The X Factor: Open Access, New Journals, and Incumbent Competitors
Wolfgang Schmal
No 723956, Working Papers of Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven from KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven
Abstract:
The academic publishing market is considerable in its size, its highly oligopolistic structure, and the profits it extracts from researchers and their institutions. In this paper, I evaluate whether a citation advantage exists for open-access publications and whether new market entrants suffer from less recognition. To do so, I exploit a quasi-causal setting created by Elsevier. In 2019, the publisher launched its ‘X journals:’ Relying on the editorial process of their ‘parent journals,’ X journals were the fully open-access derivatives of established outlets. In parallel, Elsevier continued to offer authors an open-access option for their publications within the established outlets. Exploiting this threefold variation, I cannot detect any impact of open access on citations within the incumbent journals. However, a large and adverse effect exists for the novel journals. This ‘X factor’ represents a nonnegligible entry barrier for potential competitors in the publishing market. One potential way to mitigate this can be strict open-access requirements for publications supported by grants. My findings highlight the challenges on the way to more open access and stronger competition in the academic publishing market.
Keywords: Open Access; Elsevier; Citations; Mirror Journals; Grants; Transformative Agreements; Economics of Publishing; Market Entry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56
Date: 2023-08-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-sog
Note: paper number MSI_2307
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Published in FEB Research Report MSI_2307, pages 1-56
Downloads: (external link)
https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/723030 Published version (application/pdf)
Related works:
Working Paper: The X Factor: Open Access, New Journals, and Incumbent Competitors (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ete:msiper:723956
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Working Papers of Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven from KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven
Bibliographic data for series maintained by library EBIB (ebib@kuleuven.be).