An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach to Open Access

TL;DR

This paper models open access publishing as an evolutionary game between scientists and publishers, using Hamiltonian systems to analyze the dynamics and qualitative behavior of the interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Hamiltonian framework for analyzing the strategic interactions in open access publishing.

Findings

The model reveals stable and unstable equilibria in open access dynamics.

Hamiltonian structure provides insights into long-term behavior of publishing strategies.

The approach offers a new perspective on policy impacts in scholarly communication.

Abstract

The paper presents an evolutionary game-theoretic approach to open access publishing as an asymmetric game between scientists and publishers. We show how the ordinary differential equations of the model presented can be written as a system of Hamiltonian partial differential equations. The understanding of the setting as a Hamiltonian system implies some properties reflecting the qualitative behavior of the system.