Scholarly Journal Publishers in a Small-Language Country: The Case of Lithuania

Abstract

The research aims to evaluate the publication of scholarly journals in Lithuania, a small-language country, by analyzing the owners and publishers of scholarly journals. The results show that, since 1990, the publishing of Lithuanian scholarly journals has grown significantly: 225 scholarly journals were published in Lithuania by 73 different publishers in 2020. Social publishers, mostly state-funded universities, scientific institutes and colleges still held the largest market share of scholarly journals, but commercial publishers also appeared and started to make a business out of publishing scholarly journals. The analyzed data on publishers show that Lithuanian publishers have tried to take over and reorganize a number of scholarly journals from the Soviet era, while adapting to the dynamically changing world of scholarly publishing and moving from simple product sales models of the twentieth century to new digital ecosystems of the twenty-first-century age in which the essential distribution of publications is carried out digitally.