Harcourt's STM Group consists of Academic Press, WB Saunders, Churchill Livingstone and Mosby. The STM publishing business involves the provision of learned journals and books with specialist academic content. Primary customers are universities, research institutes, hospitals, medical practitioners and commercial organisations world-wide. With respect to journals, the publisher recruits an editorial board for its journal. The editorial board comprises leading figures in the relevant field.
Authors provide content, in the form of research papers, free of charge to publishers.
Not to do so would impact on the institution's reputation for research and its ability to attract good students and, in turn, the level of sponsorship for research. For example, in the UK, in order to determine funding levels, the Higher Education Funding Council's Research Assessment Exercise ranks university departments on the number and quality of research articles they publish. This network effect is likely to account, in part, for the apparent inelasticity of demand for STM journals. Third party comments have suggested that print and electronic journals may be complementary products due to the way that sales of them are bundled together, and that journals and books are probably in separate markets. With respect to STM journals, I have considered whether the market comprises all STM journals or STM journals provided by commercial publishers only, and whether narrower markets according to subject areas within the STM field are relevant.