The fact that people aren’t jumping in to compete with lower-costs journals makes me suspect that it isn’t that easy. But it’s still not at all obvious why academic journals cost so much.
Huh? People are most certainly jumping in with zero-cost (to read) journals such as PLoS and others. The open-access publishing movement is not obscure and I’m surprise to see that people here aren’t aware of them.
The reason existing journals cost so much is that publishers can charge monopoly rents based on their ownership of a high-status imprint. That game is not going to last very much longer, IMO.
PLoS is a non-profit, and I’m certainly aware of it. If, however, for-profit academic journals charge much more than it costs to produce them, I would expect to see for-profit startups competing with them.
The “impact factor” measure is a part of this; you can’t just start up a new journal and have a high impact factor.
If, however, for-profit academic journals charge much more than it costs to produce them, I would expect to see for-profit startups competing with them.
Possible explanations for not seeing that:
There are for-profit startups competing with the big boys, but we just don’t know what they are, because of course they’re smaller and less visible than the big publishers
Startups get bought out by big publishers
Social barriers to entry like the impact factor issue you mention
Social barriers to entry amplified even further because startups are a bunch of entrepreneurs breaking into the field from outside, so they don’t have the same connections as scientists working in the field (less of a problem for big publishers because they can buy existing publishers)
Huh? People are most certainly jumping in with zero-cost (to read) journals such as PLoS and others. The open-access publishing movement is not obscure and I’m surprise to see that people here aren’t aware of them.
The reason existing journals cost so much is that publishers can charge monopoly rents based on their ownership of a high-status imprint. That game is not going to last very much longer, IMO.
PLoS is a non-profit, and I’m certainly aware of it. If, however, for-profit academic journals charge much more than it costs to produce them, I would expect to see for-profit startups competing with them.
The “impact factor” measure is a part of this; you can’t just start up a new journal and have a high impact factor.
PLoS claims to be sustainable on internally generated revenue at this point. I was just at their conference.
Possible explanations for not seeing that:
There are for-profit startups competing with the big boys, but we just don’t know what they are, because of course they’re smaller and less visible than the big publishers
Startups get bought out by big publishers
Social barriers to entry like the impact factor issue you mention
Social barriers to entry amplified even further because startups are a bunch of entrepreneurs breaking into the field from outside, so they don’t have the same connections as scientists working in the field (less of a problem for big publishers because they can buy existing publishers)