Modeling the evolution of the gold open access market for the equilibrium article processing charge of journals with a Hotelling duopoly game

Bibliographic Data

ID21255749
AuthorsXiaowen Tong (0000-0003-2963-2944, Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology (China)), Xiaoqun Yuan (0000-0003-3850-7192, Wuhan University), Qingong Wang (Wuhan University), Qing-Zhe Wang (Wuhan University), Wenyue Zhong (CITIC Group (China))
Year2025
Volume6
Pages1246-1270
Publication date2025-12-12
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueQuantitative Science Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2641-3337 • E-ISSN: 2641-3337
PublisherMIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1162/qss.a.392
OpenAlexW4415157275
LanguageEN
References cited45

In this paper, we construct an evolutionary process for establishing the equilibrium article processing charge in the gold open access market. To this end, the competition among journals in the gold open access market is first formulated as a three-stage Hotelling duopoly game, which may reveal the dynamic and competitive features of a gold OA market affected by the academic reputation, publication delays, and article processing charges of journals. Then backward induction is applied to derive the market equilibria and the theoretical results are verified with a numerical simulation. Finally, an empirical study of 1,346 journals is conducted to verify the credibility of our theoretical solutions. The results show that a gold OA journal with a relatively high academic reputation and shorter publication delay could set higher article processing charges. The publication delays of gold OA journals tend to cluster together in a limited time interval

Credibility · Duopoly · Market share · Nash equilibrium · Reputation · Business Strategy and Innovation

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