The Stratified Economics of Open Access

John Willinsky ()
Additional contact information
John Willinsky: School of Education, Stanford University, 485 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA 94305-3096, USA

Economic Analysis and Policy, 2009, vol. 39, issue 1, 53-70

Abstract: There is a growing recognition within the academic community that ‘open access’ to research and scholarship can increase its value and reach. A variety of open access models have developed over the last twenty years, including author self-archiving, immediate (sponsored) open access, delayed open access, and article-processing-fee open access. Yet the economics of open access is being largely determined, at this point, by the interests of a stratified scholarly publishing market that can be roughly divided among independent journals, scholarly society publishers, and commercial publishers. Each of these market segments is experimenting with forms of open access that hold promise for sustaining, if not extending, the segment’s current position. This paper reviews the economics of these open access models, while drawing attention to the consequences of this market stratification for access to knowledge and the sustainability of scholarly publishing as a whole.

Keywords: Higher; Education; Research; Institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592609500434 full text (application/pdf)
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:ecanpo:v39:y:2009:i:1:p:53-70

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Analysis and Policy is currently edited by Clevo Wilson

More articles in Economic Analysis and Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().