The study on economic mechanism of Western academic periodicals can break through the bottleneck of domestic academic periodicals and has significance of realizing "going global" strategy. Its main research methodology is literature organizing, documents categorizing, basic economic methodology, and dialectic unification of Marx doctrine. Research results show that "economic mechanism of academic periodicals" is an internal unity of interdependent and interdisciplinary relationship formed in the process of article organizing, reviewing, editing and printing. Academic periodical operating includes its profit generating, cost spending, input and funds from government and social organizations. Profit generating consists of revenue from ads, publication, page charges, sales of right to use articles and conference, etc. Input in academic periodicals of Western governments and non-governmental organizations includes publication funds from financial allocation, government funding and subsidy, tax deduction, low-interest government loans and posting fees, as well as various funds from social and non-governmental organizations. Economic expenditure of academic periodicals consists of manpower cost on editing, office expenses, fees paid to distributors, using and depreciation of fixed assets, manufacturer printing cost and posting fee. WTO regulations appeal to publications' economic return and opening up access to periodicals funding, which makes an internal element of economic mechanism of academic periodicals. The conclusion is that, the above mentioned elements and components of economic mechanism of Western academic periodicals do not result in the market activity on academic periodicals with an exchange purpose. However, there are many non-commercial economic activities aiming at spreading academic achievements, for economic mechanism can be non-commercial. The above economic activities of Western academic periodicals are neither market activities nor capable of generating market mechanism. Thus, Western academic periodicals do not bear merchandise property and economic mechanism of Western academic periodicals is accordingly instructive.