Recent years have seen a great deal of experimentation around the basic concept of the journal. This chapter overviews some of the more novel or interesting developments in this space, developments which include new business models, new editorial models, and new ways in which the traditional functions of the journal can be disaggregated into separate services.

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PeerJ Inc. is the Open Access publisher of PeerJ (a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal) and PeerJ PrePrints (an un-peer-reviewed or collaboratively reviewed preprint server), both serving the biological, medical and health sciences.The Editorial Criteria of PeerJ (the journal) are similar to those of PLOS ONE in that all submissions are judged only on their scientific and methodological soundness (not on subjective determinations of impact, or degree of advance). PeerJ's peer-review process is managed by an Editorial Board of 800 and an Advisory Board of 20 (including 5 Nobel Laureates). Editor listings by subject area are at: https://peerj.com/academic-boards/subjects/ and the Advisory Board is at: https://peerj.com/academicboards/advisors/.In the context of Understanding Research Collaboration, there are several unique aspects of the PeerJ set-up which will be of interest to readers of this special issue.

This paper summarizes the presentations made at the "Academic Journal Publishing" session of the 2007 NASIG conference. The session was conducted by four publishers from a variety of academic publishing companies who made presentations (specifically tailored to a librarian audience) which provided a broad stroke overview of their industry and how they go about the process of publishing and distributing academic journals in the 21st century. Through each of their presentations they spoke to the questions of "what they do, how they do it, and why they do it." Topics covered included the launch and acquisition of journals, the peer review process, the tools and services supplied to authors and editors, the production processes employed, special legal and copyright issues, marketing and distribution strategies, and usage.

Rolnik's preconference went well beyond the "business of publishing from a very basic perspective" as described in the conference program. Rolnik's preconference described the publishing market, operations within publishing companies, and how publishers find content. Dr. Peter Binfield, a guest speaker with expertise in society publishing, complemented the preconference.