From journals to networks: How transparency transforms trust in scholarship

Metadata

• Author: Michael Rowe (ORCID)
• Created: March 29, 2025
• Keywords: emergent scholarship, journals, publishing, transparency, trust
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• DOI: Why no DOI?

Abstract

This essay examines the shifting landscape of trust in academic scholarship, challenging the traditional model where trust has been outsourced to publishers and journals as proxies for validation and quality assessment. While this system developed important mechanisms for scholarly trust, including persistent identification, version control, peer feedback, and contextual placement, technological change offers an opportunity to reclaim and enhance these mechanisms. Drawing on principles of emergent scholarship, I explore how trust can be reimagined through knowledge connection, innovation through openness, identity through community, value through engagement, and meaning through medium. This approach does not reject traditional scholarship but builds bridges between established practices and new possibilities, enabling a shift from institutional proxies to visible processes. The essay proposes a three-tier technical framework that maintains compatibility with traditional academic structures while introducing new possibilities: a live working environment where scholarship evolves through visible iteration; preprints with DOIs enabling persistent citation; and journal publication connecting to established incentive structures. This framework offers significant benefits, including greater scholarly autonomy, enhanced transparency, increased responsiveness, and recognition of diverse contributions. However, it also presents challenges: technical barriers to participation, potential fragmentation, increased resource demands, and recognition within traditional contexts. The result is not a replacement for traditional scholarship but an evolution that shifts trust from institutional proxies to visible processes, creating scholarship that is more connected, open, engaged, and ultimately more trustworthy.

Introduction

For centuries, academics have outsourced trust to publishers and journals, assuming they would ensure that what we read and build upon is trustworthy. This system has created a robust but often inflexible infrastructure that privileges gatekeeping over dialogue and finished products over evolving ideas. Yet rather than rejecting this system entirely, we have an opportunity to reimagine trust in scholarship—to build bridges between traditional mechanisms that have served us well and emergent approaches that embrace connection, openness, and engagement.

This essay explores how we might create a trust infrastructure that both replicates valuable elements of traditional academic publishing and enhances them through principles of emergent scholarship. By examining the historical context of academic trust, identifying what remains valuable, and proposing practical implementations that bridge old and new, I hope to offer a path forward that doesn't demand revolution but instead invites evolution.

The outsourcing of trust in academic scholarship

The outsourcing of trust to journals and publishers emerged from practical necessity. In pre-digital academia, the challenges of disseminating knowledge were immense: manuscripts had to be physically reproduced, shipped to libraries and individuals, and somehow made discoverable amid growing volumes of scholarly output. Individual scholars lacked the resources to solve these logistical challenges alone.

Publishers emerged as essential intermediaries who could manage reproduction, distribution, and preservation of scholarly work. Journals, with their editorial boards and review processes, developed as trust mechanisms that helped scholars filter an expanding universe of knowledge. By the mid-20th century, this system had crystallised into a formal structure with clear roles:

• Publishers managed the physical infrastructure of scholarly communication
• Editors served as disciplinary gatekeepers and curators
• Peer reviewers provided quality control through pre-publication assessment
• Academic institutions validated scholars through affiliation
• Citation metrics offered quantitative measures of influence

This system effectively solved problems of its time. Physical journals created permanent, unchangeable records. Editorial selection helped scholars navigate information overload. Peer review, though imperfect, provided quality assurance. Citation tracking created networks of related knowledge.

Yet these solutions also introduced constraints that persist even as technology has transformed what's possible (for a detailed discussion of how AI might support the transformation of academic journals, see Publishing with purpose). The closed, opaque nature of traditional peer review obscures the developmental dialogue that shapes ideas. The emphasis on finished products neglects the evolving nature of knowledge. The privileging of established voices can marginalise new perspectives. And perhaps most critically, the outsourcing of trust to commercial entities has created misaligned incentives between publishing profit and scholarly progress.

Valuable elements worth preserving

Despite these limitations, traditional scholarship has developed several trust mechanisms that remain valuable and worth preserving. These elements address fundamental needs that persist regardless of technological context:

Persistent identification ensures that scholarly works remain findable and citable over time. Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) have become the standard method for creating permanent references to published work, allowing citations to remain stable even as platforms change. This persistence is essential for building knowledge that extends beyond individual scholars or momentary technological conditions.

Version control provides clarity about which iteration of work is being discussed, cited, or built upon. In traditional publishing, this was accomplished through formal publication of discrete versions (e.g., preprint, published article, subsequent editions). The stability of these versions creates a shared reference point for scholarly conversation.

Peer feedback remains essential to knowledge development. While traditional blind peer review has limitations, the principle of knowledge refinement through expert assessment and dialogue continues to serve an important function. When scholars engage critically with each other's work, both the specific scholarship and the broader field benefit.

Contextual placement situates work within broader scholarly conversations, ensuring that new contributions acknowledge and build upon existing knowledge. Traditional mechanisms like literature reviews, citations, and disciplinary journals help establish this context, preventing fragmentation and repetition.

These elements constitute a trust infrastructure that has enabled remarkable scholarly progress. Yet they need not be implemented solely through traditional publishing models. Indeed, emerging digital infrastructure may offer enhanced ways to achieve these same goals while addressing the limitations of traditional approaches.

Reimagining trust through emergent scholarship principles

The principles of emergent scholarship offer a framework for reimagining trust in academic communication—not by rejecting traditional elements, but by enhancing them through connection, openness, community, and engagement.

Knowledge through connection transforms isolated peer review into networked dialogue. Traditional peer review typically involves a small number of anonymous reviewers providing one-time feedback on nearly-completed work. This closed circuit limits the perspectives that shape scholarly development. In contrast, emergent scholarship emphasises that "valuable insights emerge at the intersection of different perspectives and disciplines" and that "understanding develops through both formal and informal exchanges across networks." By opening feedback channels and facilitating connections across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, we can create more robust quality assessment while accelerating knowledge development.

Innovation through openness addresses limitations in traditional gatekeeping models. When scholarship is "making knowledge as open and accessible as possible" and "benefiting from early sharing and continuous feedback," it creates opportunities for unexpected insights that might never emerge in closed systems. Traditional publishing models often restrict access to work until it has passed through gatekeeping mechanisms, limiting the diversity of perspectives that might identify flaws or suggest improvements. Emergent scholarship reverses this approach, using transparency to enhance integrity rather than positioning selectivity as the primary trust mechanism.

Identity through community shifts trust from institutional affiliations to networked relationships. Traditional scholarship often relies on institutional proxies for trustworthiness—the journal's reputation, the university affiliation, the citation count. Emergent scholarship recognises that trust can also emerge through "building supportive environments that foster collective meaning-making" and "creating spaces where scholars develop and transform their professional identities." This approach values "collaborative achievements alongside individual contributions," creating a more nuanced trust infrastructure that encompasses both individual expertise and collective wisdom.

Value through engagement offers alternatives to traditional impact metrics. Citation counts and journal impact factors provide limited views of scholarly contribution, often privileging established voices and conventional approaches. Emergent scholarship proposes "developing multiple approaches to evaluating scholarly contributions" and "moving beyond citation metrics to more holistic assessments of value." By viewing "impact as an ongoing dialogue rather than a terminal outcome," we can create more meaningful measures of scholarly contribution.

Perhaps most fundamentally, meaning through medium recognises that how we share knowledge shapes the knowledge itself. Traditional publishing treats the medium as neutral, emphasising content over form. Yet emergent scholarship acknowledges that "the medium shapes the message and influences how it's received." When we "employ diverse formats to enhance understanding and engagement," we not only make knowledge more accessible but potentially more impactful. The technical infrastructure of scholarship is not merely a delivery system but an integral part of how knowledge is constructed, shared, and trusted.

From proxies to participation: The implications of reclaiming trust

The traditional academic publishing system effectively established journals and publishers as proxies for trust. Rather than directly evaluating the quality and reliability of scholarly work, academic communities relied on these proxies as signals: publication in a prestigious journal indicated that work had passed certain quality thresholds and could therefore be trusted. This proxy system reduced cognitive load on individual scholars while creating shared reference points for quality assessment.

However, by moving from external proxies to "in-housed" trust mechanisms, we gain several significant benefits:

Scholarly autonomy and value alignment. When trust mechanisms are controlled by commercial publishers, they inevitably reflect commercial interests alongside scholarly ones. By bringing these mechanisms under scholarly control, we can ensure they align with academic values rather than profit motives. This enables recognition of valuable contributions that may not fit traditional publishing models or commercial interests. As emergent scholarship recognises, we gain "sustainability through ecology" when "scholarship enhances rather than depletes human and environmental resources."

Responsiveness and adaptability. Traditional publishing processes are notoriously slow, with typical timelines from submission to publication measured in months or years. By controlling trust mechanisms directly, scholarly communities can create more responsive systems that evolve alongside research practices. The principle of "resilience through mastery" supports this approach, recognizing that expertise enables "adaptation to changing contexts" while "viewing uncertainty as possibility."

Transparency and accountability. When trust is mediated through proxies, the processes that establish trustworthiness often remain opaque. By bringing these mechanisms under direct control, scholarly communities can make trust-building processes more transparent, creating greater accountability while simultaneously building understanding of how knowledge is refined and validated.

Diverse forms of contribution. Traditional publishing models privilege certain forms of scholarship while marginalising others. By reclaiming control of trust mechanisms, scholarly communities can create systems that recognise and reward diverse forms of contribution, from traditional research articles to datasets, software, educational resources, and public engagement.

Challenges and risks

However, this reclamation of trust mechanisms comes with significant challenges and risks:

Technical barriers to participation. As trust mechanisms become more technically sophisticated, they may create new barriers to participation, potentially excluding scholars without technical expertise or institutional support. This could inadvertently reinforce existing power structures even while attempting to dismantle them.

Fragmentation and inconsistency. Without centralised coordination, trust mechanisms might become fragmented across disciplines or institutions, creating inconsistent standards and complicating cross-disciplinary work. This could undermine the very trust the system seeks to establish.

Resource demands. Traditional publishing outsources not only trust but labor—the work of managing peer review, copyediting, formatting, and distribution. Bringing these processes under scholarly control requires redistributing this labor, potentially adding to the burdens of already-taxed academics.

Credibility in traditional contexts. Academic careers remain largely structured around traditional publishing metrics. Scholars embracing alternative trust mechanisms may face challenges in promotion, tenure, and grant applications if their work doesn't translate easily into conventional metrics.

Technology to increase trust

The technical infrastructure I propose helps mitigate these risks through several key features:

Accessibility alongside rigour. The combination of GitHub, Netlify, and Zenodo provides both rigorous versioning and accessible presentation, reducing technical barriers while maintaining scholarly standards. The GitHub interface, while initially unfamiliar to many scholars, offers a structured environment with increasing adoption across academic communities.

DOIs as bridges to tradition. By integrating with DOI systems through Zenodo, this infrastructure maintains compatibility with traditional citation practices, ensuring work remains discoverable and creditable within established academic contexts. This creates a crucial bridge between emergent and traditional scholarship.

Version control for accountability. Git's robust version control creates transparent accountability that addresses concerns about quality control. Rather than relying on pre-publication gatekeeping, this system enables post-publication scrutiny with complete visibility into how work evolves in response to feedback.

Community governance potential. While the initial implementation focuses on individual scholars, the GitHub platform inherently supports community governance models that could prevent fragmentation while distributing responsibility. This supports the principle that "knowledge is socially constructed through interaction and exchange."

By bringing trust mechanisms under scholarly control through this infrastructure, we don't eliminate the need for trust—rather, we transform how trust is established, from reliance on institutional proxies to engagement with visible processes. This shift demands more active participation from both authors and readers but offers the potential for more robust, responsive, and values-aligned scholarship.

Bridging traditional and emergent models: A technical framework

Building bridges between traditional and emergent scholarship requires a framework that honours both approaches—maintaining what works in established practices while embracing the possibilities of connection, openness, and engagement. The three-tier model I propose offers such a bridge:

1. Live workspace: A dynamic environment where scholarship evolves through visible iteration and open dialogue
2. Preprint with DOI: A stable snapshot that enables persistent citation while maintaining connection to ongoing development
3. Journal publication: Traditional recognition that connects emergent work to established academic incentive structures

This approach maintains compatibility with traditional academic structures while introducing new possibilities for knowledge development. The live workspace enables the openness, connection, and continuous dialogue that emergent scholarship values. The preprint with DOI provides the persistent identification and version control that traditional scholarship requires. Journal publication acknowledges the continuing reality of academic incentive structures while potentially influencing their evolution.

The technical implementation of this framework requires infrastructure that supports:

1. Visible evolution: Making the development of ideas transparent through accessible version history
2. Open dialogue: Enabling diverse perspectives to contribute to knowledge refinement
3. Persistent identification: Ensuring stable references for citation and discovery
4. Contextual connection: Situating work within broader scholarly conversations
5. Multiple representations: Presenting knowledge in formats appropriate to different audiences and contexts

This framework represents not a replacement for traditional trust mechanisms but an enhancement that addresses their limitations while preserving their strengths. It recognises that trust in scholarship emerges not only from pre-publication gatekeeping but from ongoing dialogue, visible evolution, and networked assessment.

Implementation example: GitHub, Zenodo, and Netlify

While this conceptual framework could be implemented through various technical stacks, my implementation using GitHub, Zenodo, and Netlify demonstrates how emergent scholarship principles can guide practical technology choices.

The principle of knowledge through connection calls for making the evolution of ideas visible and connected. Git's version control system implements this principle by documenting every change, attribution, and decision in the scholarly process. Every commit, branch, and merge becomes part of a transparent record that reveals how knowledge develops over time. This stands in contrast to traditional publishing, where the messy, iterative process of knowledge development remains hidden behind a polished final product. The implementation creates connections that span disciplinary boundaries by revealing the contextual decisions that shape scholarly work.

Innovation through openness demands systems that enable diverse perspectives to contribute to knowledge refinement. GitHub Issues implements this principle by transforming assessment from closed gatekeeping to open dialogue. The platform allows anyone to raise questions, suggest improvements, or offer alternative perspectives—all within a public forum that documents the conversation. Contributors are identified through persistent GitHub accounts, creating accountability while expanding participation beyond traditional reviewer roles. This creates conditions for unexpected connections and emergent insights that might never surface in closed review systems.

Identity through community requires mechanisms that recognise contribution while enabling collaborative development. Zenodo's DOI integration implements this principle by maintaining persistent identification for scholarly citation. Even as the live document continues to evolve, specific versions receive stable identifiers that enable traditional academic practices of citation and attribution. This ensures that collaborative work can still attribute individual contributions appropriately, maintaining scholarly identity within community contexts.

The principle of meaning through medium recognises that how we share knowledge influences how it's understood and trusted. Netlify deployment serves as an accessibility layer that implements this principle by transforming technical repositories into readable, navigable documents. Unlike traditional PDF publication, which separates the artifact from its context, this presentation layer maintains the link between published content and the conversations that shaped it. Netlify doesn't function as a trust mechanism itself, but rather makes the underlying trust infrastructure visible and accessible to audiences without technical expertise.

Together, these technology choices create a system guided by emergent scholarship principles while addressing traditional academic needs. The GitHub repository becomes both a workspace for development and a transparent record of evolution, implementing the principle that collective intelligence surpasses individual efforts. Zenodo provides the persistence required for academic citation, implementing the principle that scholarly systems should enhance rather than replace valuable traditions. The Netlify layer makes these mechanisms accessible to diverse audiences, implementing the principle that knowledge should be as open and accessible as possible.

Most importantly, this implementation shifts trust from pre-publication gatekeeping to visible process. Rather than asking readers to trust that appropriate assessment has occurred behind closed doors, it invites them to examine the developmental dialogue directly. This transparency doesn't eliminate the need for expertise—indeed, it makes expert contribution more visible and potentially more valuable. The technology stack is not merely a delivery system but an embodiment of the principles that guide emergent scholarship.

Conclusion

Trust in academic scholarship has traditionally been outsourced to publishers and journals, who served as proxies for validation and quality assessment. This system emerged from practical necessities in pre-digital scholarship and developed mechanisms that continue to serve important functions: persistent identification, version control, peer feedback, and contextual placement.

Yet emerging technologies and evolving scholarly practices offer opportunities to bring these trust mechanisms under more direct scholarly control. By reclaiming trust from commercial proxies, we can create systems that are more aligned with academic values, more responsive to evolving research practices, more transparent in their processes, and more inclusive of diverse forms of contribution.

The technical framework and implementation described here demonstrate one approach to creating bridges between proxy-based and participatory trust models. By combining version control, open dialogue, persistent identification, and accessible presentation, this approach maintains compatibility with traditional academic incentives while introducing new possibilities for knowledge development.

What emerges is not a replacement for traditional scholarship but an evolution—one that shifts trust from institutional proxies to visible processes, from closed assessment to open dialogue, from finished products to evolving knowledge. This approach doesn't demand abandoning established academic practices but instead offers a path for their gradual transformation through the principles of emergent scholarship.

As we navigate this transition, we have an opportunity to reimagine trust in academic communication—not by rejecting what came before, but by building upon it to create scholarship that is more connected, open, engaged, and ultimately more trustworthy.