The market of academic attention

This work broadens the perspective on academic attention, to tackle the key economic problem of how to allocate scarce attention, and what kinds of dynamics this situation can foster. Focusing on selected fields and using standard tools of industrial organization, we delineate the trends in the market for academic attention over 14 years, and attempt to provide an interpretation. We find a tendency toward progressive market concentration, and also that specific strategies adopted by players, aside from the usual benefits determined by price discrimination, can produce subsidies of attention from well-known journals to lesser-known journals belonging to the same bundle. This may influence readers’ and authors’ choices of how to direct their attention.