Abstract:
This chapter is an overview of the current state of scholarly journals, not (just) as an activity to be described in terms of its changing business processes but more fundamentally as the pivot point in a broader knowledge system that is itself in a process of transformation. After locating journals in what we characterize as a process of knowledge design, the chapter goes on to discuss some of the deeply disruptive aspects of the contemporary moment. These not only portend potential transformations in the form of the journal, but possibly also in the knowledge systems that the journal in its heritage form has supported. These disruptive forces are represented by changing technological, economic, distributional, geographic, interdisciplinary and social relations to knowledge.