The Pricing of Academic Journals: A Two-Sided Market Perspective
32 Pages Posted: 26 Jul 2007
Date Written: March 8, 2007
Abstract
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 efficient pricing of an academic journal from a two-sided market perspective and the consequences of the open access policy on the journal's quality standard. When the journal's objective is to maximize social welfare, open access is optimal if and only if the positive externalities generated by its diffusion exceed the marginal cost of distribution. This condition is satisfied in particular for an electronic journal for which the marginal cost of distribution is zero. However, we show that if the journal is run by a not-for-profit association that has a different objective (such as maximizing the utility of its readers or the impact of the journal), 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. In some cases, it may even lead to a reduction in readership size.
Keywords: Academic Journals, Open-Access, Reader-Pays, Two-Sided Market, Endogenous Quality
JEL Classification: D42, L44, L82
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Downstream Competition, Foreclosure, and Vertical Integration
-
Open Access as a Crude Solution to a Hold-up Problem in the Two-Sided Market for Academic Journals
-
Bundling Electronic Journals and Competition Among Publishers
By Doh-shin Jeon and Domenico Menicucci
-
Academic Journal Prices in a Digital Age: A Two-Sided-Market Model
-
A Model of Academic Journal Quality with Applications to Open-Access Journals
-
Getting Cited: Does Open Access Help?
By Patrick Gaule and Nicolas Maystre
-
Pricing of Scientific Journal and Market Power
By Mathias Dewatripont, Victor A. Ginsburgh, ...
-
By Mark J. Mccabe, Christopher M. Snyder, ...
-
Inefficient Intra-Firm Incentives Can Stabilize Cartels in Cournot Oligopolies
By Roland Kirstein and Annette Kirstein