Shifting sands of research domains, migrating knowledge clouds and academic journals as Zeppelins (editorial considerations in mid‐2012)

Academic journals still navigate the relatively closed space of academic peer domains, but knowledge production explodes and blows up in a cloud of expanding “gases” of knowledges slowly solidifying into tectonically mobile continents. This paper seeks to address these issues. It also provides an overview of seven published papers.

This paper uses a viewpoint approach as well as introducing the current issue.

The paper finds that “everything in knowledge production and dissemination has changed”, which will have consequences and implications in areas such as research domain independence and the role of the academic journal.

This paper raises the issues of change in knowledge production and dissemination, and of possible redefinition in the areas of change management and cross‐cultural knowledge. It also introduces the seven papers in the current issue.