Introduction: The Wrong Fear There is a comforting narrative floating around the publishing world right now. It says that AI is overhyped, readers still value human writing, and publishing will adapt just like it always has. That narrative is not entirely wrong, but it is dangerously incomplete. AI is not coming for publishing in the … Read more
Introduction Academic publishing did not collapse. It evolved, then quietly reorganized itself into something far more complex and far more controlled. What used to be a fragmented ecosystem of journals, university presses, and scholarly societies has gradually transformed into an interconnected network of platforms. This shift is not cosmetic or purely technological. It is structural, … Read more
Introduction Academic publishing has long relied on a narrative of stability and intellectual control. Editors read manuscripts, reviewers evaluate them, and decisions emerge from human judgment shaped by disciplinary expertise and scholarly norms. It is a system that presents itself as careful, deliberate, and grounded in reasoned evaluation. For decades, this framing has been repeated … Read more
Introduction Walk into a modern publishing company and the change is immediately noticeable. Editors still debate manuscripts. Peer review still happens. Books and journal articles are still produced. Yet behind the scenes, the operational machinery increasingly resembles something closer to a software company than a traditional publishing house. Large publishing organizations now run digital platforms, … Read more
Introduction For most of the history of publishing, the hierarchy of value seemed obvious. Content came first. Everything else existed to support it. Authors created manuscripts, editors refined them, publishers packaged them, and distributors delivered them to readers. The better the content, the stronger the publishing program. That logic worked reasonably well during the print … Read more