The Role of Intermediaries in the Scientific Publishing Industry: An Exploratory Study

It is widely accepted that advances in IT have impacted many markets allowing for a direct interaction between the supply and the demand side. Pioneering studies on this topic predicted huge dis-intermediation phenomena as long as internet allows for a reduction of the transaction costs. Empirical work of the last decades shows instead that dis-intermediation is not the natural result of the Internet. Many other intermediation phenomena - such as the cyber-intermediation - have been identified by scholars. The heterogeneity of the findings relies on the fact that while it is true that Internet help decreasing the transaction costs of markets, the market dynamics are driven by other criteria as well. This is also the case of the scientific publishing industry. Intermediation in the scientific publishing industry plays an important role in terms of its governance, structure and the functions.