Here’s Why Academic Publishing Should Not Be Regulated

In this article, I explain why the monopolistic prices administered by the most prestigious online publishers (who enjoy some quasi-monopolistic status) are due to a combination of: 1) copyright laws 2) open access (OA) mandates 3) moral hazard (due to subsidies).

1. Copyrights restricts competitors from selling “perfect substitutes” for existing journals by publishing exactly the same articles. Likely the most important factor that explains the very high publication fees and disproportionate profits of large publishers.
2. Enforcing OA publishing restricts the researchers’ choice since the other alternative model, is the subscription model, which is much cheaper for researchers (especially those from low income countries). By doing so, OA mandates reduce competition.
3. Economists and other researchers complain about the inelastic demand (e.g., prestige effect of top tier journals, big deal packages that are seen as anti-competitive) but they ignore the evidence that researchers are not sensitive to prices, which is due to research grants being “provided” by taxes, thus distorting the demand curve.

In the article, I also explain why the predatory practices of OA publishers are not inherent to free markets. Public agencies actually encourage the “publish-or-perish” culture, which increases the number of submitted papers, lowering the quality of the papers due to emphasizing quantity, and overwhelming journals with numerous papers, more than volunteered reviewers can handle, which in turn reduces quality check.