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Academic Publishing and Corporatization: Reflections on Professionalism, Profits, and Peculiarities of Today’s Presses and Journals

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Abstract

We reflect on peculiarities and challenges we increasingly encounter in academic publishing with book presses and journals. First, we assess decreasing professional standards among commissioning editors with presses and managing editors with journals, including editing avoidance and peculiar reviewing practices. Second, we examine problems that result from the profit motivation of corporations that own and operate most of today’s presses and journals. These include problems stemming from lowest-bid, outsourced copy-editing and introduction of journal manuscript software that assigns not only more digital labor to scholars upon submission, but also more responsibility to manage risk. Third, we reflect on possible remedies and alternative strategies, including recognizing and rewarding presses that are holding out against these trends. We hope to suggest to (especially junior) scholars that their similar experiences are not unique or random and that these trends are mostly recent inventions of a corporatized academic publishing industry and are not without alternatives.

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Notes

  1. Our observations are based on publishing some 133 refereed articles (29 together) mostly in international journals, 62 book chapters (10 together), and 17 books (5 together) (monographs and edited volumes) since 2004. We have served as editors of special issues of five journals and eight collections, as journal board members, as international editorial board advisors, and as book review editors.

  2. https://beallslist.weebly.com.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Joanne DeCosse, Crystal Gumieny, and Bilguundari Enkhtugs for their assistance.

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  1. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg, Centennial Hall, 3rd Floor, 515 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, MB, R3B 2E9, Canada

    Kevin Walby

  2. Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada

    Randy K. Lippert

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Correspondence to Kevin Walby.

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Walby, K., Lippert, R.K. Academic Publishing and Corporatization: Reflections on Professionalism, Profits, and Peculiarities of Today’s Presses and Journals. Pub Res Q 35, 362–376 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-019-09668-2

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