The role of Learned Societies in Scholarly Publishing in Finland

Early scholarly journals were published by learned societies to able scholars to communicate their research findings with other scholars within the field. The distribution of the volumes was based on trades between the societies. After the WWII the status of commercial publishers strengthened. Nowadays the majority of the scholarly journals (also those started by learned societies) are published by commercial publishers such as Elsevier, Springer etc. However, learned societies are still active in promoting their discipline and exchanging and disseminating knowledge especially nationally.

This study presents preliminary results concerning the role of learned societies in scholarly publishing in Finland. Our research results will offer knowledge about the share of learned society journal and book publishers of all Finnish peer-reviewed channels and of the Finnish universities' output published in Finland in years 2011-2017. The role of learned societies is compared with commercial publishers, university presses and other types of scholarly publishers operating in Finland. We also examine the field and share of OA of learned society publications. Quantitative data for the study are collected from publication channel register of Finnish Publication Forum and VIRTA publication information service.

In Finland, there are approximately 300 active learned societies of which more than half publish journals and/or book publications (monographs and edited books). Results show learned societies have a strong role in national scholarly publishing in Finland. There are in Finland a total of 55 peer-reviewed book publishers and 349 journals or book series, of which more than half are published by learned societies. Learned societies provide publication channels also for more than half of the total peer-reviewed output of universities published in Finland. In the presentation, we will show results also concerning the share of open access publications.