Comments on: Is Science Being Distorted?

By: A “Great Comments” Roundup « The Scholarly Kitchen

A “Great Comments” Roundup « The Scholarly Kitchen — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:11:35 +0000

[...] On the topic of “Is Science Being Distorted?” there was a very good comment on the relationship between brands, authors, readers, and information [...]

By: The Market for Scholarly Articles « The Scholarly Kitchen

The Market for Scholarly Articles « The Scholarly Kitchen — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:45:14 +0000

[...] market, considering articles to be commodities that can be traded on the free market. As Kent Anderson recently wrote, this analogy is about as helpful as a train [...]

By: More discussion

More discussion — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:49:22 +0000

[...] dalbera Is Science Being Distorted?: [Via The Scholarly Kitchen] A recent PLoS Medicine article claims that information economics [...]

By: Authors Seek Shelter « The Scholarly Kitchen

Authors Seek Shelter « The Scholarly Kitchen — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:51:26 +0000

[...] fact that information is no longer scarce should surprise nobody. A very salient comment in the Scholarly Kitchen recently put this into a brand perspective. But this flood of information is threatening to drown [...]

By: Philip Davis

Philip Davis — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:16:20 +0000

Analogies can help us understand new discoveries or insights — they can also lead us astray. I’m afraid the Young et al. article in PLoS Medicine does more of the latter.

Economies of stuff are defined by scarcity, and there is no scarcity of information. What is scarce is the attention of the reader.

If an analogy is necessary, it may be more useful to think of a two-sided market (authors on one side, and readers on the other) with asymmetric information; that is, authors know more about the true quality (aka value) of an article than the reader.

Since readers don’t know the true value of an article before it has been read, the reader in a market of information overabundance will look for quality signals to alert him/her what is worth reading. The journal (as a quality signal) is perhaps the strongest signal of quality, which is why readers attend to journal brand so strongly.

This is why authors are so interested in having their manuscripts published in journals with such strong brand/quality signals.

At a time when authors can simply put copies of their research on their own web site, it helps to understand what authors gain from the transaction with publishers. It is more than most publisher critics will admit.