Abstract
Since the early 1990s, when digitalisation began to open new opportunities for disseminating information, many academic journals started to introduce online services. However, while some studies suggest that online availability and free access to journal articles are positively connected to the number of citations an article receives, little is known about whether being an early adopter of digital services provides journals with a (long-term) competitive advantage in times of digital change. We use data from SSCI-listed management journals to examine which journals pioneered the introduction of digital services, to what extent first-mover advantages can be identified, and which journal characteristics are associated with citation-based performance indicators. Our results show that lower ranked journals were the first to introduce digital services and were beneficiaries of the digital age. Furthermore, we find a negative correlation between general submission fees and journal performance and that the top-performing journals of our sample are those of non-commercial publishers. Our analysis of the relationship between journal performance and the provision of open access contradicts previous studies, as we find no positive correlations between performance and open access on the journal level.
Highlights
Since the 1990s and early 2000s, more and more academic journals have offered selected content or entire issues online
In the first step of our descriptive analysis, we examine the introduction of digital services into the field of academic journals, for which we distinguish between print journals, journals with combined print and online services, and online journals
This study examines factors that are related to the citation-based performance of academic journals in the digital age
Summary
Since the 1990s and early 2000s, more and more academic journals have offered selected content or entire issues online. With the help of modern technologies, this content can be accessed by a large number of people from any location (Lozano et al 2012), making digitalisation a relevant aspect in the context of knowledge generation (Ding et al 2010). Digitalisation changes the behaviour of those who consume this content (readers), as they can search for specific topics or articles without having to search through entire journal issues (Lozano et al 2012). Further aspects in which academic journals differ from each other and which could be relevant for explaining their success include their age (Sugimoto et al 2013), access modalities (Borgman 2008; Sugimoto et al 2013), costs (Beverungen et al 2012; Craig et al 2007; De Groote 2008; Siar et al 2005), and whether they demand submission fees from their contributors (Asai 2019; Chressanthis and June 1994)
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