On Scholar-Led Knowledge Creation

🍏your Thursday Essay 17th July, 2025

A well-researched original piece to get you thinking.

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Online Thumbnail Credits: Fyfe, A. (2022). A history of scientific journals: Publishing at the Royal Society, 1665–2015. UCL Press.

Hi Scholar

It is often the case that discussions around academic publishing do not interest scholars at the early stages of their career - as many of you reading this are - unless they’re about how to get publications out.

In one's scholarly youth, very little is asked of the PhD student or the Postdoc by the industry itself; requests and expectations for peer review or other unpaid labor are typically reserved for more experienced academics. When we are young, the publishing industry exists to serve us and our career ambitions, which can be realized by publishing articles. It is only later, once we have started our climb up the steps of the ivory tower, that the publishing industry begins to make demands of its own.

There is something Faustian about the pact a young researcher makes with the publishing industry. Doctor Faustus sold his soul to the devil in exchange for 24 years of power, only to realize the full cost of his bargain when his time is up. In the same way, the young scholar comes to realize the harsh demands made in return for the industry's initial rewards long after the deal is done.

This is why the nature of the publishing industry should interest you, dear Scholar - it is part of your inheritance. It will define how you create knowledge: it will shape your career. It may feel distant now, in the golden years of your youth, but there may well come a time when you are unhappy with the terms of the deal you have signed. The purpose of this week's Essay is to understand how the terms of that deal came to be.

My own perspective on knowledge creation through publishing is perhaps slightly different to yours, for my relationship to it was not defined by the same pressures experienced by Scholars such as yourself. My time as a PhD student was short enough to spare me from the worst of the "publish or perish" mentality. The pressures applied to me as a junior employee at a large open access publishing company were of a different nature but, I like to believe, no less intense.

P.S. this piece is inspired by a wide variety of reading. Rather than referencing throughout, I’ve compiled a short bibliography at the end of the Essay if you’re interested in what previous work has informed the making of ‘On Scholar Led Knowledge Creation’.

On Scholar Led Knowledge Creation

- Written by The Tatler

There are some institutions in the scholarly ecosystem that have existed for so long that we begin to wonder if their current configuration could be governed by irrefutable laws of nature. Academic publishing, which is our primary method of knowledge creation, is one such institution. Like the other large institutions who govern and shape the scholarly ecosystem - universities, funding agencies - it is hard to imagine a world without it. And yet, though it is essential, it no longer conducts itself in a scholarly manner.

In our efforts to critique, it is easy to tear down the problems we identify without building anything new in their place: to "add fresh ruins to fields of ruins" in the words of Latour. This is especially tempting when the object of critique is a fundamental part of the research infrastructure, seemingly capable of weathering any criticism directed toward it with barely a scratch. The issues with academic publishing are well known and keenly felt. Yet the system is so complex, so large, and so necessary that it feels impossible even to pull it apart - let alone imagine an alternative.

Articles critiquing the opacity of peer review are themselves peer-reviewed behind closed doors.

The concentration of publishing power in the hands of a few companies is examined within journals owned by those very companies.

A discussion of article processing charges and their effects on the commodification of individual articles must be paid before it can be published.

Metaphorically speaking, you might see a lot of problems with the road network. You might even hate your reliance on it. But you've still got to drive to work.

The purpose of this essay then, is not to give publishing an intellectual spanking and denounce loudly all that is wrong with it. There has been enough of that. Instead, I'd like us to explore a different question:

Why is academic publishing the way it is?

Should you wish to break free from the system as it stands, there are no alternative pathways that can get you a CV impressive enough for the hiring committee. The creation and production of knowledge in our world flows through the academic publishing industry - we cannot escape this fact.

A part of me wonders how a community of young Scholars united by a love for knowledge might re-imagine publishing: what changes could you, one who cares deeply about their scholarship and feels a duty of care towards knowledge, be able to envision?

As we will see, the publishing industry as we know it today serves itself first. I have written this Essay in the hope that it would give you, Scholar, the knowledge and understanding to instead demand that the publishing industry begins to serve scholarship again.

An interesting feature of the publishing industry is that it readily adopts new technology, but rarely ever updates its practices and norms: the result is a patchwork set of practices and norms which have been gradually collected over centuries. Many of these practices have been in place for so long that we have forgotten what purpose they originally served. Some of these practices are relatively harmless, but equally, some enable publishing companies to put their own wants above what is good for scholarship. It is therefore necessary to begin our discussion with a brief history of scholarly publishing norms and practices up to the present. The present period of publishing is defined by what a recent article calls “publisher-led science”. In this article, the authors call for a shift towards science-led publishing.

However, during the course of writing this Essay, I have become confident that we can go a step further and aim for scholar-led publishing. Exactly what this means and how we, yes "we", could achieve this is the focus of the second half of this essay.

Part 1: To Honour Scholarship

The publishing practices you are inheriting today have a rich history.

In the 360 years that scholarly publishing has existed, the highly commercialized, profit-driven nature of contemporary publishing is an anomaly.

For 285 years, knowledge creation through publishing was a service to scholarship performed by learned societies at considerable expense. How these early learned societies operated, and more importantly who they were for, matters enormously because we still carry on many of their practices today.

The first recognizable scholarly journal, The Journal des Sçavans, printed its first issue in Paris on January 5, 1665. This was followed a few months later by the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which was first printed in London later the same year. This period roughly between 1665 and 1820 was the time of the gentleman scientist: members of early learned societies were typically rich, well-educated, and exclusively male. Though these individuals took their work seriously, they were not professionals whose livelihoods depended on the successes of their scientific endeavours; many were members of the land-owning aristocracy but also included professionals like lawyers and doctors.

They were, first and foremost, part of an elite social class of 17th century European gentleman.

From our viewpoint in the 21st century, we might look upon the culture of these early learned societies with mixed feelings. These societies were exclusive and did not publish work done by non-members, nor share published work with those outside its personal networks. Sturdy barriers were kept in place explicitly to prevent people who were women, of a lower social class or non-European, from participating in knowledge creation.

However, learned societies and their members also acted as stewards and curators of knowledge, motivated by a desire to honour scholarship. At this time, universities as institutions that supported scholarship were not widespread, nor would they become prominent facilitators of knowledge creation for at least another 200 years; the majority of scientific knowledge produced during this period was only possible due to the efforts of learned societies. Interestingly, it was not uncommon to admit members who were not practicing scientists; some were aristocrats who saw themselves as patrons supporting science by paying their membership fees and making donations.

These financial contributions were important and allowed societies to pay for the cost of printing journals which was incredibly expensive and decidedly unprofitable.

The costs of publishing were down to the material nature of journals: paper, ink, printing services, plus storage and distribution of printed journals made up virtually all of the costs. Printing costs were significant, and if an article contained mathematical formulae or illustrations, special printing arrangements were required that made costs higher still.

Partly due to a sense of scholarly duty and partly due to the high cost of printing, members did not "submit" their work.

They "gifted" it, which gave us the tradition of journal authors being unpaid.

The knowledge scholars brought with them was given as a gift to the society; through printing the work in journals, the society returned these gifts back to its wider membership. Additionally, societies across Europe gifted the work of their members to other societies, in the hope that they might receive a similar gift.

To members of early learned societies, knowledge creation through publishing was a necessary burden for the advancement of human understanding - they gladly donated their time and labour without payment to support it.

They served as contributors, editors and eventually reviewers solely to facilitate knowledge creation and uphold high quality scholarship.

Between 1820 and the end of the Second World War in 1945, science gradually became a profession. As the number of academics began to increase, expertise and reputation became increasingly determined by one’s publication record rather than of social status. Linking professional standing to publications was swiftly followed by increases in the number of published journal articles, which in turn increased the share of society budgets devoted to publishing. Materials and manpower shortages during and immediately after WW2 also resulted in yet another surge in printing costs. Under these conditions, academics continued to gift their scholarship and labour. However, gifting published journals was becoming unaffordable.

In an effort to break even on publishing costs, learned societies ended the practice of gifting their journals and began selling them to the very institutions that had, until then, received them for free.

Thus, by 1945, publishing had more or less taken the shape we know today. Professional academics were reliant on publication records to prove their expertise. Journals were becoming more specialized, and institutions like universities had become paying customers. Using a journals reputation as a shortcut to evaluate the quality of a scientists publications was gaining popularity. All published articles were peer reviewed and journals had permanent editorial boards with subject specific expertise. Most importantly, all of the labor required to sustain a journal was offered voluntarily then, as it still is today.

Part 2: Printing Money

The end of World War 2 was a significant event for modern science. Governments around the world saw how scientific and technological advancement were matters of both national security and prosperity. Government support for scientific research meant more published papers and larger library budgets. The large amount of money being spent on science supported higher prices for journal sales, meaning that, for the first time, knowledge creation through publishing was able to earn a profit. This drew the attention of commercial publishing companies who saw a lucrative opportunity.

At the start, the presence of commercial publishers was not necessarily a bad thing.

They used profits to launch large numbers of specialized journals that served specific communities of researchers and were more international in their focus, promoting the global circulation of journals in one standardized language (which was of course, English). These activities of commercial publishers were, by their nature, motivated by profit. Overall however, these players were more able to meet the needs of the growing scientific community around the world than learned societies, who tended to direct publishing surpluses towards supporting other activities like research grants and fellowships instead of expanding their own publishing operations.

For a time, learned societies and commercial publishers co-existed more or less in harmony.

Until the 1970s, things were going smoothly. Published papers increased year-on-year, new journals were launched to soak them up and healthy library budgets bought all the journals. Learned societies continued to print the majority of journals and the publishing landscape remained diverse, with numerous small publishers contributing to a competitive and relatively balanced ecosystem.

However, peaceful co-existence would not last.

Economic crises in the 1970s and 1980s would trigger the collapse of not-for-profit learned societies as significant contributors to knowledge creation through publishing.

During The Great Inflation, as governments cut research spending, competition between publishers for smaller library budgets became fierce. Under normal market conditions, the reduced purchasing power the libraries now had should have resulted in lower journal prices. Academic publishing is, however, not a 'normal' market. Each published journal, or article, is unique and one-of-a-kind.

Academic literature is inherently monopolistic. One can never buy the same journal from a different publishing company.

With no risk of competition, whoever owns the journal can charge whatever price they wish. This is especially true if a company owns a prestigious journal that many institutions agree is irreplaceable. Commercial publishers capitalized on these unusual market dynamics by raising the prices of their prestigious journals, effectively crippling library budgets and diverting money away from their competitors.

The majority of journals run by learned societies went bankrupt in 1970s-1980s - and were subsequently acquired by the same companies who drove them out of business.

This is how 61% of global scholarly output came to be controlled by only 5 companies.

The consolidation of the publishing market continued into the 1990s, alongside technological advances that made it possible to digitize the production and circulation of knowledge. Initially, the ease with which electronic files could circulate online threatened to undo the business model that had proven so lucrative for commercial publishers thus far. In response, they lobbied extensively for changes to existing copyright law that would prevent the free sharing of scholarly knowledge under their control - which was, of course, nearly all of it!

This, dear Scholar, is how the paywalled article you are so familiar with came to be.

It is also why commercial publishers are legally permitted to license content they did not pay to produce, edit or review to AI companies for millions of dollars.

The possibility for digital research to be shared widely combined with a growing realization that virtually all of the last century's scholarship was held under copyright, led to the Open Access Movement.

However, the damage had already been done.

Commercial publishers would easily survive the rise in Creative Commons licenses - the legal framework Open Access articles are published under that prevents publishers gaining copyright over material. Adjusting their business model, they simply shifted from a journal-based economic model (where institutions pay for journal subscriptions) to an article-based model (where authors or funders pay per article).

Beyond lobbying for copyright laws that privileged their commercial interests over scholarship, commercial publishers also quietly benefitted from the drastic reduction in production costs that came with digitization.

This is, in my opinion, the most significant development in the entire history of publishing. It is also the primary reason why Scholar-led publishing has a chance at challenging the current business model. The cost of printing has historically been the greatest expense for publishers and, I would argue, had the single most negative influence on publishing practices. Printing costs made it necessary for contributors, editors and reviewers to conduct their work on a voluntary basis. Additionally, increases in printing costs were responsible for ending the practice of gifting journals and turning institutions into customers.

The transformation of publishing as an act of care and stewardship into a commercial venture was driven primarily by the increased costs of printing physical journals.

And in the last 40 years, as knowledge creation through publishing has become digital, it has entirely ceased to matter.

In our digital age, this limiting factor is no more. Of course, new technologies bring their own expenses, such as maintaining web domains and digital platforms, but these costs are modest when measured against the historically heavy burden of print production. The table below shows the production costs of The Royal Society's publishing activities in 1936 compared to 1986 (right before digitization became widespread). In 1936, printing costs (paper, typesetting and artwork) accounted for 89% of the publishing operations costs, compared to 61% in 1986.

Scholar, have you ever used a physical journal as a point of reference? Personally, I have only ever used digital versions of journal articles - even during my undergraduate degree 10 years ago. How much do you think Elsevier spends on paper, printing, artwork and binding in 2025? Not much I'd guess.

If publishing followed normal market dynamics (which, as we've seen, it doesn’t) then falling production costs should have led to falling prices. Instead, prices have remained high and continued to rise above inflation to this day.

This begs the question,

what were publishers starting to spend the money they were saving on printing?

The answer, as you can see in the table, is staff.

Part 3: For the Few, Not the Many

Today, virtually all journals employ staff whose role is neither strictly academic nor absolutely essential for a journal's existence: marketing managers, branding teams, public relations officers, machine learning engineers, sales reps. These are full time, professional, decently paid roles.

Withdrawing from my PhD and leaving academia invoked complicated feelings. I did not wish to continue, but I also did not want to leave scholarship behind. I was delighted when I was offered a job in publishing, which I viewed as a way to facilitate knowledge creation now that I would no longer be an active researcher. It was, to me, a way to remain a Scholar.

On the day I started my job, my salary was 86% higher than the stipend a funded UK PhD student could expect to receive - plus an extra yearly bonus based on performance. Over the next 2.5 years, I would eventually be paid more than the going rate for a junior Post-Doc in the UK.

On my first day, my manager described my role for the journal "as essentially sales".

Scholar, words could not express my disappointment.

How could a role in knowledge creation through publishing be distilled into a word like “sales”?

I was trained to use the existing pressures of academic life for the advantage of the journal I was assigned to. I persuaded, coaxed and nudged academics to donate time they did not have, to a company that did not care, in order to fatten already healthy profit margins.

My duties included analyzing the number of article submissions to forecast if they were growing fast enough compared to previous years. I developed action plans to boost journal revenues. I solicited, not invited, article submissions from academics all over the world. I sat in meetings and discussed with my colleagues the potentially negative consequences of tightening journal quality controls would have on revenue.

Meanwhile, the labour that really sustains a scholarly journal - that is done by it's editorial board, reviewers and authors - remains voluntary and unpaid. 

How strange a system this is, when that is the very labour that a journal cannot do without.

It is striking that the publishing industry continues to draw its vitality from the scholarly community in the same manner early learned societies did from their aristocratic members more than 350 years ago.

However, the reasons why scholars were required to donate their scholarship and labor no longer apply - publishing journals is no longer a loss-making operation.

And while the cost of printing journals has disappeared, the cost of staffing publishing companies has skyrocketed.

Commercial publishers today spend absurd amounts of their revenues employing individuals whose main directive is to increase the profits of the company.

Over the last 75 years that publishers have been run as for-profit businesses, we have all collectively have lost sight of their original purpose: they exist solely to aid the scholarly community in the act of knowledge creation. More than that, commercial publishers are only able to function thanks to the goodwill of scholars. In 2020, it was estimated that scholars in just three countries (the USA, UK, and China) donated the equivalent of $2.5 billion worth of their time to for-profit publishers through peer review alone. The reason why we have been blind to the exploitation of the scholar and institution is that they are the only ones we regulate. Society expects universities and Scholars themselves to act in the interests of a public good or common scientific enterprise - yet we make no such requests of the publishers who are an integral part of the same system.

Commercial publishing will never change when so many are well paid to keep it just as it is.

The people who work in commercial publishing as salaried employees are themselves a massive obstacle to change. To reform knowledge creation by publishing is to put their jobs at risk: it is a lot to ask of them. Ultimately, the rising profit margins of the publishing industry are beneficial to its employees, who can expect at least some of it to be given out in their salary increases or bonuses. To be truthful, I can only bring myself to write these words because I am not employed there anymore.

Part 4: Scholar-Led Knowledge Creation

When I began the research for this essay, I confess there was little hope of being able to offer a compelling alternative to our current system.

However, I now believe there is a way towards a model of knowledge creation by publishing that can serve scholarship as it used to.

A model that is Scholar-led.

And here it is.

It seems clear that the amount of scholarship published Open Access will only continue to increase. The article-based publishing economy where each article incurs a publishing fee will continue. However, with no printing costs, the digital nature of knowledge creation through publishing does not justify the prices currently charged to publish Open Access. Commercial publishing operations spend far too much money on non-academic staff whose role is not to serve knowledge creation but to increase profits (refer to the vacancy for Revenue Acceleration Manager, among others, included above). Scholars sustain this excess of staff by continuing to donate time and labour while still managing to work in their full-time, salaried positions at universities. The problem is clear.

Journals could charge lower prices and compensate scholars for their time spent as editors and peer reviewers if full-time staff counts were reduced.

The article-based nature of the present publishing economy makes it possible to divide a portion of article processing charges among the scholars who contributed to it's publication, specifically the editors and reviewers. I fear compensating authors would incentivize the production of even more articles, which is not something that should be stimulated further.

If individual publishing companies were not so large, then the number of non-academic staff required would be reduced further still. Theoretically, a small organization publishing a handful of journals would be able to compensate all it's editors and reviewers while employing a small team of supporting administrative staff. Smaller organizations do not need Vice-Presidents, Global Heads of HR, or Portfolio Managers.

A version of the not-for-profit society model that became unsustainable due to printing costs could be reborn in our digital, article-based publishing economy.

Perhaps (dare I dream?) the proliferation of this model may be a catalyst for the transition from a publishing economy to a publishing ecology.

Springer Nature is currently advertising a vacancy for a Reviewer Engagement Assistant with an annual salary of $45,000-$60,000. This individual will be tasked with speeding up the peer review process in a portfolio of journals, and is likely to spend their days sending emails to large numbers of academics in the hopes of finding a qualified reviewer. Tell me, Scholar, might a better solution to the reviewer shortage be to offer scholars a small fee, drawn from the funds reserved for the Reviewer Engagement Assistant’s salary?

All of the essential labour in publishing is already done by scholars, on top of their usual research and teaching workloads. I would go further to argue that there is no essential role in knowledge creation through publishing that could not be performed by members of the scholarly community.

Launching such an organization might be challenging in the current market dominated by large players. However, this organization would not be competing for a slice of the publishing market’s financial pie in the same way other publishers currently do.

Instead, these organizations would be competing for the only scarce resource that actually matters in knowledge creation by publishing: the time and goodwill of the scholarly community.

Journals run in this way could still have an Impact Factor. They could still have the prestige, reputation and editorial processes that we have come to expect them to. The only thing that would change is who gets paid for their labor and how many full time staff a publishing company employs. In this way, the moral courage required to bring about change does not rest with the scholarly community, as it so often does, but with the commercial publishers.

Scholar, in 10 to 15 years time, your career will have advanced to the point where you are senior enough to sit on the editorial boards of journals in your discipline. Your time will be in demand to review articles and uphold high standards of quality scholarship. I wonder, will you be content to donate your labor to subsidize the salary of a Revenue Acceleration Manager?

The 6 weeks it has taken me to formulate this vision is far shorter than the 4 years required to write a doctoral thesis. Yet, I find myself experiencing the sense of personal transformation that the Critic has described in ‘On The Inability to Let Go Of The Scholar’. I am a "scholar who at the end of writing is different from the writer who began". This vision for a Scholar-led model is barely formed and there’s little doubt that testing exposes unforeseen problems. And yet, I find myself unable to let go of the idea that Scholar-led knowledge creation through publishing is possible. I find myself desperate to apply my meagre experience developing journals to test this idea. A part of me wishes, that there are some among you reading this who share this desire too.

Dare I hope we could realize it together?

Special thanks for to the following sources - without this work done by previous Scholars, writing this Essay would not have only been difficult, but impossible.

Fyfe, A. (2022). A history of scientific journals: Publishing at the Royal Society, 1665–2015. UCL Press. https://uclpress.co.uk/book/a-history-of-scientific-journals/

Aczel, B., Szaszi, B. & Holcombe, A.O. A billion-dollar donation: estimating the cost of researchers’ time spent on peer review. Res Integr Peer Rev 6, 14 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-021-00118-2

Pattinson, D., & Currie, G. (2025). Toward science-led publishing. Learned Publishing, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.2012

Eaton, Lance, "Elbow Patches To Eye Patches: A Phenomenographic Study Of Scholarly Practices, Research Literature Access, And Academic Piracy" (2025). Graduate Doctoral Dissertations. 1058. https://scholarworks.umb.edu/doctoral_dissertations/1058

Generative AI License Agreement Tracker: https://sr.ithaka.org/our-work/generative-ai-licensing-agreement-tracker/

Do you believe in Scholar-led knowledge creation? If yes, do you think the model proposed above is feasible? Apples can only say so much. The Scholarly Letter exists because we believe that knowledge and scholarship begins in conversation and communing. Respond to this email, Scholar, we want to hear what you have to say and share.