Interconnection Among Academic Journal Platforms: Multilateral Versus Bilateral Interconnection

Abstract

Electronic academic journal platforms provide new services of text and/or data mining and linking, indispensable for efficient allocation of attention among over-abundant sources of scientific information. Fully realizing the benefit of these services requires interconnection among the platforms. Motivated by CrossRef, a multilateral citation linking backbone, this paper performs a comparison between a multilateral interconnection regime and a bilateral one and finds that publishers are fully interconnected in the former while they may partially break connectivity in the latter for exclusion or differentiation motives. Surprisingly, if partial interconnection arises for differentiation motive, exclusion of small publisher(s) occurs more often under the multilateral regime than under the bilateral one. In addition, we show that our main result is robust in the case of Internet Backbone interconnection. Finally, when publishers can interconnect both in a multilateral way and in a bilateral way, a conflict between a private incentive and a social incentive may arise when large publishers prefer excluding small publishers by opting for a bilateral interconnection. In this case, a light-handed regulation imposing no discrimination among rivals would foster full interconnection.