2.5 The Importance of Scientific and Professional Societies in Journal Publishing

In the previous Unit, you learned about roles of learned societies in academic publishing. The learned societies around the world as well a number of international associations of in different subject fields have been associated with journal publishing in their respective subject areas since their origin the 17th century. These scientific and professional societies initially started academic publishing to disseminate scientific discoveries, innovations and major research findings to their respective members’ communities. However, institutional subscription model of their scholarly journals gave them much impetus in continuing journal publishing rather professionally ensuring a steady revenue stream to finance societies’ other developmental activities. These learned societies later got engaged with for-profit publishers for publishing scholarly journals with motives to run these journals professionally on profit sharing basis. Some scholarly societies, such as American Library Association, also have strengthened their publications division and run this division in a professional manner in order to generate surplus revenues or profit margins for the societies. The professional approaches also have made several positive changes in journal publishing. The editorial office ensures timely peer-reviewing of submitted manuscripts, timely conveying decisions on manuscripts to the authors, quality assurance and coherence in scientific contents, and finally timely publishing journal issues without any delay. While ensuring quality contents and timely production of journal issues – the researchers take a journal seriously. The editorial advisory board of an international journal also ensures diversity in publishing contents, bridging the scientific communities through publishing research findings relevant for the society in the global North as well as in the global South.

Last modified: Thursday, 25 March 2021, 10:35 AM