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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Cost Effectiveness Of Open Access Publications, Jevin D. West, Ted C. Bergstrom, Carl T. Bergstrom
Cost Effectiveness Of Open Access Publications, Jevin D. West, Ted C. Bergstrom, Carl T. Bergstrom
Ted C Bergstrom
Open access publishing has been proposed as one possible solution to the serials crisis—the rapidly growing subscription prices in scholarly journal publishing. However, open access publishing can present economic pitfalls as well, such as excessive article processing charges. We discuss the decision that an author faces when choosing to submit to an open access journal. We develop an interactive tool to help authors compare among alternative open access venues and thereby get the most for their article processing charges. (JEL I2, C1, A1)
Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles, Ted Bergstrom
Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles, Ted Bergstrom
Ted C Bergstrom
Large commercial publishers sell bundled online subscriptions to their entire list of academic journals at prices significantly lower than the sum of their á la carte prices. Bundle prices differ drastically between institutions, but they are not publicly posted. The data that we have collected enable us to compare the bundle prices charged by commercial publishers with those of nonprofit societies and to examine the types of price discrimination practiced by commercial and nonprofit journal publishers. This information is of interest to economists who study monopolist pricing, librarians interested in making efficient use of library budgets, and scholars who are …
Librarians And The Terrible Fix: Economics Of The Big Deal, Ted C. Bergstrom
Librarians And The Terrible Fix: Economics Of The Big Deal, Ted C. Bergstrom
Ted C Bergstrom
The academic journal market is characterized by delegated purchasing, unreliable signals of demand, and a complex, difficult-to-evaluate product. As a result, the demand for journals is highly inelastic to prices. Large commercial publishers have capitalized on this inelastic demand, by reducing competition through mergers and consolidations, by offering Big Deal bundled contracts, and raising their prices to levels far above average cost. We suggest that the demand for access to journal articles would be much more price elastic and the overall cost to the academic community would be lower if universities were to abstain from purchasing bundled site licenses at …
Big Macs And Eigenfactor Scores: Don't Let The Correlation Coefficients Fool You, Jevin D. West, Carl T. Bergstrom, Theodore C. Bergstrom
Big Macs And Eigenfactor Scores: Don't Let The Correlation Coefficients Fool You, Jevin D. West, Carl T. Bergstrom, Theodore C. Bergstrom
Ted C Bergstrom
A recent article by Phil Davis suggested that the Eigenvalue metric does adds little useful information to the more simply calculated measure of total citations published by the ISI. This paper argues that Davis's claim is an instance of a classic statistical fallacy of spurious correlation. Based on an analysis of the entire 2006 ISI Journal Citation Reports, we show that there are statistically and economically significant differences between the Eigenfactor metrics and the ISI's impact factor and total citations.
Differences In Impact Factor Across Fields And Over Time, Benjamin M. Althouse, Jevin D. West, Ted C. Bergstrom, Carl T. Bergstrom
Differences In Impact Factor Across Fields And Over Time, Benjamin M. Althouse, Jevin D. West, Ted C. Bergstrom, Carl T. Bergstrom
Ted C Bergstrom
The impact factor of an academic journal for any year is the number of times the average article published in that journal in the previous two years are cited in that year. From 1994-2005, the average impact factor of journals listed by the ISI has been increasing by an average of 2.6 percent per year. This paper documents this growth and explores its causes.