Academic institutions are grappling with a crisis in scholarly publishing, facing stressed presses, squeezed library budgets, and challenges in faculty publishing. Promotion and tenure committees are navigating new evaluation methods without clear guidelines. This work serves as both a provocation to rethink the future of academia and a call to reconceive it in more community-oriented ways. Kathleen Fitzpatrick addresses the technological changes necessary for academic publishing to thrive, emphasizing the role of internet publication technologies, digital archives, social networking tools, and multimedia. However, she argues that the core issues are social and institutional. Drawing from original research and her practical experiences with MediaCommons, the digital scholarly network she co-founded, the work delves into scholarly communication, digital scholarship preservation, and the role of publishing within modern universities. Written in an accessible style, it aims to engage both administrators and scholars in a dialogue about the future of scholarly communication, ensuring its relevance in a digital landscape.
