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The Scholarly Publishing Ecosystem

In today’s academic landscape, traditional publishing and networking models create considerable barriers for researchers. High costs, limited access, and a lack of true community engagement stifle innovation and inhibit knowledge sharing—critical components for advancing anthropology. CollabAnthNetwork was created to overcome these limitations, providing a more accessible, collaborative space tailored to the needs of anthropologists.

Today, scholarly publishing is dominated by five competing models, each with distinct limitations that researchers must navigate:

  1. Traditional academic publishers leverage their brand reputation to attract researchers to publish for free, yet they charge governments, universities, and the general public through costly subscriptions or pay-per-article fees. While this model meets institutional tenure requirements, it offers minimal benefit to individual researchers, who often face restricted access to their own work and the work of others.
    • Challenge: High-cost subscriptions and paywalls limit public – and researcher – access to valuable research.
    • Impact: Researchers see little return for their work, while publishers generate substantial profits. The need to meet tenure requirements forces researchers to stay tied to this costly system, limiting opportunities for broader dissemination.
  2. Institutional repositories offer long-term archiving and preservation of research outputs, built on traditional library systems rather than social platforms. Access and contribution often require institutional membership or affiliation, and many of these repositories are owned by for-profit companies or traditional publishers, limiting accessibility.
    • Challenge: Access is restricted to affiliated members, making it difficult for independent researchers to contribute or benefit.
    • Impact: While valuable for preserving research, institutional repositories provide limited support for collaboration or public engagement, isolating valuable work from the broader academic community.
  3. Open Access repositories aim to make research freely accessible as a public good, using platforms similar to traditional repositories. Despite the rise of the open access movement, traditional publishers maintain a firm grip on the legitimization of research within institutional merit systems and often charge in excess of $4,000 in processing fees in order to be published as open access. This cost barrier restricts Open Access publishing to researchers with significant financial resources or secure academic positions.
    • Challenge: High processing fees make Open Access publishing accessible primarily to well-funded researchers.
    • Impact: Although the Open Access movement promotes knowledge sharing, financial barriers and publisher control limit participation and prevent equitable access for all researchers.
  4. Institutional profiles and professional platforms like LinkedIn offer researchers a space to present resume-like profiles as a service run by scholarly organizations, academic institutions, and internet companies. Institutional profiles are often restricted to approved members of an organization that meet certain criteria and pay membership fees, or at the graduate, PhD, and faculty level in academic institutions. While these institutions may or may not have affiliated repositories, integration is often very poor and even as platforms serving their community, social networking features are almost non-existent. Services like LinkedIn offer free and open access to create an extended professional profile, with network connections, recent activities, profile views, social groups, and article posting capabilities geared towards career opportunities and professional development. However, LinkedIn does not host or integrate with scholarly research and is poorly suited for intellectual and academic activities that take place outside of job market and career objectives.
    • Challenge: Lack of research integration, limited networking for academic work.
    • Impact: While LinkedIn and similar sites offer career-focused profiles, they lack support for research visibility and intellectual collaboration, leaving researchers without a comprehensive space for scholarly interaction.
  5. Personal Websites are an additional or alternative option for researchers to publicly post their professional profile and research. However, building a personal site requires technical skills, design investment, and ongoing maintenance. While platforms like WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace simplify the process, their templates cater to general audiences and lack support for academic research. Additionally, personal websites are often isolated, with limited community or institutional integration, making it challenging for researchers to reach wider academic networks.
    • Challenge: Personal websites demand technical skills and maintenance while lacking academic community integration.
    • Impact: While allowing control over research presentation, personal sites often feel isolated, limiting discoverability and networking.
  6. For-profit research platforms like ResearchGate and Academia.edu offer free access to research communities without imposing author rights restrictions or charging for content. However, they rely on an ad-driven, for-profit model that treats users as products. These platforms often operate in a legal grey zone (ProtoHedgehog, 2017), allowing users to post published papers that may violate journal licensing agreements. Additionally, premium features promote academic hierarchies by revealing user roles and affiliations, a practice that some argue fosters academic class stratification rather than meaningful research impact.
    • Challenge: For-profit models prioritize ad revenue, often disregard licensing standards, and monetize user data.
    • Impact: Although popular, these platforms are criticized for emphasizing user data monetization and academic stratification over genuine research support and impact without enhancing research meaningfully.

Despite the vast industries that rely on academic research, individual researchers see minimal benefits from current publishing and networking models. Each model serves a narrow purpose, forcing researchers to navigate multiple platforms strategically—often limited by traditional scholarly gatekeepers. While institutional repositories provide essential archival functions, they lack the tools necessary for actively promoting research and connecting it with wider audiences. This limited scope drives researchers to for-profit research platforms, which, despite their popularity, face criticism for prioritizing revenue over academic integrity and research impact.

For many researchers, these platforms function primarily as social spaces for showcasing their work, rather than as legitimate venues for preservation or publication. Despite their limitations, these platforms offer a social space that allows researchers to:

  • Reach a wider audience and increase the impact of their research
  • Share both traditional and non-traditional research outputs
  • Provide access to a broader audience for researchers unable to afford Open Access fees
  • Offer a repository option for researchers without institutional access or affiliations
  • Serve as a platform for independent researchers outside academia who want to preserve and share their work

While current platforms meet certain needs, a truly effective social platform for researchers should address these demands while also adhering to academic and ethical standards. To achieve this, an improved model must:

  • Implement ethical, reliable processes for tracking research impact (such as DOI, Altmetrics, and ORCID integration)
  • Respect the role of established research repositories as essential long-term archives
  • Offer self-publishing capabilities compliant with research funding mandates and publisher policies

There is a clear need for an integrated model—one that upholds the scholarly standards valued by researchers and institutions while moving beyond traditional constraints. Such a model would foster greater collaboration within a dedicated academic community, merging the rigor of established scholarly practices with innovative, community-driven tools.

To create a truly collaborative environment for anthropologists, we must move beyond outdated models. Join us in redefining the scholarly landscape by becoming a part of the CollabAnthNetwork—where your research matters, and your contributions can thrive.

Works Cited

ProtoHedgehog. 2017. “ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and bigger problems with scholarly publishing.” Green Tea and Velociraptors. http://fossilsandshit.com/researchgate-academia-edu-and-bigger-problems-with-scholarly-publishing/ (accessed April 25, 2021).