Introduction For decades, academic publishers have operated in a closed, profitable ecosystem where knowledge is packaged and sold back to the institutions that produce it. Scholars write, review, and edit academic content largely without compensation, only to have their own universities pay subscription fees or exorbitant open access charges to access the same work. Critics … Read more
Introduction Academic journals have long been the gatekeepers of scholarly knowledge, shaping careers, setting research agendas, and determining which ideas gain traction in academia and beyond. For centuries, this model remained remarkably stable: researchers submitted manuscripts, peer reviewers vetted them, and publishers printed and distributed the final product, mostly to institutional libraries. Prestige followed citation … Read more
Introduction There’s a bizarre paradox at the heart of academia: governments and institutions spend billions funding research, universities pay scholars to write, peer reviewers work for free, and yet, when it’s time to access the final article, you still have to pay a publisher. Sometimes a lot. How does that make sense? The academic publishing … Read more
Introduction The phrase “publish or perish” in academic publishing has become a kind of mantra—ominous, omnipresent, and seemingly unshakable. It encapsulates a reality where scholarly output is no longer just a means of sharing knowledge but a metric for academic survival. For early-career researchers and tenured professors alike, the pressure to churn out publications is … Read more
Introduction Academic publishing has long been guided by metrics. From impact factors and h-indices to citation counts and journal rankings, these numerical indicators are often treated as gospel in evaluating research quality, institutional performance, and even individual academic careers. For many scholars, these metrics determine not only where to publish but how their work is … Read more