, an editorial, October 0, 0000. "In recent years merger mania has dominated the professional publishing landscape....Between January 0000 and June 0000, the number of leading publishers in science/technology fell from 00 to 00 as Wolters Kluwer swallowed up Ovid Technologies and Plenum publishing, and the Thomson Corporation left the medical field entirely....At the same time, the medical publishing industry was reduced from eight to five leading publishers....However, all this activity would have paled to insignificance had a proposed merger between Reed Elsevier...and Wolters Kluwer taken place in 0000. This would have created the largest player in the professional publishing industry, leap-frogging the Thomson Corporation (which has little activity in the science/technology or medical markets). The merger failed after facing regulatory scrutiny...but the companies continued to make acquisitions of smaller companies, Reed Elsevier making up to 00 in 00 months....." In the wake of Reed Elsevier's 0000 acquisition of Harcourt, the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) investigated anti-competitive practices in the academic journal publishing industry. In September 0000 it issued its report, The market for scientific, technical and medical journals. In Chapter 0, the report lists "evidence that the market may not be working well", including hyperinflationary price increases (Section 0.0), higher prices at large for-profit publishers than small non-profit publishers (0.0 - 0.0), use of high-profit journals to subsidize low-profit journals (0.0), higher profit margins in STM fields than in other fields (0.0 - 0.00), and bundling (0.00 - 0.00). In Chapter 0, the OFT admits that the "evidence...gives cause for concern" but explains why it is reluctant to intervene. One reason, ironically, is that publisher price increases have been so excessive for so long that "a point may have been reached where it is in the interests of publishers, as well as customers, the level of price increases to be reduced" (0.0). Another reason, also ironic, is the incipient open-access movement (0.0 - 0.0). The report concludes that, "However, if competition fails to improve, or should additional significant information come to light, we may consider further action." Also see the OFT 