ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some reflections based on the 'modest proposal' that, as newly appointed CEO of academic publishing group Taylor & Francis, the author presented a forum of experts in scholarly publishing and communications. It attempts to share the author's early observations, first by outlining a modest perspective on the current state of academic publishing, followed by an even more modest proposal formed from an outsider's view looking in. Fifty per cent of a first year’s college curriculum in the US is obsolete by the time a student graduate. In the twenty-first century the need to learn is no longer episodic but continuous. Unless the readers are living off a trust fund or endowment, knowledge over centuries has served two human imperatives: professional advancement and economic sustainability. Increasingly, these goals are unattainable except for a privileged few. Because academic institutions, with the complicity of publishers, are still largely delivering twentieth-century product to a generation trying to successfully meet twenty-first-century demands.
