UK University Journal Subscription Costs from 2010-2014 via FOI Requests

Nearly £400 million in payments from UK higher education institutions to seven major academic publishers between 2010 and 2014. The data was compiled by Stuart Lawson from Freedom of Information requests submitted through whatdotheyknow.com. Updates were added throughout late 2014 and early 2015, with notes on VAT treatment for electronic versus print subscriptions.

Use Cases

• Analyzing expenditure trends over time based on the 2010-2014 coverage.
• Comparing subscription costs between different academic publishers like Elsevier and Wiley.
• Investigating financial transparency in higher education based on the FOI request source.
• Assessing the scale of institutional spending on journals based on the reported £400m total.

Strengths

• Covers a significant financial total of nearly £400 million.
• Includes data from seven major publishers: Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Sage, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press.
• Documents a specific time range from 2010 to 2014.
• Source is documented via FOI requests and a linked F1000 data note.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The author notes potential inaccuracies in VAT calculations for a minority of figures.
• Data represents only seven publishers, not the total journal expenditure of the institutions.

Provenance

Source

Stuart Lawson, via Freedom of Information requests to UK universities.

Collection Method

Data was obtained by sending FOI requests through whatdotheyknow.com.

Time Range

2010-2014

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

United Kingdom (UK higher education institutions)