![]() We hypothesize that recent shifts have been facilitated by an already disproportionate publisher ownership of academic content (and data) and that the implications include increased dependence by individual researchers and institutions, as well as the consolidation of an already unequal scholarly communications landscape, making it harder for alternative services and products to succeed in the industry. We argue that moves toward openness and increased control of scholarly infrastructure are simultaneous processes of rent-seeking which could further entrench publishers’ power and exacerbate the vulnerability of already marginalized researchers and institutions.ĢThis paper’s primary objective is to systematically document the economic concentration in the academic publishing industry in order to situate recent shifts towards the acquisition of scholarly infrastructures and evaluate its implications for inequality in knowledge production. However, this paper problematizes this claim by documenting and examining the simultaneous redirection of multinational academic publishers’ business strategy towards the acquisition and integration of scholarly infrastructure, the tools and services that underpin the scholarly research life cycle, many of which are also geared towards data analytics for the purpose of creating new income streams. 1As major commercial academic publishers’ have redirected their business strategies to open access and alternative paying structures, it could be argued that this represents a move towards more democratic access to knowledge. ![]()
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