How Academic Publishers Make Insane Profits by Making Others Pay for Publicly-Funded Research Publications

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• The Origins of a Lucrative Model
• Free Content, Paid Access
• The Big Five and the Oligopoly Effect
• The Double-Dip Dilemma: Open Access and APCs
• The Public Pays Twice
• Why Resistance Has Been So Weak
• The Alternatives: Hope, Hype, or Hurdles?
• Conclusion

Introduction

There’s a bizarre paradox at the heart of academia: governments and institutions spend billions funding research, universities pay scholars to write, peer reviewers work for free, and yet, when it’s time to access the final article, you still have to pay a publisher. Sometimes a lot. How does that make sense?

The academic publishing industry has perfected a business model that might make oil barons and casino magnates blush. At its core is a simple, exploitative cycle: get free content, get free labor to validate that content, and then sell it back, at extortionate prices, to the very people who created it. This is not just an inefficiency or a market quirk. It’s a systemic design engineered for profit, hiding behind the noble facade of “disseminating knowledge.”

The write-up peels back the curtain on how academic publishers generate their eye-watering profits through an economic system that heavily relies on publicly funded research and labor. Let’s also examine how this model affects researchers, institutions, and the wider public and why, despite all the grumbling, change has been slow to arrive.

The Origins of a Lucrative Model

The modern academic publishing system began innocently enough. Scholarly societies in the 17th and 18th centuries started printing journals to share discoveries within their communities. The motive was clear at that point: spread knowledge, not make money. But as academia grew more formalized in the 20th century—particularly with the post-WWII research funding boom—publishers realized serious money was to be made.

The shift from scholarly societies to commercial publishers like Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley was gradual but transformational. These companies brought efficiency and reach, but they also brought profit motives. Over time, what had been a collegial process became industrialized, monetized, and, ultimately, weaponized against the very institutions that feed it.

Academic publishing evolved into a unique sector in which publishers don’t pay for the content they publish, don’t pay the experts who verify it, and don’t share royalties with authors. However, they do charge steep subscription or access fees to libraries, researchers, and the public. That’s a business model with a 100% markup on goodwill and public funds.

Free Content, Paid Access

Let’s get one thing clear: academic publishers rarely pay for the articles they publish. Researchers write journal articles as part of their employment or PhD programs, usually funded by governments or universities. There’s no financial incentive for writing these papers. The reward is prestige, career progression, or simply contributing to the field.

Peer review, a cornerstone of academic credibility, is also largely unpaid. Experts spend hours evaluating submissions, offering detailed feedback, and ensuring academic rigor—all without compensation. For many, it’s part of their academic duty or a professional obligation. The publisher? They just manage the process and slap their branding on it.

And yet, access to these articles comes at a premium. Subscription costs for libraries often run into millions annually. Individual researchers unaffiliated with well-funded institutions face paywalls demanding $30–$50 per article. Considering the marginal cost of digital distribution to be minimal, the profit margin here is astronomical.

The Big Five and the Oligopoly Effect

A handful of players dominates the academic publishing industry. Known as the “Big Five,” they control over half of all scholarly publishing. Their dominance isn’t just about size; it’s about ownership of critical journals and influence over impact metrics.

This consolidation has allowed them to exert incredible pricing power. Libraries, especially at public universities, are caught in a bind. Canceling a subscription means cutting off access to key journals, which could cripple research capacity. It’s not a market in the traditional sense; it’s more of a knowledge cartel.

Publishers frequently lock libraries into restrictive subscription bundles known as the “Big Deal”—a take-it-or-leave-it package that compels institutions to pay for vast collections of journals, many of low relevance, just to secure access to a handful of critical titles. This model has drawn widespread criticism for inflating costs and limiting budget flexibility, particularly as academic budgets tighten. The practice has been likened to requiring consumers to purchase an entire cable TV lineup when they only want a single channel—a comparison that underscores its inefficiency and financial burden.

The profitability of this model is staggering. In 2023, Elsevier’s parent company, RELX, reported an operating profit margin of approximately 34%, continuing a trend of outsized earnings that surpass even tech giants like Apple (28%) and Google (25%). 

This discrepancy is especially striking given that the core content—peer-reviewed research—is produced by academics who contribute their work without payment, review manuscripts as unpaid volunteers, and often even fund the research through public grants. Critics argue that this system effectively privatizes publicly funded knowledge while extracting exorbitant profits, fueling ongoing debates over open-access alternatives and institutional pushback against unsustainable pricing.

The Double-Dip Dilemma: Open Access and APCs

Enter open access (OA), the movement that aims to make scholarly publications free for all to read. On the surface, OA sounds like a revolutionary solution. But like everything else in publishing, it has been commercialized. Publishers, spotting another opportunity, now charge authors or their institutions Article Processing Charges (APCs) to make articles freely available.

These APCs often range from $1,500 to over $10,000, depending on the journal. So, instead of charging readers, publishers now charge authors, who are again relying on public or institutional funds. It’s the same cake, just sliced differently. Either the library pays to read, or the researcher pays to be read.

This double-dipping is not just theoretical. Many hybrid journals—offering both subscription and open access options—collect APCs while still charging libraries subscription fees. In essence, they’re getting paid on both ends for the same content.

And the kicker? Many OA journals are owned by the same Big Five academic publishers. The movement meant to break their stranglehold has largely been absorbed into their empires.

The Public Pays Twice

Here’s where the ethical outrage begins to solidify: the public funds research through taxes, pays academics to conduct and write up findings, and then, via libraries and subscriptions, pays again to access the published work. In some cases, even publicly-funded institutions like hospitals and small colleges can’t afford subscriptions, effectively locking out those who could benefit most.

This paywall around publicly funded knowledge is more than inconvenient—it’s a moral failure. Access to the latest research can directly impact lives in fields like medicine, climate science, and public health. Yet many of these findings are buried behind digital tollbooths.

Moreover, early-career researchers, especially in the Global South, are often priced out of publishing in top-tier journals due to high APCs. This creates a gatekeeping effect that reinforces existing hierarchies and biases in global academia.

Why Resistance Has Been So Weak

Given all this, why hasn’t the academic community revolted en masse? Several reasons.

First, academic publishing is deeply entangled with career advancement. Promotions, grants, and reputations hinge on publishing in high-impact journals, most of which are controlled by the Big Five. Breaking away feels professionally risky, especially in competitive fields.

Second, alternatives exist but lack prestige. Institutional repositories, preprint servers, and independent OA journals have grown, but they don’t carry the same weight without the branding muscle and citation indexes.

Third, inertia is powerful. Academia is slow to change, bound by traditions and governed by cautious administrators. Change often requires collective action, which is notoriously difficult to coordinate in competitive academic environments.

The Alternatives: Hope, Hype, or Hurdles?

Despite the grip of traditional publishers, cracks are appearing. Plan S, spearheaded by cOAlition S, mandates that publicly funded research in Europe be published in compliant open access journals or platforms. Several funders and governments are beginning to follow suit.

Preprint platforms like arXiv, bioRxiv, and SSRN are growing in popularity. These platforms allow researchers to share work before formal peer review, preserving public access while decoupling visibility from formal publishing.

Library-led initiatives like SCOAP³ and consortium-driven platforms are trying to reclaim the publishing process. Even some universities have launched their own presses focused on open access.

Still, these efforts often lack scale, funding, and perceived prestige. Unless funders and institutions align incentives—valuing openness over journal rank—change will remain incremental.

Conclusion

Academic publishing should serve the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge, not the enrichment of shareholders. But today’s system does the opposite. It thrives on a model where the public pays for research, pays for its validation, and then pays again for access. All the while, publishers reap the rewards of a system they barely contribute to, at least in terms of content creation.

This isn’t just a system in need of reform—it’s a system that demands disruption. True open access isn’t about shifting costs from readers to authors. It’s about reimagining scholarly communication in ways that prioritize equity, access, and transparency.

Until then, academic publishers will keep making insane profits, and the rest of us will keep paying—twice.