Evolution of scholarly communication models from publisher-driven to scholar/funder-driven: a narrative review

Scholarly communication has changed continuously in response to technological advances, financial pressures, and shifting relationships among its core stakeholders: scholars, publishers, and funders. This narrative review examines the historical development of scholarly communication models and proposes a scholar/funder-driven model as a desirable future direction. Before the 17th century, scholarly communication was largely scholar-driven and relied on personal correspondence and manuscript circulation within small networks. The invention of the periodical journal in 1665 marked the beginning of the publisher-driven era, during which commercialization intensified and subscription fees increased, culminating in the serials crisis of the late 20th century. The open access movement emerged around 2000 in response to unsustainable subscription costs; it shifted publication expenses from readers and libraries to authors and funders through article processing charges, thereby establishing a publisher/funder-driven model. Since the 2020s, open science has emerged as a new paradigm encompassing open access, open data, and open collaboration, as reflected in the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. Against this background, this review proposes a scholar/funder-driven model in which shared infrastructure and repositories replace many traditional publisher functions, and research assessment shifts from journal-level indicators, such as the journal impact factor, to article-level metrics. Open Research Europe, launched in 2021, illustrates this emerging model. For this transition to succeed, research funders must institutionalize scholar-centered publishing platforms, adopt article-level assessment frameworks, and support shared infrastructure. Ultimately, scholars must reclaim scholarly sovereignty from commercial publishers to create a more open and equitable scholarly communication ecosystem.