> Repeat after me: scholarship is not a publishing business. Nope - it's much more than that. It's a way for a caste of too-often incompetent and self-absorbed

> Repeat after me: scholarship is not a publishing business. Nope - it's much more than that. It's a way for a caste of too-often incompetent and self-absorbed university dwellers to perpetrate itself. I've had the misfortune of working in university for a while. People on department are living in a bubble - they write books and they publish on journals that are read only by other professor "studying" the same "subject". They treat subjects like "the history of mining in scandinavia". Why? Because they're often the only person in the world (or one of the 2-3 people in the world) who is studying that. What does it mean? A grant, and later a position as a full-time professor. Everyone of them has his small little niche in which he's the best specialist in the world... that is used to both justify their research and to avoid real world competition. Publishing rules will never change if the underlying ecosystem doesn't. If professors will ever be interested in expanding their audience (now they're interested in the opposite) then publishing will change accordingly.