Conclusions and Further Research

In conclusion, there are several arguments to believe that the future of academic publishing should be open access. While Shavell (2010) finds that OA may strictly increase researcher’s incentives due to higher readership, our analysis also points to some countervailing effects of OA, especially when reconsidering Shavell’s assumption that most universities will cover the publication costs under an “author pays” model. We show that primarily due to rent seeking motives in the publishing game the incentives to exceed higher efforts may decrease. Nevertheless, we have stressed that this may just correct another distortion that the “publish or perish” environment in academia has enforced: namely the fact that “too many” papers are produced that are hardly ever read. Meho (2007) finds evidence for the fact that 90 % of all published papers are never cited and as many as 50 % of all papers are never read by anybody but the reviewer and the authors themselves. Moreover, we have pointed to the possible benefits but also the costs of OA publishing at the international level, especially when considering the position of developing countries.