From the Source to the Mainstream User: Publisher is the panacea in the mix

Abstract

This is a literature-based opinion paper that uses secondary data and content analysis to demystify the various roles of the publisher as a key player in the publishing process. This article aims to elucidate how the publisher dynamically scales and shapes the process of knowledge production,assessment,reproduction, distribution and consumption for economic prosperity. Publisher enablesknowledge to transit from its locus of emergence (the author) to the global market. It is argued that for this to happen, knowledge has to be disseminated collectively. Transmission of intellectual works from their encoders to consumers can take place in various ways. In non-literate and semiliterate societies, the only means by which ideas are disseminated is recitation, either by itself or augmented with performances. With the advent of writing and information and communication technology, the constructs can be recorded and disseminated in both physical and electronic forms. Publication, involving the reproduction of recorded works in multiple copies and the distribution of these copies to consumers, become, in literate societies, a major mode of knowledge dissemination. The publisher has four core functions in this process: firstly, decides, by assessing both the needs of consumers and the works which have been produced, what to publish; secondly,identifies where and in what forms knowledge exist; thirdly, acquires controls and supervises the reproduction of these works; and lastly, makes decisions on how to make the right knowledge available at the right time in the right format through some system of distribution. In performing these roles, the publisher influences the production, as well as the consumption of knowledge.