When Paywall Goes AWOL: The Demand for Open-Access Education Research

Autor/inn/en	Gershenson, Seth; Polikoff, Morgan S.; Wang, Rui
Titel	When Paywall Goes AWOL: The Demand for Open-Access Education Research
Quelle	In: Educational Researcher, 49 (2020) 4, S.254-261 (8 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0013-189X
DOI	10.3102/0013189X20909834
Schlagwörter	Access to Information; Educational Research; Electronic Publishing; Journal Articles; Electronic Journals + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Bildungsforschung; Pädagogische Forschung; Elektronisches Publizieren; Journal article; Zeitschriftenaufsatz; E-Journal
Abstract	As universities cut library funding and forego expensive journal subscriptions, many academic organizations and researchers, including the American Educational Research Association (AERA), are moving toward open-access publications that are freely downloadable by anyone with a working internet connection. However, the impact of paywalls on the consumption of academic articles is unclear. We provide novel evidence on this question by exploiting a natural experiment in which six high-impact, usually gated AERA journals became open access for a 2-month period in 2017. Using monthly download data and an always-open-access journal as a comparison group, we show that making journals open access likely increased article downloads in those journals by 55% to 95% per month. Given a per-article download price of $36, this suggests a relatively elastic response: The average price elasticity of demand for downloads is 1.2, with individual journal elasticities ranging from 0.6 to 2. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01