Academic publishing has become a profit racket one where researchers write, edit, and review for free, yet face exorbitant Article Processing Charges (APCs) just to see their work published. Meanwhile, universities are forced to buy back access to the very research their scholars produced, enriching private publishers while draining institutional budgets. This is unsustainable, unjust, and fundamentally misaligned with the mission of higher education.
Universities must stop playing the role of passive consumers and start leading as publishers. Instead of funneling prestige and recognition into for-profit journals that prioritize shareholders over science, institutions should elevate and prioritize their own journals and publishing platforms.
Imagine the transformation if universities:
1. Gave more weight in promotion and tenure evaluations to articles published in reputable university-owned journals.
2. Invested strategically in improving editorial quality, visibility, and indexing of their institutional journals.
3. Mandated open access as a principle of university publishing, ensuring knowledge is free to those who need it.
4. Built consortia of universities to pool resources, share peer review infrastructure, and increase the global reach of non-profit publishing.
5. Protected young researchers by offering fair, low-cost publishing avenues that do not exploit their limited resources.
If universities truly believe in their mission to advance and democratize knowledge, then they cannot continue outsourcing that responsibility to corporate publishers whose business model thrives on exclusion. The academic community must demand that universities take back ownership of scholarly communication not as a side project, but as a core academic policy priority.
This is not just about money. It is about academic freedom, equity, and integrity. The longer we remain dependent on profit-driven journals, the more we compromise the very purpose of research: to generate and share knowledge for the public good.
The time to act is now. Will universities rise to the challenge?
You are correct Dr Akande. Perhaps, this is a call for academicians to create a framework that can help the university system implement this idea. This is also a chellenge for the information system unit (Library/Librarians) of the university. The disruptive encroachment of internet and AI is making our libraries becoming almost non functional at its optimal capacity, however, what you have pointed out could give them a new purpose, if they hold it dear.
Thabks for sharing this.
Th
Totally appreciate your views, but its easier said than to be done. Publishing houses are earning huge revenues, creating databases & in general have been successful in making academic institutions compliant with ranking points for publications
When the Scoreboard Becomes the Game, It’s Time to Recalibrate Research Metrics
"In academic publishing, numbers have become the shorthand for authority. An impressive Impact Factor or a high citation count signals credibility at a glance. For decades, these metrics have been used to guide decisions on funding, hiring, and promotion. But somewhere along the way, what began as a means to measure quality has started to dictate the very shape of research itself.
Today, the scoreboard often overshadows the substance. Researchers are not only aware of the numbers, they are actively shaping their work to achieve them. And the more these metrics are chased, the more they risk distorting the very thing they were meant to measure...
The future of research depends on whether we let numbers stay on the scoreboard or use them as the compass that points us toward integrity, inclusivity, and long-term impact."
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/09/11/guest-post-when-the-scoreboard-becomes-the-game-its-time-to-recalibrate-research-metrics/?informz=1&nbd=&nbd_source=informz
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