SPACE researchers presented their work at SASE Conference 2021 (online)
SPACE researchers Stephan Pühringer, Johanna Rath and Teresa Griesebner presented their recent study “The political economy of academic publishing. On the commodification of a public good” at this years Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics (SASE). Their 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. Based on a meta-analysis of publication costs and a questionaire study with Austrian social scientists the authors used a 4-channel model and estimated the financial flows from the public to private publishing companies. In all these estimated costs add up to about 66-103 million Euro per year, which amounts to about a fourth of annual public spending by the Austrian Ministry of education, science and research for this field. Against this background, the authors suggest far-reaching institutional reforms and regulations to reclaim the public souvereignty of academic knowledge.
The authors benefited from many valueable and thought-provoking comments and remarks by the audience in their session “Defending property rights”. You can find the published paper here.