Russian market of electronic resources: providers and users

Abstract

Aim. The article aims at the analysis of the dynamics and the structure of the Russian markets of scholarly electronic information broken by reference groups of providers and users.Materials and Methods. Materials comprise results of the data processing of the Russian surveys on acquisition budgets in 2012–2018 and published results of the international surveys. We analyze three main reference groups and four sub-groups of the Russian organizations and three reference groups of providers of the electronic scholarly information. We obtained market shares of different reference groups of Russian subscribers and analyzed temporal dynamics of the market structure in 2012–2018.We obtained subscription chains and preferences broken by resource providers in Russia and compared our results with the results of the 2018 survey of American academics. We developed Russian rating of information providers and estimated market shares of each reference group.Results. The market of electronic scholarly information shows continuous concentration towards the group of universities. In 2018, relative share of the university segment of the market of electronic resources made 94%. Since 2015, the share of the reference group of the universities of the 5/100 project increased from 36% to 46%, whereas the share of two national Russian universities shrank from 12% to 9% in 2017–2018. The Russian market of electronic resources is broken in three nearly equal parts related to three groups of resource providers and producers: 35% belong to the group of international publishers, 36% – to the Russian subscription agents and 29% – to the Russian producers and providers of electronic information. Nine of ten organizations responded that they subscribe via Russian information vendors and subscription agents and four of ten – directly via international publishers. This result corresponds to the results of the Academic Library Collection Development Survey 2018.Conclusions. One can conclude that the Russian market of electronic resources is monopolized as referred to the users/consumers of scholarly electronic information and non-monopolized referring the providers and producers of electronic resources. The market comprises three almost equal segments related to three reference groups of providers and producers of electronic resources. The majority of Russian organizations subscribe to electronic resources via Russian electronic information producers or agents.