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Evolutionary games between subject categories

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Abstract

Here we examine the evolution of journal sharing between scientific subject categories, using evolutionary game theory. We assume that there is journal sharing between subject categories if they share common scholarly journals. In this paper, the Prisoners’ dilemma (within evolutionary game theory) is used as a metaphor for the problems surrounding the evolution of journal sharing between scientific subject categories. Using evolutionary games, here we show that connections between categories (that share common journals) can enable journal sharing to persist indefinitely on stationary configurations. The conclusion is that journal sharing between subject categories is an evolutionary advantage. Using a set of experiments, we have explored the asymptotic behaviour of this system for various values of the model’s parameter and the results seem robust. Subject categories are described in terms of graphs, such that categories occupy the vertices. Sharing categories are connected through the edges of those graphs. The combination of evolutionary game theory and graph theory provides the flexibility for carrying out more realistic simulations.

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Acknowledgments

This research was sponsored by the Spanish Board for Science and Technology (MICINN) under Grant TIN2010-15157 cofinanced with European FEDER funds. Sincere thanks are due to the reviewers for their insightful comments, constructive suggestions, and help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación e I. A., CITIC-UGR, Universidad de Granada, 18071, Granada, Spain

    Rosa Rodriguez-Sánchez, J. A. García & J. Fdez-Valdivia

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  1. Rosa Rodriguez-Sánchez
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  2. J. A. García
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  3. J. Fdez-Valdivia
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Correspondence to Rosa Rodriguez-Sánchez.

Appendix: Prisoners’ dilemma between subject categories

Appendix: Prisoners’ dilemma between subject categories

The simple PD can be thought as a game with two subject categories (P1 and P2) which are the game’s players, each having two options: C (to share a journal); D (not to share).

If both categories share a common journal (they cooperate), both receive a reward R for journal sharing. If P1 does not share, while P2 shares a journal, then P1 receives the temptation, T, payoff while P2 receives the “sucker’s”, S, payoff.

Similarly, if P1 shares a journal while P2 does not share, then P1 receives the sucker’s payoff S while P2 receives the temptation payoff T.

If both categories do not share, they both receive the punishment payoff P. To sum up, it follows that:

$$ \begin{array}{ccc} &(Share) & (Not \, to \, share)\\ (Share) & R,R & S,T\\ (Not \, to \, share) & T,S & P, P\end{array} $$

And to be a PD game in the strong sense, the following condition must hold for the payoffs: T > R > P > S.

The payoff relationship R > P implies that mutual sharing is superior to mutual non-sharing, while the payoff relationships T > R and P > S imply that non-sharing is the dominant strategy for both players.

The dilemma then is that mutual sharing (of journals) yields a better outcome than mutual non-sharing but it is not the rational outcome because the choice to share a journal, at the individual level, is not rational from a self-interested point of view.

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Rodriguez-Sánchez, R., García, J.A. & Fdez-Valdivia, J. Evolutionary games between subject categories. Scientometrics 101, 869–888 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1255-1

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