Robert Maxwell transformed scientific peer-review journals into a hyper-profitable commercial enterprise by co-founding Pergamon Press. He realized he could get academic research and editorial labor for free and sell the resulting journals back to university libraries at massive subscription rates.

Robert Maxwell was many things from an MP to a fraudster. He also had an outsized impact on academic publishing, effectively creating the system that we have today. In this Lunch & Learn we spend 30 mins discussing his impact and the lasting effects that we still feel today within academic publishing and research culture more broadly.