The 21st century heralded the dawn of the open access era in university publishing houses. The internet has transformed publishing from a lower reliance upon peer review processes, to readers being given direct access to text via digital content delivery. The internet era now enables knowledge transfer free at the point of deliver, without copyright or license. The internet has transformed university presses and publishers, from content providers to service deliverers. As a result, global publishing has changed, and university publishing houses have had to change with it. A global consensus of publishing has been set due to the technological advance of the internet. A global consensus which has been widely accepted by most university publishers. People will need to develop a good grasp of media and information literacy as either providers or consumers of university publishing houses’ content and services. The potential effects of the internet on COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2022) compliance features. One of many questions covered in this paper is: How will impact factors, readership analytics and the metaverse, effect publishing in the 2020s. The utility of the internet enables geographically spread authors who have never met, to co-author academia.
