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The market of academic attention

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Abstract

This work broadens the perspective on academic attention, to tackle the key economic problem of how to allocate scarce attention, and what kinds of dynamics this situation can foster. Focusing on selected fields and using standard tools of industrial organization, we delineate the trends in the market for academic attention over 14 years, and attempt to provide an interpretation. We find a tendency toward progressive market concentration, and also that specific strategies adopted by players, aside from the usual benefits determined by price discrimination, can produce subsidies of attention from well-known journals to lesser-known journals belonging to the same bundle. This may influence readers’ and authors’ choices of how to direct their attention.

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Notes

  1. See e.g. Tribe (2006). The estimated number of papers published in 2006, based on Ulrich’s database gathering detailed information on more than 300,000 periodicals of all types, is 1,350,000 in approximately 23,750 scholarly journals (Björk et al. 2009). The average annual growth rate between 1995 and 2007 was + 2.5% (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/c5/c5h.htm). According to Ulrich’s, the number today is more than 2.5 million.

  2. For a deeper discussion see Thorngate (1990) and Klamer and van Dalen (2002).

  3. Stylistic devices are essentially techniques used to impart an auxiliary meaning to a written text or to a speech, painting, etc. Examples include allegory, metaphor, symbol and many others. By saying something other than in an ordinary way, they attract attention. These devices are heavily exploited in society. A simple and very accessible example are the road signs used for attracting drivers' attention to issue directions relevant to the circulation of traffic (Lanham 2006).

  4. Interestingly, a referee underlines that this social cascade, triggering a sort of demand-network externality dynamics, accounts for the highly skewed distribution of attention. Although this phenomenon can be considered somewhat ‘natural’, in the rest of the article we will show that it can be further manipulated to increase the skewedness.

  5. e.g. The success of the newly introduced journals by the American Economic Association can be to a large extent explained by the scientific reliability of the association itself (Cavaleri et al. 2009).

  6. Of course this does not imply that the impact factor represents, per se, the best system, and there are many critical voices (see e.g. Ramdsen 2009).

  7. The citations pattern seems to follow this orientation. Migheli and Ramello (2014) performed a test on a sample of journals listed under economics in a different and wider database, Scimago, and showed that the average citations are higher for journals listed in the JCR, and that this difference is statistically significant.

  8. However, it must be noted that IFs are average citations of articles published in a journal in a given range of years; therefore the presence of superstar articles (i.e. papers that receive hundreds of citations) may hide that of ’dry holes‘ (i.e. articles without citations). Laband (2013) and Torgler and Piatti (2013) present evidence for the high level of citation inequality that characterises many top journals in economics. Nevertheless, these superstars are terrific attractors of attention, as the number of citations received proves. However, this fact does not alter our analysis: superstar articles contribute to concentrate the attention of scholars on the journals where they are published.

  9. In other words, although it is questionable to assert that journals not listed in the JCR are inferior in terms of quality to those listed (see e.g. Migheli and Ramello 2014 for economics), it is true that, under the existing system, being listed in the JCR ensures the journal has a minimal endowment of quality.

  10. The issue was, rather, to obtain access to the few available journals. To meet the excess of demand the French Journal des Sçavans (later renamed Journal de Savants) led to the flourishing of pirate publications (Ramello 2010).

  11. For example, according to the Association of Research Libraries, a non-profit organization of 125 research libraries in North America including many academic libraries, between 1986 and 2004 the expenditure for serials rose by more than 273% and the average price of a serial by more than 188%, compared with a 73% increase in the consumer price index (Ramello 2010).

  12. We can cite, in chronological order, the Faculty Advisory Council Memorandum on Journal Pricing of Harvard University, eloquently subtitled “Major Periodical Subscriptions Cannot Be Sustained” (see: http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup143448).

  13. One could argue that it depends on the inability of new journals to be listed in JCR. But this is not the case because, in all the fields, JCR is expanding the lists of journals and there are newcomers joining the markets of academic attention.

  14. For all the studied fields, the correlation index is quite high, ranging from 0.68 in business to 0.98 in business and finance.

  15. The ISI Thomson website provides the procedure for being considered by JCR. However in a number of private interviews, editors told us that the whole evaluation process, including the final decision, is quite opaque.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Scienze Politiche, Economiche e Sociali, Università del Piemonte Orientale, via Cavour, 84, I-15121, Alessandria, Italy

    Giovanni Battista Ramello

  2. BRICK-Collegio Carlo Alberto, piazza Arbarello, 8, I-10122, Torino, Italy

    Giovanni Battista Ramello

  3. Department of Economics and Statistics “Cognetti de Martiis”, Università degli Studi di Torino, lungo Dora Siena, 100, I-10153, Torino, Italy

    Matteo Migheli

  4. CeRP-Collegio Carlo Alberto, piazza Arbarello, 8, I-10122, Torino, Italy

    Matteo Migheli

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  1. Matteo Migheli
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  2. Giovanni Battista Ramello
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Correspondence to Matteo Migheli.

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Giovanni B. Ramello acknowledges the financial support from Università del Piemonte Orientale.

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Migheli, M., Ramello, G.B. The market of academic attention. Scientometrics 114, 113–133 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2564-y

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