News & Views: China’s New STM Policies: By the Numbers

Tao Tao and Lori Carlin • November 15, 2020

A series of new plans and policies that could potentially impact STM publishing in China in a major way over the next few years have attracted a great deal of global attention. In this article, we take a look at the financial forces driving these policies to better understand their impact. As the vast majority of stakeholders (i.e., researchers, publishers, libraries) in the Chinese STM publishing industry are publicly funded, we treat China as one entity. The assessment looks at online publications only as the mainstream format.


Expenditure on Reading


According to the Chinese Ministry of Education, a total of 2,663 higher education institutions (HEIs) were registered in China at the end of 2018. The Steering Committee for Academic Libraries (SCAL) maintains a database and encourages members to submit data on their annual spending. According to the latest SCAL University Library Development Report, 964 libraries spent a total of $473.5m USD in 2018 to purchase electronic content, with a median spending of $155k USD. This list includes most of the top schools (66%) offering graduate programs (Tier 1) as well as some colleges (26%) without these programs (Tier 2). Assuming that all the Tier 1 schools not included in this list had spending above the median, and that all Tier 2 schools not included spent below the median, 75% of Chinese universities had less than $155k USD to spend on electronic content.


Electronic content includes everything from databases, e-journals and e-books to proceedings published both locally and by foreign organizations. For the majority of Chinese schools, the library budget is allocated first to purchase domestic Chinese language databases such as Chinese National Knowledge Interface (CNKI), which carries a price tag of 100k to several million Ren Min Bi (RMB – the official currency of China). In the case of a school with a budget below the median, once Chinese journal databases have been paid for, there is not much left to buy foreign publications. In fact, we estimate that less than 20% of Chinese university libraries buy foreign language databases.


To verify this estimate, we checked the Chinese university library consortium DRAA’s website and found that the largest consortium deal (in terms of number of members) organized for foreign language journals included 497 participants, or less than 19% of Chinese universities. This means that over 80% of Chinese universities may have access to little or no content behind a paywall, including content they themselves produced as researchers. With library budget increases at less than 3% annually (anecdotally), there is no reason to believe that this picture would change in the foreseeable future. With this in mind, it appears Open Access (OA) STM publishing would significantly benefit China.


Expenditure on Publishing


The benefit of access to research published OA is only one side of the equation. In a 2016 article, Weihong Cheng and Shengli Ren estimated that China expended a total of $72.17m USD on Article Processing Charges (APCs) in 2015. The “2020 Blue Book on China’s Scientific Journal Development” (the Blue Book1) includes an estimate of China’s APC spend in 2019 using the same methodology; it shows that China spent a total of $140m USD (average: $2,054/article) to publish OA articles in pure Gold or Hybrid journals. Although these charges may be paid by the funder, the author’s institution, or the author, this estimate assumes that the APC is paid in full at list price and that only articles with at least one Chinese funder are counted.


The Blue Book1 also reveals that the number of Gold OA articles produced by Chinese authors increased by 101.7% between 2016 and 2019, faster than the increase in total number of articles published by Chinese authors (65.9%). The share of Gold OA articles as components of Chinese overall research output has increased slowly but steadily over the last 5 years, as shown in the figure below.

Source: Dimensions.ai/Digital Science. 


In an annualized projection (based on data from Dimensions), China is on track to publish 683k research articles (at least one of the authors’ organization is located in China) and fund more than 393k of them (at least one of the funders is a Chinese organization) in 2020. Of the 393k funded articles, fewer than 20% will likely be published in Gold and Hybrid journals.


Assuming the average cost per article remains the same as 2019, the total APC cost would be $159m USD. If all of these 393k 2020 China funded articles were published in Gold and Hybrid journals, total APC cost would surge to $808m USD. (Note: it is likely that funding information is not available for some articles and the actual number of articles funded by China is more than 393k.)


Revenue from Publishing


The third piece of this picture is publishers – specifically, publisher revenue. The bulk of English language STM journals published by domestic Chinese publishers are done so under a co-publishing agreement with an overseas publisher2, with revenue shared between partners. As revenue information remains unavailable, we make an educated guess on the basis of the number of published articles. A total of 359 English language titles were registered in China in 2019, of which 204 were indexed in SCI1. All the SCI indexed titles published a total of 26,754 articles1, or an average of 131 articles per title. If we do the math, the estimated total number of articles published by Chinese domestic English language titles was approximately 47k. We also know anecdotally that most of these titles are OA and, according to the Blue Book, more than 85% of the articles they published were written by Chinese authors. Again, basing our estimate on an average APC of $2,054 USD, the total revenue these titles would generate is $96.6m USD, to be shared between Chinese publishers and the international publishers they partner with.


Despite an increase in English language titles, the annual number of articles published by these titles remained nearly the same over the last decade (and decreased in some years). In contrast, articles produced by Chinese authors has been increasing rapidly, at an average annual rate of 15.7%. According to Dimensions, Chinese authors produced a total of 524k articles in 2019, resulting in a total number of articles published by domestic Chinese English language journals of less than 9% of this overall total.

The capacity of Chinese journals contrasts sharply with research output, as demonstrated by the figure below taken from the Blue Book. As the Blue Book is available in print only, the graphic above is a reproduction of the original with permission from the publisher, and with captions translated into English. Numbers shown in the graph were the numbers of articles indexed in SCI.


Source: 2020 Blue Book on China’s Scientific Journal Development (the Blue Book1).


Conclusion


Taking into account the cost of reading and publishing, compared to revenue from publishing, it is clear that while China will benefit greatly from Open Access, sufficient funding is currently not available to cover the costs of all articles when using an APC-based OA business model. Although there is great potential to increase China’s share of the global STM publishing market, it remains unclear just how to solve the inherent funding situation.


New plans and policies introduced in China recently have aimed to control and decelerate growth in article publishing cost on the one hand (setting limits on the number of qualified publications, capping publishing cost at 20k RMB per article, etc.), while growing domestic STM publishing capacity on the other (through continual financial support). The most eye-catching of these results is the mandate to publish one-third of representative articles in domestic Chinese journals, which could have the greatest impact on distribution of Chinese research by non-Chinese journals. However, China’s continued growth in R&D spending and research output could mitigate some of this reduction in distribution of research through non-Chinese publishers if overall volume continues to increase.


Dimensions shows that 2020 year-to-date article output by China is 584k and projected annual output is 683k. If Chinese 2021 output is just 600k, and one-third of these articles are published in domestic publications (assuming there is enough capacity) with a 20k RMB publishing cost cap ($3k), China could save $600m USD by publishing more of their research in domestic publications. This may be one mechanism to manage the cost of publication while also encouraging Open Access publication.


References:

1. 2020 Blue Book on China’s Scientific Journal Development, September 2020, published by Science Press on behalf of Chinese Association of Science and Technology

2. Zhang Y, Bao F, Wu J and Lin H, Reflections on the international impact of Chinese STM journals, doi: 10.1002/leap.1203, Learned Publishing 2019; 32: 126–136


This article is © 2020 Delta Think, Inc. It is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Please do get in touch if you want to use it in other contexts – we’re usually pretty accommodating.

News & Views: Falling Dollar, Rising Prices

By Dan Pollock & Heather Staines • May 20, 2025
After our previous analysis of the effects of inflation on APCs, we received a question about the effects of currency exchange rates. At a time when the dollar’s exchange rate is changing rapidly, what effect might that have for organizations buying services from abroad? Background Each year we survey the list Article Processing Charges (APCs) of more than 30 major and significant publishers. Going back to 2015, the dataset includes more than 20,000 unique titles and 150,000 title per year combinations. We have previously seen how headline prices typically increase each year, but mostly fall in real terms , once inflation is accounted for. After our most recent analysis, we were asked by a US-based institution whether our inflation numbers included currency effects. With the US dollar (USD) having weakened over the last few months, the institution found buying services priced in non-USD currencies to be significantly more expensive by the end of April 2025 compared with the start of the year. We take a snapshot of APCs at the same time each year. To compare like-for-like across our global market, we normalize prices to USD. This practice is commonly used by economists when analyzing global data and happens to be the most commonly used currency in our sample. Many non-US publishers – especially larger ones – offer an option of USD prices alongside their native currencies (and perhaps others). So, we sample USD prices where quoted, which cover on average around 94% of our annual samples of around 15,000 journals. Otherwise, we convert the prices cited in the publisher’s native currency into USD using the average exchange rate the most recent full year available. Effects of changing exchange rates Our analysis of price changes includes the effects of annual changes in exchange rates for the subset of around 6% of non-USD journals in our sample. It also includes any changes made by non-US publishers to their USD prices. However, it does not include the effects of significant and quick changes to exchange rates. Given the volatility in the US dollar over the last few months, we can dig deeper to explore the impact of these changes. And are there winners and losers depending on who’s buying or selling?

Analysis is Underway: Preliminary Data from our Researcher/Author Survey on the Impact of Potential Funding Reductions

By Lori Carlin & Bonnie Gruber • May 15, 2025
Background: Anticipating Change Earlier this year, the Delta Think team began reflecting on what potential decreases in United States federal funding could mean for research and scholarship both nationally and internationally. We knew our industry and clients also shared these uncertainties, so we embarked on an effort to capture market data for a more grounded understanding of trends. With analytics in hand, we could help our community begin to measure the impact of changes in the times to come and make informed decisions and plans. Methods: Transparency and Rigor Delta Think designed a researcher/author survey that explored topics such as potential research and publication output, peer review availability, conference attendance, society support, research concerns and sentiments, and more. Twenty-seven organizations, associations, and societies participated with us across fields in the health sciences, life sciences, physical sciences, engineering & technology, social sciences, and arts & humanities. A unique survey link was distributed to each participating organization who then shared it with their constituents between March 25th and May 4th. This outreach gave us unprecedented and comprehensive access to the scholarly community, enabling immense confidence in the data. The data generated will deliver systematic, quantitative insights from the market, and the accompanying analysis will support evidence-based strategy development and scenario planning within a rapidly evolving funding landscape and policy framework. Results: Initial Demographics Full results and analysis are in process, but we can share an overview of the response counts by segment:  We received 13,246 total responses from 138 countries; 60% of responses were from the US. All fields were well represented with Health Sciences and Life Sciences leading the way with more than 50% of responses. Physical Sciences and Engineering & Technology followed with 35% of responses, and those in the Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences saw close to 15%. Career stage also saw a good balance with about 34% identifying as Grad Students/Residents or in their Early Career, 31% in Mid-Career, and 30% Senior. Respondents worked across many different roles including 33% who selected Professor/Faculty/Educator, 12% who selected Healthcare Provider or Physician/Surgeon, and 10% who selected Researcher/Analyst. Conclusions: Stay Tuned and Sign Up Based on the large number of responses, we have a high degree of confidence in the data, and we know it will provide meaningful, evidence-based, and actionable intelligence not only for the 27 participating organizations, but also for the larger scholarly communications industry. Participants will receive the detailed findings, but we will share high-level insights along the way with the wider community. Based on the overwhelming response to this project and the extraordinary and ongoing shifts in US federal policy, we expect to conduct this survey again in the fourth quarter of this year to start to document trends. Current survey partners as well as new societies, associations, and organizations are encouraged to participate, so please contact us at info@deltathink.com for more information or to ensure you are included. This Author/Researcher Survey is a logical and natural extension of our work. Delta Think consultants specialize in uncovering evidence for our clients, discovering what that evidence means for them, and using the knowledge gained to build customer-driven, actionable business and publishing strategies. Through the expert utilization of innovative and creative market research techniques and analysis, we are committed to doing our part in support of the scholarly communication community, putting our ideas into action. We will also be attending the upcoming SSP Annual Meeting, so please reach out to set up a meeting with one of the team to hear more in Baltimore.

Contextual Inquiry: The Science Behind User Behavior

By Lori Carlin • April 29, 2025
“I had a wonderful teacher about animal behavior.” – Jane Goodall Jane Goodall was renowned for her ability to understand chimpanzees in the wild simply by observing their day-to-day behaviors. Her subjects were her teachers. She immersed herself in their natural environment, which allowed her to gather authentic insights into her subjects’ social structures, tool use, communication, and cultural behaviors. This ethnographic style of research has now been adopted by the business world to gain deeper insights into customer needs, workflows, and challenges. What is Contextual Inquiry? Contextual Inquiry, as it’s frequently called in the commercial world, is a user-centered research method. Like Dr. Goodall in the field in Tanzania, Contextual Inquiry involves observing and interviewing users in their natural environments while they perform routine tasks, allowing market researchers to understand user behaviors, goals, motivations, and pain points in real-world contexts. The methodology is guided by four key principles: Context: Observations and interviews occur in the user’s actual environment. Partnership: Researchers collaborate with users to understand their processes. Interpretation: Insights are shared with users during the interview for clarification. Focus: The interaction is steered toward topics relevant to the research scope. Why Contextual Inquiry? Contextual Inquiry illuminates user behavior and workflows and can be used to inform solutions including product development, processes, and policies. 1. Deep Understanding of User Needs By observing users in their natural environment, contextual inquiry uncovers hidden needs, pain points, and behaviors that users may not articulate in surveys or traditional interviews. This identifies solutions that address real user challenges rather than assumed ones. 2. Authentic Data Collection Unlike lab-based studies or self-reported methods, Contextual Inquiry captures authentic behaviors as they occur. This helps reveal workarounds, unconscious habits, and environmental factors that influence user behavior. 3. User-Centered Design and Focus The method places users at the center, ensuring solutions are tailored to their needs and preferences. 4. Reduced Risk and Costs By identifying real-world user behaviors and challenges, Contextual Inquiry increases the likelihood that resulting solutions, products, processes, and policies meet user needs. 5. Informed Strategy Insights from contextual inquiry help prioritize users’ needs and challenges, identify new opportunities, and ensure alignment of product and strategy roadmaps with market demands. 6. Empathy Building Direct observation helps teams develop empathy for users by experiencing and understanding their challenges firsthand. Use Cases and an Idea Delta Think uses a Contextual Inquiry methodology to apply the principles above in several different types of projects: Understanding specialized work processes and designing complex systems or workflows Exploring new product opportunities Redesigning existing products Informing processes and policies One way Delta Think can use Contextual Inquiry to help publishers is around the use of AI by researchers and authors. For example, before developing any guidelines, it is critical that publishers first understand how these tools are being used. Using Contextual Inquiry to observe how researchers and authors are currently using AI allows you to build policies that address specific use cases and provide meaningful guidelines based on actual behaviors. At Delta Think, we know how powerful a tool Contextual Inquiry can be for creating a user-centered culture grounded in decisions based on real-world insights and observations. We specialize in uncovering evidence for our clients, discovering what that evidence means for them, and using the knowledge gained to build customer-driven products, policies, and actionable business and publishing strategies. Ready to start the conversation? Please reach out today to discuss how our market research expertise, including Contextual Inquiry, can help your organization unlock key insights to support development and growth.

News & Views: The Impact of Inflation on APC Costs

By Dan Pollock and Heather Staines • April 22, 2025
In March 2025, we looked at the latest Article Processing Charges (APCs) . This month we focus on how prices have risen relative to inflation. As APC price increases fall back to trend, what does this mean in real terms? Background Each year we survey the list Article Processing Charges (APCs) of more than 30 major and significant publishers. Going back to 2015, the dataset includes more than 20,000 unique titles and 150,000 title per year combinations. Going into 2025, we saw price increases fall back to long-term trends from their unusually high increases in 2024. Fully OA (“gold”) journal list prices across our sample rose by around 6.5%, compared with a 9.5% increase this time last year. Hybrid list prices rose by an average of 3%, compared with 4.2%. Last year’s price rises were above long term trends, but overall we found they were rising below inflation. How does this hold for this year’s price increases? We again use the global Consumer Price Index (CPI) as our inflation index, as we consider it to represent the most realistic view of our marketplace. Prices exclude zero APCs, so we can see the effects for instances when publishers choose to charge APCs. Are APCs becoming cheaper or more expensive? The chart below shows how increases in all list APCs work out in real terms for both hybrid and fully OA journals.

News & Views Webinar: Open Access Charges 2025

By Heather Staines • April 7, 2025
We are proud to share a video recording of our March News & Views companion online discussion forum! Join us to hear the latest trends around APC data, including APCs for both fully OA and hybrid journals. We'll talk about what we're seeing in relation to recent years and discuss the broader context for the APC market. If you missed the session, or if you attended and would like to watch/listen again, or share forward with friends, please feel free!

Author/Researcher Survey: Impact of Potential Funding Reductions on Research, Publishing, and Conference Attendance

By Lori Carlin • March 28, 2025
Delta Think is currently spearheading an industry market research survey to authors and researchers across the scholarly community designed to provide insight into the impact of potential US federal funding reductions on their research. The survey addresses topics such as publication volume, their ability/allowance for peer review, conference participation and attendance, influence on their research scope and topics, and more. Working in collaboration with nearly 25 scholarly societies, we are launching this initiative to capture the real-world impact of these potential changes in order to help societies better plan and support their members, researchers, and authors. The results of the survey will provide scholarly publishers with systematic, quantitative voice-of-market data to inform evidenced-based strategy development and scenario planning in a rapidly changing funding landscape and policy environment. The survey opens this week, with each participating society distributing the link to their own communities. All participating societies will receive an in-depth analysis of the full survey results, filtered by various demographics such as country, career stage, and discipline, as well as options for Delta Think to analyze their specific community data or the raw data from their specific community so they can analyze it themselves. Delta Think has designed the survey and will conduct all the analysis of the results.

News & Views: Open Access Charges – Price Increases Back on Trend

By Dan Pollock and Heather Staines • March 13, 2025
This month we look at our latest data about Article Processing Charges (APCs). Per article pricing is a fundamental building block for all paid publishing models, so our review provides an invaluable insight into how costs of open access continue to evolve. APC prices in general continue to increase, but at a slower rate compared with this time last year. Important nuances in the distribution of prices continue to affect the value and cost of paid publishing models. Background Each year we survey the list Article Processing Charges (APCs) of a sample of major and significant publishers. Covering more than 20,000 titles going back to 2016, our dataset represents one of the most comprehensive reviews of open access pricing. To compare like for like, we consistently analyze non-discounted, CC BY charges. We take a snapshot at the end of every January, so we can track yearly changes while controlling for the different times of year that publishers may update prices. Our statistics exclude zero or unspecified APCs, although these are included in our underlying data. This allows us to understand trends where publishers choose to charge APCs without skewing averages. We run separate analyses around APC-free models. Headline Changes Going into 2025, we have seen APC pricing increasing but falling back to long-term trends. Fully OA APC list prices across our sample have risen by around 6.5% compared with 9.5% this time last year. Hybrid APC list prices have risen by an average of 3% compared with 4.2% this time last year. Maximum APCs for fully OA journals remain at $8,900. Maximum APCs for hybrid journals now top out at $12,690 (up $400 from last year). Big jumps in prices happened last year, driven by high inflation. In 2020-2021 prices were driven up when high-impact journals began offering OA options for the first time. In both cases, increases subsequently fell back to averages. Underlying trends continue. There are around 2.6x more hybrid journals than fully OA ones, down from 2.9x a year ago. Hybrid journals follow (or, rather, set) a similar pattern to the market overall. On average, fully OA prices are around 64% of those of hybrids. This is a couple of percentage points higher than long term trends. Around 31% of our sample of fully OA journals charge no APCs. (We have separately analyzed the number of articles in OA journals.) Price rises vary significantly by discipline. Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences have seen particularly large average increases, especially in fully OA journal prices. Price Distribution Market-wide headline price changes mask important nuances. We have discussed previously that the most important nuance lies in the spread of prices within a given publisher’s portfolio. For example, if the bulk of a publisher’s journals lie toward the lower end of its pricing, with just a few journals priced at the high end, the average (mean) price will be higher than most authors pay. The following figures show how the spread of prices plays out in the market across our sample of publishers. The figures are outlines of histograms, showing how many titles sit in various price bands over the successive years of data we have curated. The red line shows the most recent year’s prices. The lines become greener as they go further back in time. Subscribers to Delta Think’s Data and Analytics Tool can see full details of axes. Hybrid Prices The spread of price bands for hybrid journals is shown in Figure 1 below.

Books: The Hidden Goldmine in Your 2025 Content Strategy

By Diane Harnish and Meg White • February 27, 2025
User information needs as well as funding models are evolving rapidly, as evidenced by Clarivate’s recent move to phase out perpetual access purchases for print, eBooks, and digital collections by the end of 2025. Taking a hard look at how these assets contribute to your portfolio and overall organizational strategy has never been more critical. A holistic books program assessment can help you think intentionally about how books and book-based content can help meet customer and market needs. Publishing and Product Strategy A market-driven publishing and product strategy begins with an understanding of customer information needs. What markets, segments, information needs, and challenges are present? How can customer information needs be addressed? What role can our book content play? How can we differentiate our solutions? Can our book content contribute to a unique value proposition? Thinking creatively about how your content meets market needs is critical; think solutions, not printed pages and chapters. Commercial Strategy A detailed commercial strategy, supported by proper resources, is fundamental to success. Leveraging a clear understanding of customer preferences and delivering messaging that resonates with your specific market segments and use cases is essential. What are the best methods to generate market awareness? When and how should we communicate with key audiences? What messages resonate best? What sales and marketing capabilities do we have internally? Where do we need to partner to reach core audiences? How do we meet global needs? Do we have the appropriate access, pricing, and distribution models in place to meet customer expectations? What do we need to do directly? Where should we cultivate successful channel partnerships? And you don’t have to go it alone; a commercial strategy is best formulated and executed by a combination of internal and external resources. Technology Infrastructure Is your technology optimized to support your book program? From agile content management systems to product platforms to customer relationship management tools, the right tools enable your content and commercial strategy. What systems do we need to ensure efficiency in our publishing processes and quality and integrity in our content? What technologies and platforms do we need to build market-responsive products? What systems do we need to communicate effectively and meaningfully with our customers, including authors? Are we best served by building these systems or partnering? Successfully integrating and leveraging new technologies, such as AI, requires a fundamental understanding of markets and customer information needs . The Numbers Financial metrics are a key measure of the health of any program. An in-depth assessment of a program’s recent performance is a vital tool to help identify strengths, weaknesses, and gaps, and help to surface areas for improvement and corrective action. A financial analysis will clarify: What is our book and content annual output? Is it sufficient to support our strategy and meet customer and market needs? What is our cost structure? Our pricing strategy? Do they align with industry and market norms and expectations? Do we have the appropriate mix of internal and external resources in place to support our strategy? How can we best align our financial performance to contribute to the organization’s larger strategy? Beyond red ink or black ink, financial analysis will provide answers to these questions. Assessing Your Book Program Delta Think partners with publishers to do the foundational analysis necessary to understand how your book and book-based content can be a vital part of your content portfolio and support your organization’s goals and objectives. Our processes, including program benchmarking, stakeholder interviews, surveys, and workshops, combined with expert landscape research and analysis ensure you are building a content strategy that is market-focused and customer-driven. Contact Delta Think at info@deltathink.com to set up a time for a video call to learn more. We will also be attending the London Book Fair, March 11-13, 2025, if you’d like to schedule an in-person chat.

News & Views: What proportion of OA is Diamond OA? Can AI help us find out?

By Dan Pollock and Ann Michael • February 20, 2025
Overview A recent post on the Open Café listserv posed a question about the true extent of fee-free open access publishing, but it noted the incomplete coverage of the data cited. We have more comprehensive data, but just as we started our analysis, DeepSeek’s release sent markets into turmoil. The stage was set for a timely experiment. We first answer the question using our data. Then we see how the AI did. Background What proportion of open access is not paid for by APCs? In discussing this, a recent Open Café listserv post cited studies by Walt Crawford – a librarian, well-known in the academic library and OA communities for his analysis of open access. He has paid particular attention to “diamond” OA journals, which charge neither readers nor authors. His studies are based on data from the Directory of Open Access journals ( DOAJ ). Excellent though both sources may be – and, full disclosure, we contribute to the DOAJ – the DOAJ’s remit covers only fully OA (“gold”) journals. As listserv founder Rick Anderson noted, “By counting only articles published in DOAJ-listed journals, Crawford’s studies radically _undercount_ the number of APC-funded OA articles published – because DOAJ does not list hybrid journals, which always charge an APC for OA and which produce a lot of genuinely OA articles (though exactly how many, no one knows).” Using our data Actually, we do know … or at least have some fair estimates of hybrid OA. Our data allows us to determine the share of open access output in APC-free journals, as follows.

News & Views Special Edition: How much scholarly publishing is affected by US Presidential Executive Orders?

By Dan Pollock and Ann Michael • February 11, 2025
Overview Following the 2024 US election, the new US administration has instructed employees in some key federal agencies to retract publications arising from federally funded research. This is to allow representatives of the administration to review the language used, to ensure it is consistent with the administration’s political ideology. In this special edition of News & Views, we quantify how many papers might be affected and estimate their share of scholarly publishers’ output. The initial numbers may be small, but we suggest the effects on scholarly publishing could be profound. Background On 20 January 2025, Donald J. Trump took office as the 47th President of the United States. Within hours he signed an Executive Order 1 (EO) 14168 proclaiming that the US government would only recognize two sexes, and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs inside federal agencies. The following day, his administration instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications – “such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts” – pending their review by presidential appointees. These instructions were delivered to staff at agencies inside the Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS), including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The events that followed are important, as they directly affect scholarly papers and our analysis. A memo on 29 January instructed agencies to “end all agency programs that … promote or reflect gender ideology” as defined in the EO. Department heads were instructed to immediately review and terminate any “programs, contracts, and grants” that “promote or inculcate gender ideology.” Among other things, they were to remove any public-facing documents or policies that are trans-affirming and replace the term “gender” with “sex” on official documents. By the start of February, more than 8000 web pages across more than a dozen US government websites were taken down . These included over 3000 pages from the CDC (including 1000 research articles filed under preventing chronic disease, STD treatment guidelines , information about Alzheimer’s warning signs, overdose prevention training , and vaccine guidelines for pregnancy). Other departments affected included the FDA (some clinical trials), the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (the OSTP, removing papers in optics, chemistry and experimental medicine), the Health Resources and Services Administration (covering care for women with opioid addictions, and an FAQ about the Mpox vaccine). Around this time, it further emerged that CDC staff were sent an email directing them to withdraw manuscripts that had been accepted, but not yet published, that did not comply with the EO. Agency staff members were given a list of about 20 forbidden terms, including gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female, and he/she/they/them. All references to DEI and inclusion are also to be removed. The effects of the EO Commenting on the merits of policy and ideology lies beyond our remit. However, when these matters affect the scholarly record – as they clearly do here – then they are of interest for our analyses. Specifically, what might the effects of the EO be on the publication of papers, and what effects might accrue from withdrawal of research funding? If federal agencies are being instructed to withhold or withdraw submissions, then, to quantify what this might mean to publishers, we have estimated the volume of output from a few key federal agencies. It is summarized in the following chart. 
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