The economics of publishing and the publishing of economics

Abstract

The paper explores the relationship between economics and scientific journal publishing in a number of areas by: establishing the fact, neglected by some librarians, that the “serials crisis” is not exclusively a plague infecting the STM sector, but that economics too has been badly affected; providing a more disaggregated analysis of the market power exerted by the dominant commercial publisher in economics journal publishing; considering briefly three academic‐led experiments aimed at improving scholarly communication in economics; comparing the policy stance taken by the UK Competition Commission on scientific publishing and on banking for small businesses in two recent reports and exposing its glaring inconsistency; and suggesting a modest proposal to remedy some of the inefficiencies identified in this paper.

Citation

La Manna, M. (2003), "The economics of publishing and the publishing of economics", Library Review, Vol. 52 No. 1, pp. 18-28. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530310456988