The Pricing of Academic Journals: A Two-Sided Market Perspective (PDF; 356 KB)

More and more academic journals adopt an open-access policy, by which articles are accessible free of charge, while publication costs are recovered through author fees. We study the consequences of this open access policy on a journal’s quality standard. If the journal’s objective was to maximize social welfare, open access would be optimal as soon as the positive externalities generated by its diffusion exceed the marginal cost of distribution. However, if the journal has a different objective (such as maximizing its impact), the move from the traditional reader-pays model to the open-access model may result in a decrease in quality standard below the socially efficient level.

Source: Munich Personal RePEc Archive

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 1:33 am and is filed under Libraries and Librarianship, Scholarly Publishing, Source File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.