Scholarly Publishing and its Discontents: An economist's perspective on dealing with market power and its consequences by Joshua Gans


Scholarly Publishing and its Discontents: An economist's perspective on dealing with market power and its consequences
Title : Scholarly Publishing and its Discontents: An economist's perspective on dealing with market power and its consequences
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : -
Language : English
Format Type : Kindle Edition
Number of Pages : 97
Publication : Published February 1, 2017

This book examines the emergence, consequences and remedies for market power in scholarly publishing. While many activists have used various boycott mechanisms to diminish to power of publishers these have been largely ineffective. Moreover, new business models have not changed the situation appreciably.
The book provides an economic treatment and concludes that the only way to have a long lasting sustainable means of diminishing publisher market power is to unlock the knowledge from within journals rather than open access to the journals themselves.
If you want an overview of the long-lasting debates in this area with a clear presentation of economic evidence and findings and some thought-provoking ideas, this is book is for you.

Scholarly Publishing and its Discontents: An economist's perspective on dealing with market power and its consequences Reviews

  • Joshua Gans

    It's probably not his best but a good read if you are interested in the topic

    Joshua Gans (aka I) has written a number of books. This is his first self published one and, in my unbiased opinion, it shows. The book is mercifully short but lacks a good overarching story of take-a-way.

    That said it is pretty much the only book out there that looks at Scholarly Publishing from an economics perspective. As Gans is a famous antitrust expert then this is what might be a rare treat. It would have been better however if he had stuck to this theme instead of veering off to offer somewhat random, although interesting, comments on font choice in academic journals. Font choice is really important but surely the knowledge within is what is important and not the typeface. I mean really. Also it missed a good discussion of pagination.

    Finally, Gans ignores library science completely. It's not that he is unaware of it but you can the impression that he thinks that it isn't rigorous enough and so can be given short shrift. So if you like library science I am pretty sure you are not going to like this book.

    In the end, if you are going to judge this book by its cover that is a good idea because Gans actually designed the cover himself and even bought a prop to do it. So there you go.

    I liked the Index.

  • Paul

    An easy-to-read survey of academic publishing (journals, almost exclusively), along with some interesting observations and ideas for change. I found chapter 7 the most interesting. The book is available as a free PDF at the authour's website:
    http://www.joshuagans.com/scholarly-p...