Introduction Academic publishing is an industry built on paradoxes. At its heart lies a curious contradiction: the world’s smartest people, backed by billions in public research funding, give away their work for free to publishers who then charge exorbitantly to access it. Meanwhile, those same researchers review each other’s work, edit journals, and scramble for … Read more
Introduction: The Prestige Trap In the competitive world of academic publishing, prestige is everything. For decades, one number has come to define that prestige: the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). Hiring committees scrutinize it, grant panels cling to it, and researchers obsess over it like it’s the scientific equivalent of a stock ticker. A brilliant early-career … Read more
Introduction Sci-Hub is arguably one of the most disruptive forces in the history of academic publishing. Founded in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan, a then 22-year-old graduate student from Kazakhstan, the website promised free access to millions of scientific papers—material that was, and largely still is, locked behind paywalls operated by commercial publishers. For researchers in … Read more
Introduction The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is arguably one of the most influential metrics in the history of academic publishing. Introduced by Eugene Garfield in the 1960s as a practical tool for librarians, it has since morphed into a behemoth that governs the careers of academics, the reputations of journals, and the decisions of universities … Read more
Introduction Academic publishing, for all its rhetoric about knowledge sharing, is driven as much by prestige as by the pursuit of truth. Scratch beneath the surface of any major journal or top-tier university press, and you’ll find a prestige economy humming along—a parallel universe where reputation, status, and institutional clout dictate who gets published, who … Read more