What is a Platform Paper?

There are more than 700 published articles on platform competition, but how do I determine whether an article is a Platform Paper?

Platform Papers started when Melissa Schilling and I set out to conduct a systematic and interdisciplinary review of the academic literature on platform competition (published in the Journal of Management, open access). We conducted a Boolean search query on Web of Science to collect the initial sample of articles considered for the review. The search query focussed on articles’ titles and their publication outlets.

To be included in the sample, an article had to have at least one of the following phrases in its title: “platform,” “complementor,” “two-sided market,” “multisided market,” “network effect,” “network externalit,” “system market,” “winner take all,” “ecosystem,” or “installed base.” We used wildcards (*) to include plurals and variations on these phrases. An inclusive approach was taken with regard to the set of publications under consideration. We started with publication outlets included in the Financial Times FT50 journal list. We then added publications that are historically known for publishing research on platform competition, such as International Journal of Industrial Organization, the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, and the Journal of Industrial Economics. We also added some newer journals that lacked the history required for inclusion in the FT50 list (e.g., Strategy Science).

We manually screened each article produced by the search query and we also performed several checks to ensure we included relevant articles that were not included in these results (e.g., primarily based on citations). The resulting list of 333 articles published between 1985 and 2018 (inclusive) was subsequently hand-coded to obtain input on fields such as conceptual theme, method, and empirical context.

Once this data extraction system was in place, I decided to continue collecting the data on newly published platform papers on a monthly basis using the same method. I also occasionally receive requests from authors to have their articles included in the dataset. If their suggestions meet the requirements, I add them to the set (I make note of which articles were suggested to me and which were added automatically). In all of this, I try to be as objective and systematic as I can be. The resulting dataset can be accessed in the form of a references dashboard, which is updated monthly.

I invite authors whose articles are included in the Platform Papers database to translate their research for the Substack blog. I primarily select authors and articles based on relevance, personal interest, and the research’s broader implications.