Independent Thinking on Publishing's Future
Introduction Plan S set out in 2018 to make publicly funded research free to read the moment it is published. Eight years on, it has changed how publishers price and license research, but cOAlition S is now rethinking how it gets there. This article looks at where Plan S came from, what it requires, what … Read more
Introduction Not many academic disputes get coverage in The New York Times, inspire hashtags on Twitter, and trigger late-night strategy sessions in research labs from Berkeley to Berlin. Yet in 2019, the University of California (UC) did just that when it told Elsevier—arguably the most powerful scholarly publisher—to take its $10-million-a-year subscription bill and kindly … Read more
Introduction It might sound like the setup to a particularly dry economic satire, but here’s a bold claim: running an academic publishing house can be more lucrative, at least on paper, than running Apple Inc. That’s right. The folks putting out journal articles about medieval plant taxonomy or nanoparticle simulations may be quietly outpacing the … Read more
Introduction In 2024, academic publishing passed another milestone: by one widely cited estimate, more than 5 million scholarly articles were published worldwide. Depending on what is counted, the total ranges from about 4.5 million to more than 10 million, and it is climbing every year. That scale reflects not only the increasingly hyperproductive nature of … Read more
Introduction Academic publishing has always worn a veneer of nobility. It presents itself as the beating heart of global research, the engine behind scientific discovery, and the bridge connecting ivory tower ideas to real-world impact. But strip away the Latin mottos, the peer-reviewed gloss, and the library branding, and you’re left with something that looks … Read more