Independent Thinking on Publishing's Future
Introduction The promise of open access was a thrilling, almost utopian vision for scholarly publishing: immediate, free access to research for everyone, everywhere. It was supposed to tear down the paywalls that had turned publicly funded knowledge into a commodity accessible only to well-endowed institutions. Among the various open access models that emerged, Gold Open … Read more
Introduction Academic publishing, the bedrock of scientific and scholarly communication, is not exactly known for its breakneck speed. For centuries, the process has felt as entrenched as a medieval fortress: peer review, acceptance, print, and the glorious, high-priced subscription model. But don’t let the stodgy reputation fool you. We’re now living in an era where … Read more
Introduction The scholarly publishing landscape has never been what one might call ‘static,’ but in 2026, the rate of change feels less like a slow evolution and more like a rocket launch. We’re past the argument of whether research should be open access. Today, the discussion revolves around how we achieve universal openness in a … Read more
Introduction The academic publishing world has long been dominated by the Global North: think of those large, commercial, and often wildly profitable publishing houses headquartered in North America and Western Europe. This dominance has created a landscape where the knowledge, research questions, and institutional contexts of the Global South—a term generally encompassing countries in Africa, … Read more
Introduction The open access movement, with its foundational belief that scholarly research should be free to read and reuse, represents a seismic shift in the world of publishing. It emerged as a radical counterpoint to the traditional, subscription-based model, which critics often lambasted as the “serials crisis,” a system where publicly funded research was locked … Read more