Introduction For over three centuries, the journal article has been the crown jewel of scholarly communication. Since the launch of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1665, considered the world’s first academic journal, researchers have treated journal publication as the ultimate act of intellectual validation. If it was not peer reviewed, formatted into … Read more
Introduction For decades, the global publishing industry has operated on an unspoken assumption. Power lives in a few familiar cities. New York decides the commercial conversation. London shapes the trade lists. Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris quietly steer segments of scholarly output. If you wanted to understand publishing, you studied those hubs and called it a … Read more
Introduction For decades, academic publishing followed a relatively stable script. Scholars produced research. Commercial publishers packaged and distributed it. Libraries paid the bill. Everyone complained, but the system endured. That stability is now cracking. Universities, research institutes, funders, and even library consortia are increasingly stepping into roles that once belonged almost exclusively to traditional publishers. … Read more
Introduction The idea that universities might become their own publishers sounds radical at first glance. After all, academic publishing has long been dominated by large commercial houses with global brands, subscription bundles, and profit margins that would make most university administrators blink twice. Yet beneath the surface, something has been shifting. Universities are rethinking their … Read more
Introduction Academic publishing loves to imagine itself as timeless. Peer review feels ancient. Journals feel permanent. University presses feel like institutions carved into stone. Yet if we rewind just twenty years, the landscape looked dramatically different. In 2005, open access was still considered radical. Preprints were niche outside physics. Artificial intelligence in editorial workflows was … Read more