Information, Medium & Society – The Publishing Studies Research Network

Our Platforms

The Information, Medium & Society – The Publishing Studies Research Network traces its roots to Common Ground’s “Creator to Consumer in a Digital Age” program (2003), which examined how creative work becomes public through publishing systems and cultural intermediaries. Building on that inquiry, the Book Conference foregrounded the book as a cultural object, communicative technology, and social practice. In a subsequent phase, the agenda widened to publishing as an information system within convergent media—bringing platform economies, data infrastructures, openness, and creative industries into view and leading to today’s Publishing Studies focus. The Network now connects scholars, editors, writers, technologists, and cultural practitioners who analyze how publishing infrastructures shape communication, culture, and knowledge in a digital age.

Annual Conference

Information, Medium & Society: The Publishing Studies Conference is hosted each year with a leading partner. Recent editions include University of Granada, Spain (2019); Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain (2021); University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece (2022); Sorbonne Université, Paris, France (2023); Sapienza University of Rome, Italy (2024); University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, USA (2025); and NOVA University Lisbon – School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Portugal (2026). Each gathering connects research and professional practice in publishing, media, and digital culture, offering a space where scholars, publishers, librarians, technologists, and policy actors reflect on past trajectories and test new models for communication and cultural production.

Journal

Information, Medium, and Society: Journal of Publishing Studies is a peer-reviewed, hybrid open access journal that examines the nature and forms of media and information as expressed through publishing practices. "Publishing" is understood as a distinctive mode of social knowledge and cultural production, with the journal providing a forum for inquiry into scholarly communication, information science, and trade, technical, and academic publishing. Its scope is both retrospective—documenting historical and contemporary practices—and prospective, analyzing emerging technologies, business models, and governance structures that will shape the future of publishing. Articles undergo double-anonymous, rubric-guided peer review, with constructive editorial feedback aimed at strengthening conceptual clarity, methodological rigor, and relevance for communities working at the interface of research and industry.

Book Imprint

The Information, Medium, and Society Book Imprint publishes monographs and edited collections on publishing as both an industry and a public good—covering topics such as creative labor, intellectual property, open access, cultural policy, and the digital humanities. Complementing the journal, the imprint offers space for more expansive argument and thematically curated anthologies by multiple authors. Guided by an inclusive acquisitions philosophy, it welcomes broad or highly specialized subjects and provides open access pathways to increase the reach and impact of authors’ work.

Online Member Knowledge Community

The Network extends through CGScholar, a digital ecosystem that supports member engagement year-round. Members share profiles, papers, and projects, using a multimodal authoring environment and light, community-guided review to refine work before wider circulation. Conference presentations, journal articles, and book projects are connected within one integrated research environment, sustaining an ongoing conversation about how publishing infrastructures, media forms, and information systems shape communication and culture.