As Australasian Open Access Week ended, for-profit research publisher Elsevier announced earnings

Owner RELX reports the STM division, which includes publishing and data analytics, recorded a 2 per cent increase in YTD revenue. A driver was “expansion of analytical products supporting research (and) evaluation of science.”

Last year the STM division’s revenues were £ 2637m, with £982m in adjusting operating profit, (that’s A$1.86bn).

In Europe and the US RELX’s pay to read/pay to publish journal model is being eroded by government and university demands for various OA models – it is responding by adapting strategies and creating/buying products to monetise its vast holdings of research data.

Like Monty Python’s peasant on the plague cart Elsevier is not dead yet.