Article markets over the world show some interesting cultural differences. As many markets, the US article market is one of the largest, if not the largest and best developed. For a good definition of article markets I mean the free article markets and not the professional articles from scientific areas (medical, law, tax, science in general, etc). These are highly regulated and moderated by companies (like lexus-nexus).

But there are many in other countries. The Dutch article market is distinguished by a few characteristics. This article is focused on the management article domain.

In the Netherlands.

First of all there are two separated markets; the free market and the not-free, or the regulated market.

The regulated market is operated by a panel of specialists and is preceded by a consultant / professor. Writers’ articles are checked by the panel and only if they agree to publish the article it will go ahead. Certain rules must be followed in order to get accepted in this regulated area.
The other area is free. Everybody can write about a variety of topics. There is hardly any screening…

There is less transparency in the Dutch market, compared to the US markets. There is no insight in the number of views which makes it hard to evaluate the impact of the article. Number of writers may be deducted, but the number of articles is hard to estimate. This is all much more transparent in the US.

The U.S.

The main characteristics of the US markets for articles is not the transparency but its freedom. Anybody can write, if you have a PHD or whether you have no academic background, the market is open. And articles get appreciated according to their impact (number of views, most read, highest rating, etc) The mechanism to rate article is another difference between the two markets. In the US it is important, in the Dutch market not too relevant. The implicit rating is done by the editors of the domain.

The Netherlands is a relatively “flat” society like its countryside. Yet knowledge is one of the area where this is not true. The knowledge market is highly hierarchical. Do you want impact and change, start influencing the academics. They are the elite. In the US if you want change, just write a best-seller-article. Anybody can do that (although I cannot prove this … yet).