The privilege of learning and serendipity: My principles of publishing research for a new academic era

Abstract

The research community is swimming in a flood of published papers. The publishing system is vast, with more than 17 million contributors and 5500 items added daily to Scopus, building on some 15,000 years' worth of work put into the peer review system every year. These statistics make me often wonder: Why do I spend so much of my life writing and publishing papers? The answer, for me, lies in the five principles of responsibility, advancement, serendipity, mentoring, and personal growth. These are my own principles for publishing, and they explain my own fecundity in publishing articles, as well as why I so strongly support and volunteer thousands of hours of time managing a journal that publishes a large volume of social science articles every year.