Crisis and transition: The economics of scholarly communication

Abstract

This paper explores the scholarly communication 'industry' using a product systems approach, scopes and sizes the Australian scholarly communication product system, and examines the economics behind its operation. We find that the set of interrelationships between the market characteristics of information and cost structures, patterns of demand and acquisition practices, and the forces encouraging increasing scholarly output go a long way towards explaining the operation of the system and the genesis of the crisis. Based on our economic analysis of the system, we outline broad market conforming and market distorting approaches to alleviating the crisis.