Introduction: Publishing Runs on Trust Academic publishing is often described as a system for producing and disseminating knowledge. While that is certainly true, it is only part of the story. At its core, academic publishing is a trust system. Researchers trust that the papers they cite are legitimate. Editors trust that authors have reported their … Read more
Introduction For more than two decades, open access has dominated conversations about the future of scholarly publishing. Publishers debated it. Librarians championed it. Funders mandated it. Researchers argued over it. Entire business models were redesigned around it. The basic premise was simple. Research should be freely available to anyone who wants to read it. In … Read more
Introduction For decades, academic publishing operated on a quiet social contract. Researchers conducted studies, wrote papers, submitted them to journals, and in return received something that was rarely financial but often professionally invaluable: visibility, prestige, citations, career advancement, and a place in the scholarly record. Publishers, meanwhile, handled the infrastructure of dissemination, archiving, editorial management, … Read more
Introduction: AI Did Not Enter Publishing as a Neutral Tool Artificial intelligence has arrived in publishing wrapped in the language of efficiency. Industry conferences celebrate faster editorial workflows, smarter metadata generation, automated marketing copy, cheaper audiobook production, and AI-assisted manuscript review. On the surface, it all sounds like a productivity revolution, another technological upgrade in … Read more
Introduction For decades, the academic world treated open access as a moral victory. The logic seemed simple enough: remove paywalls, make research freely available, accelerate discovery, and allow scientific knowledge to circulate without financial barriers. Universities supported it, funders mandated it, researchers complied, and publishers adapted. Billions of dollars were poured into the transition under … Read more