Scholarly publishing is, and always has been, an adaptable beast. What started as the hand-scribed musings of ancient philosophers evolved into the printed manuscripts of wealthy gentlemen-scientists observing nature or conducting experiments using their own pounds sterling. These “natural philosophers” formed the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge in the mid-17th century and published their work in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the first journal devoted entirely to science and one that continues to publish biweekly issues to this day.
Over the intervening centuries, academic publishing has morphed into a sprawling international industry that, on the one hand, rakes in revenues of more than $19 billion in its scientific, technical, and medical segment alone, according to one 2008 analysis (Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, 9, ISSN 1704-8532, 2008). On the other hand, a constellation of open-access (OA) publishers, producing nearly 8,000 OA journals (according ...
