has been a diverse and internationally focused industry for many years. While most major publishers are headquartered in Europe with publishing offices in the US, their workforces are traditionally spread much further afield, as companies seek to take advantage of their global footprints to employ expertise from all over the world across a variety of disciplines. We are witnessing a growth in typesetting, composition and data conversion being managed out of India and the Philippines, local editors being deployed for content acquisition across the US, Europe and China, and peer review networks covering more ground and more markets than ever before. 

The global revenue opportunity

Finally, from a commercial standpoint, publishers with a global outlook who engage with global markets are in considerably better position. Although the US continues to retain the largest share of global publishing revenues in STEM and SSH, it’s worth remembering that this is still just 40%, and that the rest of the world holds a sizeable 60% of revenue generation. US-based publishers who chose not to take a global approach are potentially missing out on a much larger piece of the revenue pie.

Since 2000, KGL Consulting has served as management consultant to scores of scholarly societies and organizations. To learn how to better navigate the changing landscape, contact Cara Rivera.