I spent six years at ResearchGate watching institutions burn money on a publishing system that doesn't work for them.
As Head of Publisher Relations, I sat in hundreds of meetings with library directors, research offices, and publishers. Same conversations. Same frustrations. Same problems going unsolved.
The pattern was always the same: A researcher submits to a journal. Gets desk-rejected for formatting. Resubmits elsewhere. Gets rejected again. Finally gets accepted – and the institution gets hit with an APC invoice they never approved.
Libraries pay millions for transformative agreements they can't track. Researchers waste months on administrative overhead. Publishers drown in low-quality submissions. Everyone loses except the system itself.
The Problem
Publishers control the infrastructure. Institutions pay the bills. Nobody is building tools that put institutions in control of their own publishing spend.
I kept asking myself: Why is there no platform that sits between the researcher and the publisher? One that catches problems before submission. One that matches manuscripts to the right journals. One that gives institutions visibility before the invoice arrives.
In August 2025, I stopped asking and started building.
"Publishers have had 20 years to fix this. They haven't. Because the broken system works for them."
Publishing Gateway is the first platform built for institutions, not publishers. We're not here to disrupt publishing. We're here to give you control over it.
Pre-submission checks. Journal matching. APC approval workflows. Real-time visibility. Everything you need to stop paying for a process you can't see.
The publishing system won't change until institutions demand better tools. I'm building those tools.
