これは2017年4月に弊社の山川隆司氏が米国ユタ大学にて行った講演の要旨です。
Takashi Yamakawa
1. Introduction
2. Government Policy
3. Publishers
4. Libraries
5. Intermediaries
6. Readers / Authors
7. About USACO
8. Opinion & Conclusion
1. INTRODUCTION
I was given my speech title by Jean Shipman. I had been wondering how my speech should be organized so that the audience would all follow me well to understand my presentation. And after a while, I concluded that it is best to start with a publishing chain map and on each point of this cycle, I will give you fact data and my comment for comparison party between Japan and the U.S. which will lead you to understand Japanese society, Publishing communities, and people engaged in this industry and market.
2. GOVERNMENT POLICY
Before my Speech on the publishing chain, I need to brief you about our Government Policy on education and research. Among several different ministries with research activities that also produce scholarly output, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Science and Technology is the key agency to promote scientific research through their research grant (228.4 billion yen (2.1 billion dollars) in 2017) to researchers under the ministry.
Historically, promotion of science, technology and medicine (STM) has been one of their major objective since the Meiji restoration which terminated Samurai controlled government 130 years ago, and with the start of new government, they were so keen to learn Western technology and culture to catch up with the leading countries of Europe and U.S.A.
Education was one of the most important objectives and this has been inherited to the present. The Ministry’s annual budget for 2017 is about 5.7 trillion yen (52 billion dollars).
Thanks to this policy, Japan has had 25 Nobel Prize winners out of which 22 are researchers in physics, chemistry and medicine.
There are about 540,000 scientists in Japan and the total research spending of both government and industry is approximately 19 trillion yen (173 billion dollars).
The cabinet office of our government announced and published in the fall of 2016 their 5 year program to promote science and technology in Japan, in which they call for (1) Creation of new industries. (2) Safety and quality of our nation. (3)Sustainable production of intellectual assets.
Although the text is not clear and descriptive. (3) Will help scientists who produce scholarly outputs in good quantity and quality.
Their scholarly research papers are produced in higher education and research organizations under the ministry. Following is the number of those higher education and research organizations.
National Universities … 86
Municipal Universities … 89
Private Universities … 604
Medical Schools … 42
Out of their total budget of the ministry, about 40% is given to National Universities. It is therefore evident, government universities are well funded, and in particular, a large portion of the budget for national universities is directed to 7 major universities.
Therefore, it is not unusual that that most Nobel Prize winners are graduates of those national universities, particularly, University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Nagoya University etc.,
Private universities are less funded. Furthermore, donations of individual and industries to educational organizations are taxable which is obstacle to their income from outside source.
The ministry funds 73 billion yen (670 million dollars) in 2016 to libraries of national municipal and private universities for their acquisition of books and journals.
Out of this total, their spending for e-journals are 27.6 billion yen (25 million dollars), a 37% increase compared to the previous year. Interestingly 97 % of their spending for those e-journals and books are contents of overseas publishers.
The ministry is actively working on the program of Open Access presently through JUSTICE (Japan Alliance of University Library Consortia for E-Resources) and they are negotiating with large STM publishers.
About 500 universities have joined the institutional repository program of the ministry and with JAIRO cloud operated by NII (National Institute of Informatics) many of theses, doctoral dissertationspapers published in scholarly journals both domestic and international are offered via open access to research communities.
The ministry also subsidizes major academic societies here for their accelerating on-line publishing for open access on J-Stage platform of JST (Japan Science & Technology Corporation)
As mentioned before, a large portion of the acquisition budgets of Libraries are spent for STM publications from the U.S. and Europe, and the ratio of e-journals and books are also increasing high.
3. PUBLISHERS
I will now start briefing about the domestic publishing business in Japan. Excluding newspaper sales, the annual volume of sales of books and magazines in Japan was 1.6 trillion yen (14.6 billion dollars) last year. Comic book sales are a fairly high proportion of total book sales.
The sale of imported publications are estimated to be around 80 billion yen (730 million dollars) and 100 billion yen (910 million dollars) including e-publications sales. Among this figure, the sale of STM Publications is the highest estimated to be around 50 billion yen (460 million dollars) to 60 billion yen (550 million dollars)? After STM, language learning textbook sales are high. Actually “language” here largely means English and this area is expanding because so much money is being spent for English language education. Social science, arts and humanities are published mostly in paper form. Interestingly, imported STM textbooks sales are not as high as the rest of Asian countries, mainly because quality Japanese language textbooks are published by Japanese publishers and also popular text books published by U.S. and European publishers are translated into Japanese. It is evident that except STM, most readers of researchers prefer text books in Japanese.
Publishers means STM publishers here, and their annual volume of business worldwide is estimated to be about 25 billion dollars worldwide. Of those, key players are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis etc. all of their revenue is estimated to be 65% of their share of publishing sales followed society publishers for 30%. Many of Japanese society journals published in English are now published by those European STM publishers.
STM journals in the Japanese language are published by commercial publishers and societies here, and they are widely read by all scholars and researchers, however, those Japanese journals are less important to top researchers who always prefer reading International quality journals published by prominent societies and major STM publishers.
4. LIBRARIES
Being the top of libraries of Japan, the National Diet Library is the biggest government library serving Diet members and public nationwide. Then we have public libraries of local government serving mainly local communities, and not like the U.S., STM and professional books and journals are out of their collection program. And under Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology are all higher educational and research libraries of national, municipal and private school libraries. Other ministries of our government have their own research organizations and their attached libraries.
Public Libraries … 3,260
Special Libraries … 1,660
All of those libraries belong to following library associations.
(1) Japan Library Association … 5,670 members
(2) Japan special Libraries Association … 400 members
(3) Japan Medical Library Association … 144 members
(4) Japan Pharmaceutical Libraries Association … 115 members
(5) Information Science & Technology Association of Japan … 54 members
(6) Japan Art Documentation Society … 315 members
Besides the above there are Japan Association of National Libraries Association 82 members and Japan Association of Private University Libraries 528.
Libraries are now being faced with a constant budget cut which forces libraries to reduce their collections of books and serials. Furthermore this budget cut forces the reduction of experienced professional librarians who are now replaced by non-professional staff members sent by outsourcing agents. This unusual situation is evident in the public library sector.
At public, special and medical libraries, most librarians work for the same libraries for their life time and job mobility is much less than other countries. Since their principal language serving to their patrons is Japanese, Japanese library communities are fairly closed to foreigners compared to other professions.
5. INTERMEDIARIES
It is interesting that Japan is the only country where the business of subscription agents is only operated by Japanese companies, and none of the world’s big players like EBSCO has their business operations here. In book distribution, of course, Amazon Japan is the biggest distributor. Their annual volume of book business is estimated to be around 120 billion yen (1.1 billion dollars) out of their total retail sales of 1.1 trillion yen (10 billion dollars).
Like U.S. and other European countries, acquisitions of serials and books at government agencies must go to open bids and our margin of profit is extremely low. This is one of the reason why EBSCO and Swets gave up their business in Japan. Indeed library budgets of national and municipal universities and libraries of other government libraries occupy 65% of total spending. They are so big!
Therefore, traditional subscription agency type business is no longer in existence. The total amount of overseas subscriptions service business is roughly estimated to be between 50 billion yen (455 million dollars) and 60 billion yen (550 million dollars) including those direct business with Elsevier, Springer Nature etc., It is also interesting to note that the shift from print to electronic both for journals and books (except STM) is very slow here in Japan among the developed countries. Library consortia and big deals are mainly operated by the Japan offices of big STM publishers like Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature etc., however, library budget cut at those major libraries are cancelling consortia and big deals these days. The big player in libraries of private industries are pharmaceutical industries who also inevitably suspend big deals and some of them started to use pay per view type service to save subscription cost.
Also in corporate sector, many private companies shut down libraries and outsource their operations.
6. READERS + AUTHORS
Interestingly, in STM domain, readers of Scholorly papers are often authors On Our very rough estimates about 20% of researchers of their affiliated societies prefer reading English language International journals and about 10% out of the 20% of those people publish their research in International English language journals.
USACO Corporation represents ENDNOTES exclusively in Japan market and we maintain about 30,000 users out of approximate 200,000 users of ENDNOTES the world over. Roughly speaking Japan accounts for 10% of world population of scientists. ENDNOTES is almost a de-facto standard in Japan market.
Also it is interesting to note that between researchers who submit papers to publishers, there are several for profit editorial service companies who check and correct, and edit original articles written by Japanese authors. Indeed, many of those Japanese authors who wish to publish their papers in English need this service, because their English language skills have not reached at the accepted level of science writing in English. Interestingly, those editorial service companies are owned and operated by Indian people.
Apart from scholarly communication area, patents are important source of discoveries among industries who spend tremendous amount of money for patent searches and protections.
In terms of the number of patents accepted, the U.S. always ranks at the top, followed by China who passed Japan recent years, and after Japan are European companies. We understand China is also producing patents and scholarly papers both in quantity and in quality. It is not too long before, Chinese Nobel Prize winners will be awarded.
7. ABOUT USACO
Like the U.S., the old business model of subscription business is almost gone, papers are replaced by electronics and subscription agent business is changing to licensing agent business.
While the big two mega booksellers of KINOKUNIYA and MARUZEN hold major nationwide accounts from whom both domestic and foreign books and journals order are flowing into them, we at USACO are more marketing oriented and we are changing our business model ahead of those big two. To help STM researchers to publish their papers in international journals, ENDNOTES are essential to leading researchers who publish their papers in English. We maintain about 10,000 unit and licensee every year.
However libraries are biggest customer base to USACO. So, we will continue our business with libraries of higher educations and research, and private industries with existing products and services and will find new products and services to respond to their needs.
USACO currently employs 80 people who do business with libraries of national and private universities, research institutions, and private manufacturing industries with annual volume sales of 6 billion yen (55 million dollars).
8. OPINION & CONCLUSION
Here I pick up several sub jects of our concern in the nation and of our future business activities.
(1) Decreasing Population
Our nation’s biggest issue is decreasing population and the birth rate.
This results in decreasing students and schools, and decreasing researchers who produce scholarly outputs. To overcome this situation, private and national universities are keen to acquire students from abroad. And learning more practical English is demanded for students, and in the long run, this will help e-learning industries of our communities.
(2) Language Problem
It is my opinion that there is much less need for all the Japanese to study English. It is only 10% of total generation who will need English for their work and studies. Indeed, our daily life does not need any English. On the contrary, it is my opinion that coming young generation should speak and write their Japanese more clearly and logically, which will enable easily to convert their thought and idea into English so easily.
(3) Problem with Libraries
The library community of Japan is such a closed society to others. There is much less international activities than in other jobs and profession. All of these facts have their root in the use of Japanese language only in their environment.
I do not know how soon the scholarly community here will become more international, but it is a long way to go.
(4) Government Policy
Unlike U.S. government officers, Japan government officers are guaranteed their income and permanent employment status. Although parliamentary changes by election take place from time to time, government officers and their systems do not change. Also most of the bills submitted to the Diet are planned and prepared by those government officers. They are very conservative and they do not like change. Therefore, drastic and speedy change of government policies cannot be expected.
The same is true with funding government money to scientific research, library acquisition and service activities. On the contrary, once any budget has been approved, there is less chance of alteration and cancellation. And indeed, we find the budget of the Ministry of Education is steady with some mild growth.
We cannot expect a drastic change, but slow but steady is the policy of our government.
We must be patient doing business with the largest customer base.
(5) Young generation
Younger Japanese are more exposed to international communities and they are more independent than the older generation. I really hope they will be changing Japan’s culture to be more international, while preserving good traditional culture of Japan
Finally asked if I am pessimistic about the future of our business, my answer is no. Because as our corporate slogan under corporate logo shows, progressive change is our way of life!
We are also optimistic about our nation’s future.
Thank you.
This text is prepared and written by Takashi Yamakawa and edited by Minoru Hasegawa. USACO Corporation.
SOURCE OF DATA AND FACT
① Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Education Home Page (in Japanese)
② STM Report of STM 2016 (in English)
③ Data assembled from data of Statistics Bureau
④ Report from Cabinet Office (Partly in English)