Den efterfrågade vetenskapen : Universitetsbibliotek, akademiska tidskrifter och vetenskapliga förlag 1968–2018

What is the value of academic publications? How are they valued? What affects the processes of valuation? These are the central questions dealt with in this dissertation. By studying academic infrastructure, consisting of university libraries, academic journals and academic publishers, this thesis aims to explore and understand what creates value in an international market for academic journals and publications. I argue that in this market, value is affirmed through different measures of academic diffusion or dissemination. These measures work in a self-reinforcing manner: measures of diffusion create value that, in turn, leads to further diffusion, which generates more value. By studying library acquisitions in Sweden, and the reasoning behind these decisions since the beginnings of the e-journal in the 1990s, I show that bundles of academic journals, created by international publishers, have been, and are still, in high demand during the 21st century, despite ever-growing costs. The value of these bundles is measured and affirmed through different forms of user statistics. Additionally, I study the economy of two specific academic journals and what they require to function. I argue that all journals must either be viable as a market product or be subsidized by external funds. Both of these dependencies pose challenges to the journal. Between the libraries and the journals stand the academic publishers and their business model of bundled journals, which causes the libraries to subscribe to certain journals over a long period of time. I argue that this, in turn, causes these journals to become more diffused in order to acquire a solid source of income. A journal that does not fit the publisher’s business models cannot reap the same benefits. I further argue that since libraries ascribe great value to user statistics, international publishers will increase the value of their bundle by including journals that are likely to boost these statistics in many libraries. Hence, this measure of diffusion, through the actions of libraries, causes further dispersion among the journals that the publishers select. International dissemination of academic publications is also something that affects all evaluations that build upon citation analysis, another measure of academic diffusion