---
title: "Economics of open science"
chunk: 2/15
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_open_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:49:05.253185+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Open science club ===
The economic theory of club goods was originally developed in the 1965 by James Buchanan to complement the distinction between private and public goods. While clubs are private organizations they also manage the allocation of the resources between the individual members, in a similar manner to a public service. Membership criteria are a fundamental feature of clubs and affect their efficiency: "The central question in a theory of clubs is that of determining the membership margin, so to speak, the size of the most desirable cost and consumption sharing arrangement."

==== Definitions of knowledge club ====

Before the Second World War, academic publishing was mostly characterized by a wide range of community-driven  scholarly structures with little concerns for profitability. They relied on informal community norms rather than commercial regulations. Theses structures have been described as knowledge clubs: "until the second part of the twentieth century, most journals could be assimilated to a club model".
While managed by a community and publicly available, knowledge club are demic and mostly used to the benefit of their members. As a defining feature of the club model, scientific authors are not paid for their publications: "ever since the first scientific journals were founded in 1665 in London and Paris, journals have not paid authors for articles." Acknowledgment and recognition by the relevant community of peers is the main incentive: "intangible rewards (made nearly tangible in tenure and promotion) compensate scholars for relinquishing royalties on their journal articles".
Users and consumers of club goods are basically the same population as the core readers of scientific journals are also their core contributors: "the set of potential producers and the set of incumbent consumers are the same set". Determination of relevant membership and exclusion criteria plays a fundamental role in the management of the club. In contrast with other forms of clubs (such as Health clubs), membership criteria of knowledge clubs are not enforced strictly but stem from widespread conventions: it "happens quite naturally (i.e. culturally) in scholarly knowledge clubs by simple cost of access in time and language." As there are no formal process of adhesion, knowledge club can be joined by non-reliable members, so long as they are willing to devote the necessary time to demonstrate they adhere to common cultural values and customs: "Hostile pranks, such as the Sokal hoax/fraud, demonstrate that clubs may be hoodwinked by outsiders who apparently 'speak their language' but are in fact using it to challenge their knowledge."
The concept of knowledge club has highlighted the continuities between scientific publications and other form of restrictive associations. Journals are strongly embedded in wider institutional networks and communities and cannot be dissociated from it: "More specialized journals appeared in the 18th and 19th centuries, most of which were published by learned societies. Only at the end of the 19th century did university presses gain importance as publishers of scholarly journals". While in their daily management knowledge clubs are not strictly separated from other economic actors, the interests of the community takes precedence over any other economic incentive: "we see a journal as a club in which access to these services is internalised as a membership benefit. While the services might still be outsourced, in practice it can be seen that such a shift potentially has substantial political and economic consequences as to how we see the relations among players." As adhesion to the club is not exclusionary, researchers are usually part of a complex network of clubs: "Membership of an academic institution with the relevant benefits, including access to subscription content, is another parallel club (...) Further work will be needed to define those situations which are better analysed as complex clubs, with differential membership contributions, and those situations where multiple clubs are interacting."
Community-lead journals have been progressively acquired or outcompeted by large international publishers after the Second World War: "The small society presses, struggling to cope with growing scale, were supported and then largely supplanted by the 'Big 5' commercial presses". While the knowledge club has receded, some of its conventions have persisted: "academic journals have retained their club-like qualities through blind peer review (even more through open review), and via editorial boards that are carefully constructed to 'send the right signals' in order to build prestige and quality assurance". The evaluation of scientific journal remained largely performed as a community service, with researchers submitting peer-reviews for free. Journals continued to be officially managed by editorial committee, although in a context of ownership by a large industrial structure, their authority and their ability to set the policy of the publication is limited. Both the authors and the audience of academic publication have primarily non-commercial incitations: "When publishing articles in academic journals, most scholars are predominantly motivated by curiosity, priority and the expected gain in reputation, and much less so by any monetary rewards for the actual publications."