The Academic Publishing Experiment: The Distribution Layer of Institutional Knowledge examines academic publishing not as a neutral distribution mechanism but as the industrial extension of peer review’s structural weaknesses. The paper argues that publishing amplifies bias, inconsistency, and disciplinary narrowing through profit incentives, prestige economies, and institutional gatekeeping. Drawing on evidence from mass retractions, compromised review processes, and the economics of journal publishing, the paper demonstrates that publishing functions as a legitimacy‑production apparatus rather than a truth‑production system. It exposes how indexing systems, citation economies, and evidence‑based policy inherit the distortions of the publishing layer, revealing the fragility of the entire knowledge architecture.
Signal Rupture (Fri,) studied this question.