Pablo Markin

over 2 years ago

One can also argue that in the majority of markets price levels are set through the interplay of the forces of supply and demand. This article indirectly suggests that, in purely technical terms, in the publishing sector maintaining high levels of service quality can be challenging, if not impossible, at low price levels. Additionally, whereas publishing services can be considered as substitutable, homogeneous goods that can be effectively encompassed by quantitative assessments, that approach can have its limits, also since what sets apart high-quality services from low-quality ones are qualitative differences that other service providers cannot necessarily match. Furthermore, price-setting mechanisms in few free and liberal markets are set in close association with inflation rates. For scholarly authors, publication venue choice, therefore, is likely to represent a complex utility function, in which cost is not necessarily a preponderant parameter. While it is not unreasonable to assume that researchers would like to maximize that utility in terms of article impact, the trade-off they might seek is likely to be, for Open Access options, between cost and outcome, such as article citation performance or journal impact ranking. As for closed access models, these trade-offs are likely settled at the level of subscribing institutions, such as in terms of aggregate costs and article output, transitional or transformative Open Access agreements also, thus, aim to remove the micro-level cost-related barriers that authors might face. Yet, the existing structures of academic value and prestige are also likely to favor incumbent market players with professional editorial teams, strong, established journal portfolios and high impact performance levels in the Open Access sector.