Special Issue: The New Dynamics of Scholarly Publishing–Overview Essay Current Dynamics of Scholarly Publishing

Background: Scholarly publishing is an essential vehicle for actively parti-cipating in the scientific debate and for sustaining the invisible colleges of the modern research environment, which extend far beyond the borders of individual research institutions. However, its current dynamics have deeply transformed the scientific life and conditioned in new ways the economics of academic knowledge production. They have also challenged the per-ceived common sense view of scientific research. Method: Analytical approach to set out a comprehensive framework on the current debate on scholarly publishing and to shed light on the peculiar organization and the working of this peculiar productive sector. Result: The way in which scientific knowledge is produced and transmitted has been dramatically affected by the series of recent major technosocietal transformations. Although the effects are many, in particular the current overlap and inter-play between two distinct and somewhat opposite stances—scientific and economic—tend to blur the overall understanding of what scholarly pub-lishing is and produces distortion on its working which in turn affect the sci-entific activities. The outcome is thus a series of intended and unintende