Article growth has moved from a background trend to a live procurement problem. Publication volumes across CAUL’s portfolios are now exceeding the growth rates that capped agreements were budgeted against, in several cases outpacing 2026 estimates set only months earlier. When volume assumptions break down mid-term, pricing models built on last year’s data are out of date before the next agreement is signed.
The structural difficulty is that the decisions driving volume sit almost entirely on one side of the table. Publishers set title launches, cascading and transfer pathways, and acceptance policy. Libraries absorb the cost consequences without a lever over any of them. Meanwhile, faster submission growth is straining editorial and research integrity processes, with rising desk-rejection rates and AI-assisted submissions widely acknowledged as new pressure points. Global output is on pace to pass six million articles in 2026, up from roughly 5.5 million the year before.
The three questions
To test how publishers understand their own role in this, CAUL put three questions to four of its largest publisher partners:
- Acceptance rates and trends: Could you provide acceptance rate data across the portfolio for the past five years, and has rising submission volume been accompanied by corresponding shifts in selectivity?
- Proliferation and budget impact: Given continued growth in titles, including new launches and cascading pathways designed to accommodate articles rather than reject them, what consideration is given to downstream library budget impact when developing title launch and acquisition strategies?
- Mitigation: What steps are being taken to manage rising submissions, control costs, and maintain quality? Are journals becoming more selective, or is growth being absorbed through new titles, expanded issue counts, and cascading within the portfolio?
What came back
The responses differed in detail but converged on substance.
Acceptance rates are falling across the board.
Every publisher reported material decline over the past decade; in the sharpest case from the low twenties to the mid-teens, elsewhere from the mid-thirties to the mid-twenties, and from around 30% to under 20%. Declining selectivity is not the story; increasing selectivity is. But publications are still growing faster than acceptance rates are falling. One publisher’s own figures show submission growth at a 12% CAGR against article growth of 7%, a decade-long structural gap. Another reported its desk-reject rate doubling from 9% to 18% between 2022 and 2025. A third recorded double-digit submission growth against a falling acceptance rate. Selectivity is rising, but volume is rising faster.
“Editorial independence” was the universal answer to the budget question.
All four separated acceptance decisions from commercial or budget considerations, and used that separation to decline responsibility for cost impact. Growth was consistently attributed to the research community rather than to publisher strategy, supported by figures on the expanding global researcher population.
Growth is framed as author service, not strategy.
New titles, cascading, and transfer pathways were described as serving researcher choice and editorial merit. None was presented as a lever that could be used to manage volume or cost. One publisher stated that growth in titles does not “automatically” determine pricing, stopping short of any commitment to cost containment. Where mitigation was addressed at all, it was deferred to a joint project due late in 2026.
The gap that remains
Only one publisher supplied full submissions-versus-acceptances data, which is a genuinely useful benchmark. But no publisher offered a concrete mechanism to cap cost growth in step with volume growth.
That is the gap CAUL now needs to close in negotiation. Falling acceptance rates are evidence of effort on quality; they are not evidence of cost control, nor increased to the point of stabilising article growth. The next round of conversations should press for volume-linked cost commitments — and treat article growth as a term to be negotiated, not a condition to be absorbed.