An Academic Publisher distributes Scholarship and Academic Research, Academic Publishing is a subfield of publishing. Books, Journal Articles and Thesis Forms are how most Academic work is published. A lot of the Academic work that is published although not all of it will require editorial referencing or a review (peer review), This is required to qualify the text for the Academic Publisher to Publish.

Also known as 'Refereeing' the Peer Review is a process, it subjects an authors Research, Ideas or Scholarly work to other experts in the same field as the authors work. These experts must be qualified in that field and able to give an impartial review, a community of experts are required.

Peer reviewing has often been criticized for being slow, ineffective and misunderstood as it can be very hard to obtain an impartial review. This process does however encourage authors (Academic Publisher) to meet the accepted discipline and standards needed in order to prevent the following:

If an Academic Publisher has not undergone a Peer Review their work will be frowned upon and regarded as suspicious by professionals and scholars.

Academic Publishing is in the process of undergoing major changes, this was caused by the transition from print publication to the new electronic format. In the electronic environment Business Models are very different. Electronic resource licensing has been very common sine the early 1990's particularly in Journals. Open Access via the internet of Scholarly Journals is currently a major trend, this means that from the time of publication the whole journal is freely available.

Academic publishing is split (divided) into to distinct phases, the journal editor must process the journal for peer review. This is complete when the whole article along with all required images or figures has been accepted for publication. Proprietary Systems and Commercial Software are increasingly used to manage the Peer Review online. Some examples of Commercial Software used are:

After the Peer Review has taken place the Academic Publisher will be required to amend his text inline with the reviews comments that are put forward, this process will have to be repeated until everyone is happy with the outcome.

Once Completed the Production Process will take place, this will be controlled by the publisher or the editor. They take the article through Typesetting, Copy Editing, Printing then Publication (Electronically online or otherwise).

Copy Editing – Main function is to ensure that all labelling and referencing is correct, it also makes sure there are no grammatical errors or spelling mistakes.

Typesetting – Will deal with the other side of the article, its appearance. Headings, Layouts and Fonts will all be handles during this process. This process is required for online publication and for print publication.

These activities are typically handled by the publisher but are increasingly subject to outsourcing.