What Will Academic Journals Look Like in 2035? Five Changes Worth Watching
The PDF is unlikely to vanish overnight. Yet the systems surrounding it—review, data, discovery and payment—are already changing.
Independent news and analysis on research and scholarly publishing — from JCF Corp.
9 November 2026Staff-reported · Editorially independent
Publishing
8 stories
The Peer Review Bottleneck: Why Editors Struggle to Find Reviewers
Researchers want timely decisions. Reviewers face overflowing requests. Editors sit between the two, trying to keep standards intact.
Diamond Open Access Sounds Free. Who Pays to Keep It Running?
When neither readers nor authors receive an invoice, a journal still needs technology, editors and long-term funding.
Mega-Journals Changed Scholarly Publishing. What Comes Next?
Broad-scope journals challenge the idea that every paper must be judged for headline-making novelty. Their real test is whether quality controls scale.
Why Are Researchers Paying Thousands to Publish Their Own Work?
For authors under pressure to publish, the cost of communicating research can be as important as the research itself.
The Hidden Economics of Open Access: What Does an APC Actually Pay For?
The invoice may show a single fee. Behind it sits a chain of editorial, technical and commercial decisions that varies from journal to journal.
From submission to publication, a manuscript can pass through several distinct editorial stages.
A practical overview of editorial screening, peer review, revision, acceptance and production.
Is the PDF Still the Centre of Scientific Publishing?
The format that defined digital scholarly publishing may increasingly become only one representation of a research article.