Knowledge Production & Dissemination

In the case of academic publishing,commerce and technology have combined to shape the work environment of researchers,bringing a series of new challenges to publishers:the number of articles published annually has been soared,open access movement grows rapidly,and academic misconduct turns out to be an ever-present problem.In this context,how should publishers adjust their own business strategies?This article takes the Big Four academic publishers(Elsevier,Springer Nature,Wiley Blackwell,Taylor&Francis)as the research object,and uses case study methods to summarize the role and function of publishers in the process of knowledge production and dissemination.By absorbing the development experience of multinational academic publishers,it provides valuable suggestions for making domestic publishing industry bigger and stronger.To begin with,the article clarified the concept of knowledge production and dissemination.The process of forming "socially new knowledge" is knowledge production,and the process of forming "subjectively new knowledge" is knowledge dissemination.Then based on the theory of Knowledge Value Chain in the field of knowledge management,this paper summarized the general process of academic knowledge production and dissemination,including knowledge creation,refinement,storage,sharing and application.Upon this analytical framework,the article analyzed the role that publishers played in the production and dissemination of knowledge.During the knowledge production process,publishers are responsible for setting research agendas,quality control,and product development.During the knowledge dissemination process,publishers are in charge of content distribution,community building and advancing the broader communication of science.The role of digital archiving continues throughout the whole process.Finally,the research results show that the academic publishing industry isundergoing a transition from a product industry to a service industry.On the one hand,publishers' service gradually covers all stages of the research cycle.From research preparing to research conduct,then to sharing the results,researchers become more dependent on publishers than ever.On the other hand,publishers are starting to look a lot more like an information analytics company nowadays.Obtaining insights from massive content and user data will become the core competitiveness of future publishers.