3 ms·

The market is being unfairly controlled by oligopolists, if not straight out monopolists in many areas. This is not free market doctrine. This is econ 101 on

• refurb 11y ago
  How is it a monopoly situation? There are multiple journals out there where scientists can publish their work. They could also start their own journal (open-access if they like) without many barriers.
  • wolfgke 11y ago
    This is a two-sided market, where the publishers are the middlemen between scientists publishing their results and readers of the papers. You argue that the side scientists - publisher is a free market. I consider this as dubious because of, say, impact factors, but for the sake of argumentation, I'll accept it for now. But the really interesting side of the market is not scientist - publisher, but publisher - reader (this is what the original article is all about). And this is part of the two-sided market clearly is a monopoly, since there is no competition between publishers for a given paper, but there is only one publisher that is allowed to sell access to a paper (thanks to the copyright laws). TLDR: Thanks to the copyright laws one side of the two-sided market is a monopoly.
    • refurb 11y ago
      By that same argument, the computer market is a one-sided monopoly as well. Apple and Apple alone produces and sells Apple computers.
      • kragen 11y ago
        You may want to look up "two-sided market".