Zul M 
Introduction For a long time, research has been treated like a private club. If you wanted to read it, you had to pay expensive journal fees, almost like trying to get past a castle gate guarded by paywalls. Yet, a powerful, collective movement is now surging across continents, driven by researchers, funders, institutions, and citizens: … Read more
Introduction The academic publishing world has long been dominated by a subscription-based model, often humorously referred to as a system where public research (funded by public money) is locked behind an expensive paywall and then sold back to the very public institutions that generated it. It is a brilliant, if somewhat ethically questionable, business model. … Read more
Introduction The prophecy was clear: the e-book would obliterate the printed page. Experts around the world declared that the digital format would sweep every market, making physical books a quaint, nostalgic relic of a bygone age. Yet, if you stroll through a major bookstore in Kuala Lumpur or even a smaller one in a secondary … Read more
Introduction The credibility of scientific publishing is now under threat. The culprit? Generative AI. This technology, while hailed as an engine for human productivity, has also become a digital factory for academic fraud and misinformation. With generative AI, researchers can fabricate authentic-looking research that is now cheap, fast, and alarmingly accessible. The gatekeepers of knowledge, … Read more
Introduction The phrase “American publishing” immediately conjures the images of brownstone offices of storied houses, the annual book fairs in New York and Chicago, and the blockbuster sales of celebrity authors. It’s an industry deeply intertwined with the nation’s cultural narrative, seemingly as American as jazz or baseball. Yet a closer look at the corporate … Read more