Friction in the scholarly workflow: Obstacles and opportunities

Abstract

Is disruptive change coming to the scholarly world? Friction has been mounting in the scholarly workflow as well as scholarly publishing. After an introductory clarification of the workflow versus publishing, I go on to examine telltales of scholarly friction, which can be inferred from the over 600 small fixes that have been invented in the past years to keep the system going. Next, I turn to the 12 most annoying friction points, Finally, I examine the rising likelihood of disruptive change and the key role that machine learning will play.