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The Revenue of Finance Journals: Networks, Pricing Power, and Publication Volume

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  • Douglas Cumming

Abstract

I study commercial revenue at 26 finance journals over 1999-2025, exploiting the creation of the Elsevier Finance Journal Ecosystem (a formal network of coordinated journals planned in 2019 and launched in 2020) as a quasi-natural experiment. Using synthetic control as the primary identification strategy, I find that ecosystem membership generated a projected long-run commercial revenue effect of approximately \$54-\$59 million in real 2024 USD, comprising \$48 million in citation-mechanism-implied APC revenue and \$6-\$11 million in incremental submission-fee revenue (the submission-fee range reflects uncertainty about the share of extra submissions arriving via Elsevier's Article Transfer Service, which generates no incremental fee at the receiving journal). Of this total, approximately \$40-\$44 million is directly observed and realized through 2025 (a \$36 million synthetic-control gap on APC flow revenue plus \$4-\$8 million in incremental submission fees); the remaining \$14-\$15 million reflects standard submission-to-citation-to-revenue propagation lags from citation gains realized in 2019-2025 that are projected to materialize as publication revenue through approximately 2028. The effect is highly concentrated: four core journals (FRL, IRFA, IREF, RIBAF) account for 95% of the gain. Decomposing the revenue effect into intensive (price) and extensive (volume) margins, 89% comes from expanded publication volume; per-paper pricing power rose modestly if at all. The findings speak to the economics of coordinated networks in information-goods markets and to the industrial organization of scholarly publishing.

Suggested Citation

  • Douglas Cumming, 2025. "The Revenue of Finance Journals: Networks, Pricing Power, and Publication Volume," Papers 2508.14301, arXiv.org, revised May 2026.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2508.14301
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