A research publishing system at a crossroads

Academic publishing has never been a still pond. It has always shifted with technology, institutional priorities, and the circulation of ideas. Yet the pace and direction of those shifts have changed dramatically in the past two decades. This is the first blog post on our research group's website—devoted to quality in scientific scholarship—and it’s worth stepping back to view the system’s long arc, the cracks that have widened, and the paths that might lead us to steadier ground.

From print-era gatekeeping to digital abundance

For most of its history, research publishing moved slowly. Print journals were expensive to produce, so editorial boards acted as strict gatekeepers. Review cycles stretched across seasons. Libraries bought subscriptions that became the backbone of scholarly access. Researchers navigated this world with patience because alternatives simply didn’t exist.

Then the digital shift arrived. Submission portals replaced envelopes. PDFs replaced print runs. Global bandwidth expanded. The walls of the old system loosened just enough for a rush of new possibilities to pour through.

The age of new business models

With digital distribution came new economic models, each promising to democratize access or stabilize finances, and sometimes both.

Subscription models persisted, but their cost escalated, pressuring university budgets. Open access (OA) emerged as the solution. First came green OA, then gold OA, then APC-driven journals that turned authors into customers. New publishers appeared with energetic branding, while established giants recalibrated their strategies.

The problem is that while each model solved a problem, it created another. Subscription barriers restricted access but did not incentivize quantity. APC-based openness broadened access but incentivizes quantity. Diamond OA offers free access and free publishing but can be hard to implement for political and institutional reasons.

The system began to resemble a patchwork of competing philosophies held together by tradition, necessity, and the momentum of habit.

The reviewer bottleneck

Parallel to the business model churn, peer review began to sag under its own weight. Digital ease meant manuscripts multiplied, but reviewer capacity did not multiply equally. The old volunteer-based system now carries a global volume that would astonish its 20th-century architects.

Editors spend countless hours searching for willing reviewers; reviewers ration their time; authors wait in queues that can stretch endlessly. Meanwhile, concerns about paper mills, AI-generated content, and data integrity have added a new layer of vigilance to the process. As an example, I was contacted by a desperate editor, after having declined his review request, if I could be so kind to review the suggested manuscript since he had gotten 19 review request declines before mine. I said yes. I had empathy with the guy. The problem, however, is that while peer review remains central to scholarly publication, it is operating on goodwill that is wearing thin.

What could a way out look like?

The answer is unlikely to be singular. The system’s problems are entangled, so its solutions will be plural. Here are some ideas:

1. Community-governed publishing: Society-led and university-based initiatives can reclaim ownership of scholarly communication. Diamond OA, cooperative publishing, and nonprofit platforms offer promising seeds if supported with stable funding rather than heroic volunteerism.
2. Rethinking research evaluation: Metrics have been allowed to drive behaviour for too long. If institutions broaden evaluation criteria, the pressure to publish frenetically could ease, lowering strain across the system. This is already happening, with the competence assessment matrix (CAM) as a national example.
3. Strengthening peer review infrastructure: Reviewer credit systems, shared reviewer pools, AI-assisted screening (carefully governed), and new review formats could distribute labour more fairly.
4. Realignment of incentives: The people who do the work — editors, reviewers, authors — need to see concrete value for their contributions. Recognition systems, compensation models, and institutional policy reforms can help.

A crossroads or a collapse?

If the current moment feels chaotic, that may be because evolution often does. The publishing system might be failing or just shedding its old shell. Whether what emerges from the many and increasing number of discussions is healthier depends on whether national and international policymakers as well as the research community can take collective responsibility for its future.

Our research group explores this future piece by piece by focusing on research quality, research culture and training, and funding.

The important thing for our research group is this: we are not merely passengers in a system in crisis. We are its architects, whether we choose to rebuild or improve the current system. The crossroads is here.

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