Journals as Systems: Rethinking How Scholarly Publishing Works

Leslie H. Nicoll, PhD, MBA, RN, FAAN

Writer’s Camp Director

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The Journal Systems Framework will be introduced later this week in a Writer’s Camp Feature.

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Conversations about scholarly journals tend to circle around a familiar set of labels: predatory, legitimate, high impact, top-tier. These terms are often used as shortcuts, meant to help users navigate an increasingly complex publishing landscape. Yet the more we rely on these labels, the more they seem to generate confusion, anxiety, and unintended harm. Authors worry about making the “wrong” choice. Editors find themselves defending journals against mischaracterizations that do not reflect their intent or work. Institutions lean on proxies that promise clarity but rarely deliver it.

What these conversations often miss is a simple but important shift in perspective. Authors and editors do not experience journals as labels or reputations; they experience them as systems. A journal is more than a compilation of articles with a table of contents; it is an editorial system that shapes how scholarly work moves from submission to publication. Submission portals, peer review workflows, editorial decisions, revision processes, timelines, and communication practices shape how journals function in practice. When those systems work well, the experience feels coherent and purposeful. When they do not, journals can appear opaque or frustrating as structural and operational constraints become visible. Treating journals primarily as categories of status obscures this lived reality.

Consequences and Implications

One consequence of oversimplified journal labeling is that legitimate journals—particularly small, independent, or mission-driven ones—are easily misread. Journal systems operating with limited resources may be described as “low quality” when the more accurate description is capacity-constrained. Editorial teams doing careful, values-driven work may feel pressure to chase external markers of prestige that are misaligned with their mission. Journal impact factor, indexing status, and publisher branding become shorthand for worth, even when they tell us little about the editorial processes that shape scholarly work.

This has real implications. Editors may feel compelled to redirect energy away from mentoring, transparency, or editorial capacity-building toward goals that are believed to promise institutional recognition but risk distorting the journal’s purpose. Authors may avoid journals that are well suited to their work because those journals do not fit prevailing narratives about legitimacy or excellence. In the process, we flatten a richly diverse publishing ecosystem into a hierarchy that does not reflect how scholarship is produced, reviewed, and shared.

Part of the problem lies in our reliance on surface signals. Professional manuscript management platforms, polished websites, digital object identifiers, and formal indexing all matter—but they are necessary, not sufficient indicators of journal integrity. Legitimate journals use these tools to support editorial work, but illegitimate or deceptive journals can use the same tools to create the appearance of credibility. Conversely, journals with ethical intent and thoughtful editorial practices may struggle operationally despite having sound values and clear purpose.

Tools and appearances are easy to borrow; system integrity is not. Integrity resides in how editorial authority is exercised, how peer review is conducted, how conflicts are handled, how decisions are communicated, and how stated purposes align with routine editorial practices. These elements are not always visible from the outside, yet they shape the experience of participants in scholarly publishing.

Journals as Systems

Thinking of journals as systems helps us move beyond false binaries. It allows us to distinguish deception from limitation, intent from capacity, and prestige from function. It also creates space for more honest conversations about what journals are for and how they contribute differently to scholarly life. Some journals are designed to build capacity and mentor authors. Others consolidate disciplinary knowledge. Still others shape research agendas at scale. None of these roles is inherently superior; they are simply different functions within a shared ecosystem.

A systems-based perspective does not require us to abandon concerns about ethics, rigor, or accountability. On the contrary, it sharpens those concerns by focusing attention on how journals operate. It invites authors to ask better questions: How are editorial decisions made? What kind of feedback can I expect? How transparent are its processes? It encourages editors to articulate their mission more clearly and to evaluate success in ways that align with that mission rather than with external pressure alone.

Later this week, a Writer’s Camp Feature will introduce the Journal Systems Framework, a conceptual framework designed to support a systems-based understanding of how journals operate. Rather than ranking journals or prescribing uniform standards, the framework offers language for describing how different journal systems function, what constraints they face, and what roles they play. Its purpose is not to simplify scholarly publishing, but to make it more approachable—and, in doing so, more transparent.

The Journal Systems Framework grew out of repeated conversations with nursing journal editors and authors who struggled to reconcile traditional markers of journal quality with the realities of contemporary scholarly publishing. These discussions highlighted the need for a more nuanced way to describe how journals are organized, resourced, and supported. I believe the Journal Systems Framework meets this need by providing shared, practical language for discussing journal structures and capacities—language that has largely been absent from existing conversations about journal quality.

Conclusion

Reframing journals as systems is an invitation, not a verdict. It asks authors, editors, and institutions to pause before reaching for labels and to consider what is happening beneath the surface. It encourages evaluation rooted in context rather than fear, and strategy grounded in purpose rather than prestige. Scholarly publishing will always be complex, but complexity need not produce confusion. When we attend to systems rather than symbols, our conversations about journals become clearer, fairer, and more constructive.

I am excited to share the Journal Systems Framework with you and I look forward to your feedback.

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Author: Leslie H. Nicoll

Reviewed and Edited by: Marilyn Oermann and Lisa Marshall

Copyright © 2026 Writer’s Camp and Leslie H. Nicoll. CC-BY-ND 4.0

Citation: Nicoll LH. Journals as Systems: Rethinking How Scholarly Publishing Works. The Writer’s Camp Journal, 2026; 2(1):3. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.18099850

AI Use Disclosure: Artificial intelligence tools were used for brainstorming and early drafting of the article. The author retains full responsibility for the content.