What are the benefits of publishing original research and what stepsshould one take to realisticallyaccomplish this goal?

The costs and benefits of 'normal' academic publishing

Perhaps the clearest benefit of the standard model of academic publishing is that there is an independent organisation (the publisher) who acts as a gate-keeper to the public realm, assuring quality. Certainly one might argue that the university presses and professional associations that manage publishing programmes are not independent from the university community, but even here the modes of operation that are adopted are intended to estab- lish this separation. This independence can work especially well for publishers where the 'benefit' to the academic community is the establishment of a particular journal as the one where anyone who is anyone must publish (David, 2017: 89).

The benefit to the academic community is the inoculation of the maintenance of a rela- tively clear journal hierarchy from accusations of self-interest or bias. The individual academic whose work in the system is for the most part unpaid, often does believe (not unreasonably) that there is a likelihood that the benefit of such work will 'cash out' in career advancement either by strengthening the CV in the process of obtaining a new (or different) job, or in promotion in their own institution.

However, while the benefits are therefore largely diffused and community-based, the costs of the current model are mainly financial and as noted above represent a significant double charging for research communication. The research community supports the pro- duction of new research and its associated outputs through salaries and grants, this knowl- edge is then processed into a publishable form by academic publishers, and then universities pay again to secure access to the research outputs for libraries. How large a net cost this is to the university sector is a matter of assessing how valuable the intermedi- ate stage conducted by publishers is? While the benefit of gate-keeping and the establish- ment of authority for outputs clearly has some value to the academy, does this balance the costs to a reasonable extent? Crucially, of course, the publishers actually hold little aca- demic expertise themselves; where critical judgements are required on quality, while often paid (or partly paid) these are drawn from the academy (Pirie, 2009: 40). Although the gatekeeping/quality function is important, other than by convention it is difficult to see what academic publishers now contribute in addition to the funds for the production of outputs (which are in any case drawn from their charges to universities, which generate the gross profits of the sector).