Interconnection among Academic Journal Platforms: Multilateral versus Bilateral Interconnection

Doh-Shin Jeon () and Domenico Menicucci
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Doh-Shin Jeon: http://www.econ.upf.edu/en/people/onefaculty.php?id=p2071

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: Electronic academic journal platforms provide new services of text and/or data mining and linking, indispensable for efficient allocation of attention among over- abundant sources of scientific information. Fully realizing the bene.t of these ser- vices requires interconnection among the platforms. Motivated by CrossRef, a mul- tilateral citation linking backbone, this paper performs a comparison between a multilateral interconnection regime and a bilateral one and finds that publishers are fully interconnected in the former while they may partially break connectivity in the latter for exclusion or di¤erentiation motives. Surprisingly, if partial intercon- nection arises for di¤erentiation motive, exclusion of small publisher(s) occurs more often under the multilateral regime than under the bilateral one. In addition, we show that our main result is robust in the case of Internet Backbone interconnec- tion. Finally, when publishers can interconnect both in a multilateral way and in a bilateral way, a conflict between a private incentive and a social incentive may arise when large publishers prefer excluding small publishers by opting for a bilateral interconnection. In this case, a light-handed regulation imposing no discrimination among rivals would foster full interconnection.

Keywords: Multilateral Interconnection; Bilateral Interconnection; Academic Journals; Internet; Platforms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D4 K21 L41 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-mic, nep-net and nep-sog
Date: Written 2008-03

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