The Future of the Academic Journal

This is the second edition of a work originally published in 2009. Many of the original articles remain with updated content, though there are some new chapters, and some others have been dropped. It has only been five years since the first edition, but much has happened in the intervening period.

Since the title includes the word “future”, one would expect that the 18 chapters are forward-looking, and in the main they are. The standout chapter in this regard is the chapter on the Elsevier Article of the Future project, which effectively answers a criticism in an earlier chapter about the lack of innovation in digital publishing. There is still room for several historical studies, including, for instance, a very useful overview of the growth of journal publishing.

The editors have done a good job in drawing together contributors from a wide range of publishing, academic and technical backgrounds, which means that every aspect of academic journal research is covered and often reviewed from different perspectives. The main areas covered are: Open Access (OA); the cost of academic journals and purchasing options (individual subscriptions, bundles, journals by platform); proliferation of titles; the peer review process; the implications of analytic tools such as impact factors, journal ranking and citation services; copyright; the academic journal in an international context.

The overriding area of interest is OA, which is covered in considerable detail. This is not surprising, considering the fact that it is also the most contentious issue involving so many questions which affect journal publishing in the future: where do researchers publish and do they pay for the privilege, do they go for the Green or Gold route or publish privately, how do publishers stay in business and create the journal for the future and deliver a product which academics and libraries can afford? The plurality of viewpoints expressed by authors from industry, academia and libraries is both a blessing and a curse. It means that, although we have differing perspectives, we also see a substantial amount of duplicated basic information about OA – a bit of judicious editing might have made for a rather more effective survey of the topic.

How libraries, institutions and individuals select journals is equally important, and this issue crops up in several chapters. There is mention of how some libraries are “forced” into selecting journal packages to gain the best deals, thereby acquiring unnecessary additions to stock in order to subscribe to the essential. There is also mention of the way that journals are beginning to lose their uniqueness, when articles are found in an undifferentiated mass when discovered through databases or search engines such as Google Scholar.

The chapter on journal ranking and impact factors usefully covers the arguments for and against metrics and the impact this has on selection for publishing and literature evaluation. I thought more could be made of the impact of Altmetrics and social media as alternative means of measuring journal success, however. I also looked in vain for anything substantive on informal networks of sharing which bypasses the official journal channels such as peer-to-peer, ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Mendeley.

All chapters are prefaced by abstracts and keywords which are useful for those wanting to select the most appropriate chapters for their needs. Most chapters also have extensive references which, together with supporting data, have been updated since the earlier edition.

A little pruning might have made this collection more effective, but it mostly succeeds in covering the ground and is a useful overview for anyone who wants to know where the academic journal publishing industry is heading.