Correction
The article ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone: the changing landscape of UK learned society publishing’ (Johnson & Malcolmson, 2024) has an error in Figure 5.
The correction concerns the publishing revenues for The Physiological Society included in the figure. Due to a data extraction error, the society’s publishing expenditure figures were used instead of its publishing revenue figures for the 2013 and 2022 calendar years.
The error was identified by Alex Stewart, Managing Editor at The Physiological Society, who contacted the authors on 16 October 2024 to query the data in Figure 5 of the article in respect of his society.
To address the identified error in the revenue data for the Physiological Society, the authors have undertaken a thorough review of all relevant data used in Figure 5. They have confirmed that all data for the 2022/23 period apart from the Physiological Society’s was correct. The 2013 revenue data (aside from that of the Physiological Society), was not re-evaluated, as it draws from an established, previously validated, dataset rather than original research.
Following this review, the authors have created a corrected version of Figure 5 and updated the published dataset to reflect these amendments.
Corrected version of Figure 5:
In the ‘Revenues lagging inflation’ section the following passages need to be corrected:
Incorrect passage:
However, of the five societies reporting the steepest decline in their publication revenues only one had moved from self-publication to outsourcing, with one remaining self-published and the other three outsourcing to the same partners as in 2023. Notably, all five are in medicine and life sciences, being the disciplines in which open access publication is most widely adopted.
To be replaced with:
However, of the five societies reporting the steepest decline in publication revenues only one had moved from self-publication to outsourcing, with one remaining self-published and the other three outsourcing to the same partners as in 2023. Notably, four out of the five are in medicine and life sciences, being the disciplines in which open access publication is most widely adopted.
Incorrect passage:
A review of the underlying data further reinforces the importance of scale: the ten largest societies disclosing publishing revenues saw a median growth of 17% (mean growth: 8%), while the 11 smaller societies saw a median decline of 20% (mean decline: 22%).
To be replaced with:
A review of the underlying data further reinforces the importance of scale: the ten largest societies disclosing publishing revenues saw a median growth of 17% (mean growth: 8%), while the 11 smaller societies saw a median growth of 2% (mean decline: 15%).
In the ‘Discussion’ section the following passage needs to be corrected:
Incorrect passage:
By contrast, of the seven societies that had outsourced their publishing in both 2015 and 2023, five saw an outright decline in their revenues, with a median reduction across all seven of 30% (mean decline: 31%).
To be replaced with:
By contrast, of the seven societies that had outsourced their publishing in both 2015 and 2023, four saw an outright decline in their revenues, with a median reduction across all seven of 8% (mean decline: 20%).