Edinburgh Napier University

  This dataset contains the amount of money paid by UK higher education institutions to ten major publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Sage, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Nature Publishing Group, Royal Society of Chemistry, and Institute of Physics Publishing) for academic journals from 2010-14. The data was obtained by sending FOI requests to each institution through the website whatdotheyknow.com. It now represents over £430m of expenditure.

These are ten of the largest academic publishers but do not represent the total spend of these institutions on academic journals.

Please see the F1000 data note (http://f1000research.com/articles/3-274/v3) for a full description of the data collection process. For a visualisation of the data go to http://shiny.retr0.me/journal_costs/, and for updated 2015/16 figures go to https://figshare.com/articles/Journal_subscription_expenditure_in_the_UK_2015-16/4542433/3