The academic publication system: A time for redesign Richard T. Watson Department of MIS Terry College of Business University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602-6273 U.S.A rwatson@terry.uga.edu Abstract Three changes in the academic publication system are proposed: reviewer accreditation, an article market place, and fully electronic journals. Reviewing is a central activity in academic life, yet the training of reviewers lacks any systematic approach. Accreditation and associated actions are presented as a remedy for a general dissatisfaction with reviewing. The method of matching journals and articles is time consuming and resource intensive. A journal article market is proposed as a more efficient matching mechanism. Current electronic journals do not fulfill the potential of the Internet. An argument is advanced for developing and implementing an article markup language and a meme bank. Introduction Publication is the core of an academic career and is critical to the advancement of knowledge, yet the fundamentals of the publication system have changed little in centuries. Now, new information technologies offer opportunities to improve multiple aspects of the publication process for the benefit of all stakeholders: authors, readers, editors, reviewers, and publishers. Obviously, the Internet has improved some aspects of publishing. Some journals are now in electronic format, submissions and reviews are circulated electronically, and searching has been improved (e.g., scholar.google.com). However, when you review these changes from a socio-technical perspective (Bostrom et al. 1977) (Figure 1) it is apparent that most change has occurred at the alpha level, though there are instances where IT has been pushed beyond the alpha stage to improve manuscript quality (e.g., Lee 1999). Thus, we have changed some of the tasks of publication but not substantially changed people’s roles (beta change) or restructured the system (gamma change). Consequently, we are not taking full advantage of the Internet and associated technologies to redesign the publication system to make it more effective and efficient. In this article, I promote three reforms that I believe should be taken to improve the academic publication system. The proposed changes, each of which deals with a critical aspect of publication, are: 1. An incremental change to improve the quality of reviewing;