Academic Publishing Survives Despite Its Flaws

Roger Watson, BSc, PhD, FRCP Edin, FAAN

Writer’s Camp Counselor

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Academic publishing adds value to the discipline, but there are concerns.

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Every generation of academics believes it is living through the final days of the current publishing model. Each time a new technology arrives such as photocopiers, email, the internet, preprints, open access, Sci-Hub, generative artificial intelligence (AI),¹ predictions of the imminent collapse of academic publishing echo across the ivory tower. And yet, as anyone who watched Paywall: The Business of Scholarship documentary² will know, the multinational industry persists with cheerful indifference. Recently, I reviewed an article by Caroline Edwards³ of Birkbeck University, England, where the imminent demise of the academic publishing industry was aired again.

The Diagnosis

A more recent article by Emilia Kaczmarek⁴ joins this familiar tradition. Her critique is well-aimed: commercial publishers extract enormous profits from publicly funded labour; academics donate millions of person-hours reviewing and editing without compensation; and universities spend sums large enough to rebuild their libraries annually, only to purchase access to research they already paid to produce. One wonders whether any other industry has succeeded so thoroughly in convincing its workforce that exploitation is a noble calling.

The Paywall documentary made this point bluntly: academic publishing is the only sector where the producers of a good, the evaluators of its quality, and the purchasers of the final product are all the same set of people. Yet none of them control the price. That is done by a handful of companies whose contribution could be politely described as “branding and server space,” or less politely as “legalised enclosure of the commons.”

Kaczmarek makes the ethical case forcefully. Paywalls exclude the very public that funds research, creating a grotesque situation where pharmaceutical companies—for example—can read studies instantly while clinicians in Malawi cannot. Open access charges (APCs) drain institutional budgets. Predatory journals flourish. Junk research proliferates. And now, as she warns, there is a new threat: generative AI feasting on the low-quality papers pumped out by a hyper-competitive, metrics-obsessed academy. Garbage in, garbage out. The problem, however, is not her diagnosis. It is her hope.

Repeatedly, reformers of the academic publishing industry imagine that the combination of public frustration, financial strain, and new technology will finally prompt a revolution. Paywall suggested that open access was the decisive turning point. Kaczmarek argues that AI may be the catalyst that forces change. But history suggests otherwise. Academic publishing survives because it embodies the incentives of its ecosystem better than any alternative. It has become, in effect, the curriculum vitae (CV) industry. So long as prestige flows through a handful of journal titles, and careers depend on obtaining space in them, reform remains a theoretical possibility with almost no real-world traction.

This is not to dismiss Kaczmarek’s proposals. They are thoughtful and, in some cases, necessary. Reforming metrics would help—if universities in some parts of the world were willing to abandon the impact factor as a measure of academic achievement and a factor in academic promotions. Strengthening non-profit platforms could help, if anyone funded them properly. It is doubtful if academics, who depend on visibility and prestige, would be willing to boycott the very journals that determine their promotion prospects.

Leslie Nicoll—our Director here at Writer’s Camp—recently argued that journals could be more usefully understood not as brands or prestige hierarchies, but as editorial systems shaped by ethical intent, capacity, infrastructure, and scholarly purpose.⁵ Her work outlines these systems as a continuum ranging from deceptive outlets, through under-resourced but ethically motivated journals, to discipline-anchored and flagship journals. Many journals criticised for low impact or limited reach are not malign but fragile enterprises sustained by unpaid labour. The current commercial publishing model mirrors academic hierarchies, with prestige journals acting as funnels through which careers, metrics, and reputations must flow.

Paywall highlighted the deeper structural problem: commercial publishers have convinced universities that they cannot live without them. Subscriptions are bundled so that institutions must buy dozens of journals they do not want so they can access the few they do. Open access charges are pitched as the cost of “sustainability,” though the profits exceed the budgets of most university departments. Universities could collaborate to create their own publishing infrastructures, but bureaucracies are rarely so bold. As the documentary wryly noted, “In academia, everyone wants change—provided it involves no actual disruption.”²

Kaczmarek’s faith in collective academic action, therefore, is touching. She imagines that if enough scholars recognise the ethical issues inherent in the current system, they will abandon it. But academics do not behave like a unified moral community—they behave as employees who know their livelihoods depend on publishing in the same journals they sometimes denounce at seminars about academic publishing.

Diamond Open Access

Diamond open access, much favored by reformers, is a beautiful idea. In theory academics publish for free, other academics and interested parties read for free, and the system operates without profit. Yet Paywall showed the reality: diamond open access systems are underfunded and understaffed. Such efforts are held together by goodwill, often by a lone academic using an antediluvian submission system that cannot handle manuscripts at the volume offered by commercial academic publishing platforms of the kind provided by leading academic publishing companies.

Moreover, publishers do provide value. Not necessarily intellectual value, but infrastructural value. Submission systems, archiving, indexing, citation linking, digital object identifier (DOI) registration, legal compliance, and long-term preservation. These are not trivial tasks. Universities could replicate them, but only by investing millions. Most would rather continue paying subscriptions to journals.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of predatory journals, another of Kaczmarek’s concerns, has almost nothing to do with commercial publishing and everything to do with research assessment frameworks that reward quantity. When a system incentivises more papers, it gets more papers. Publishers know it. Academics know it. Every cycle of research evaluation demonstrates it. As Kaczmarek notes, AI will accelerate this aspect of modern academic publishing. If machine-generated nonsense begins flooding the literature, reviewers will be overwhelmed and publishers will simply create more outlets to accommodate the flow. The only casualty will be scholarship itself.

The question, then, is not whether the current publishing model is ethically flawed. It clearly is. The question is why, despite decades of criticism, documentaries, manifestos, and policy briefings, it remains largely intact. The answer is that the system is remarkably profitable. Publishers get money; universities get rankings; and academics get metrics. The losers are the public who paid for the research, the early-career scholars obliged to publish in prestigious journals, and the developing world, where institutions cannot afford subscriptions to leading journals.

What does the future look like? Kaczmarek imagines a moment of reckoning, a convergence of AI disruption, ethical frustration, and financial pressure. And perhaps, eventually, the business model will falter. But the more likely scenario is not revolution but mutation. Publishers will adapt. They already have. Bundled subscriptions for online journals replaced print, and charges for open access are replacing subscriptions. Next will come AI-enhanced editorial services, AI-driven reviewer tools,⁶ and AI-assisted submission triage, for which publishers will charge handsomely. They will monetise the crisis—they always do.

Realistic Reform

The funeral for academic publishing has been scheduled annually since about 1980. The mourners gather, deliver stirring eulogies, and prepare the coffin. Yet the deceased continues to outlive them. Reformers remain optimistic, publishers remain rich, and universities remain complicit.

Kaczmarek’s critique is right, necessary, and admirably honest. But ethical arguments alone have never moved this industry. The only force that will is economic: when the cost is no longer tolerable, or when a genuinely robust alternative finally emerges, not a preprint server, not a diamond open access ideal—but a fully funded, institutionally mandated publishing infrastructure. Until then, academics will continue to complain about academic publishers while reviewing for academic publishers, publishing with academic publishers, and proudly listing journals published by academic publisher on their CVs and applications for promotion.

For now, the academic publishing industry continues to thrive. Reform is necessary and desirable but, for the future, any models must learn to exploit the best of the new developments, such as open access and generative AI. At the same time, space should be left for the major academic publishers who, alone, can provide the kind of online platforms that can accept and distribute manuscripts for review—while checking them for similarity and inclusion of current publishing guidelines and adherence to ethical standards.⁷ These same platforms facilitate reviewing and editing processes and allocation to the production pipeline.

Conclusion

Change will come, but it may not be the change we envisage. For example, who predicted the near ubiquity of generative AI at the start of 2022? What will the next disruptive change to academic publishing be? It is impossible to predict, but academic publishing companies have the resources both to accommodate change and implement the necessary checks and balances required to sustain the industry. Universities need to work closely with the industry. Efforts must be made to drive down subscription costs, but we must not lose sight of the value-added offered by academic publishers. After all, they depend on us utterly for their profits—we must learn to use that leverage more effectively through cooperation and not confrontation.

Declaration

Generative artificial intelligence (ChatGPT) was used to extract material from existing articles and eliminate repetition prior to human oversight involving close editing.

References

1. Watson R. The transformative impact of generative AI on academic writing. The Writer’s Camp Journal. 2025; 1(1):4. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15366886
2. Schmitt J. Paywall: The business of scholarship [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAzTR8eq20k. Published September 9, 2018. Accessed January 16, 2026.
3. Edwards C. Chaos is coming for scholarly publishing. Published November 12, 2025. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-views-of-the-uk-2025-november-chaos-is-coming-for-scholarly-publishing/
4. Kaczmarek E. Why the current model of academic publishing is ethically flawed—And what we can do to change it. Journal of Scholarly Publishing. 2025; 56(4):899-921. doi:10.3138/jsp-2025-0047
5. Nicoll LH. How journals work: A systems-based framework for understanding scholarly publishing. The Writer’s Camp Journal. 2026; 2(1):4. doi:10.5281/zenodo.18037409
6. Watson R. Rethinking statistical rigor in the age of AI-powered peer review. Published November 6, 2025. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.enago.com/academy/ai-powered-peer-review-statistical-rigor/
7. Watson R. Toward a new model of academic publishing. Published November 27, 2019. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://researchoutreach.org/outreach-leaders/article/towards-a-new-model-of-academic-publishing/

Author: Roger Watson

Reviewed and Edited by: Jenny Chicca

Copyright © 2026 Writer’s Camp and Roger Watson. CC-BY-ND 4.0

Watson R. Academic publishing survives despite its flaws. The Writer’s Camp Journal. 2026; 2(2): 2. doi:10.5281/zenodo.18285119