The political economy of academic publishing: On the commodification of a public good

Abstract

This paper provides an institutional and empirical analysis of the highly concentrated market of academic publishing, characterized by over proportionally high profit margins for publishing companies. The availability of latest research findings is an important issue for researchers, universities and politicians alike. Open access (OA) publication provides a promising but also costly solution to overcome this problem. However, in this paper we argue that OA publication costs are an important, but by far not the only way for academic publishers to gain access to public funding. In contrast, our study provides a comprehensive overview of the channels through which public expenditure benefits big academic publishing companies. Furthermore, we offer the results of an explorative case study, where we estimate the annual financial flows of public expenditures in Austria for the field of social sciences. In all, these expenditures add up to about 66.55 to 103.2 million € a year, which amounts to a fourth of total public funding for this field. Against this background, we contribute to the debate whether and to what extent public subsidies are justified for economically successful companies.

Education research is still the hardest science: a proposal for improving its trustworthiness and usability

“…As Puehringer et al . (2021) noted, the political economy of academic publishing entails “publishers sell a highly profitable, yet immensely publicly subsidized product” (p. 2).…”

Providing free professional services for open access journals

“…Some might see peer review as a professional duty of suitably qualified subject matter experts, and some research employers will look favourably on contributions to journals from authoring and reviewing, to involvement on editorial boards. Despite the added value that academic publishers bring (Anderson 2018), they are businesses and many run a profitable enterprise (Puehringer and others 2021). As this duty is often performed in discretionary time, questions arise as to the degree of peer review undertaken by any individual, whether it should be compensated and, if so, how.…”

Dead rats, dopamine, performance metrics, and peacock tails: Proxy failure is an inherent risk in goal-oriented systems

“…This combination results in disproportionately high profit margins ranging from 20 to 40%, which significantly surpasses profit margins achieved in other industries. In this context, the mismatch between proxy and underlying goals gives rise to "corrupted practices" , that adversely affect the societal goal by appropriating a public good for private gain (Pühringer, Rath, & Griesebner, 2021). This prime dysfunctionality is ex-ante unrelated to a proxy failure.…”