Today I interview Carsten Buhr, CEO of De Gruyter Brill. Carsten joined De Gruyter in 2010 and was appointed Managing Director in 2018. Under his leadership, the company has achieved major milestones, including a strategic shift toward Open Access, international expansion, digital transformation, and the merger with Brill. Carsten began his publishing career at Springer Science+Business Media before joining De Gruyter Brill.

What was your route into publishing? What barriers did you have to overcome?

It took me a while to find the industry I wanted to work in, and publishing originally wasn’t at the top of the list.

I’ve always loved cooking, and at 13, I was preparing these elaborate eight-course menus for family and friends. My dream was to become a chef – which makes me incredibly thankful for this unexpected opportunity here to finally fulfil a longstanding ambition.

I did work in a kitchen, but the realities of the job turned out to be quite different from what I had imagined. That made me realize that focusing on my economics degree, which I had already started, was probably the more practical path.

After graduating, I wanted to find a job to get me started. I wouldn’t say I faced major barriers, but the transition from university to full-time work was a lot more challenging than I had expected. I did several internships, hoping one would lead to a permanent position. Eventually, I found myself ringing the bell at my parent’s house, asking them to move back in.

Fortunately, a bit later I was finally offered a permanent position, and that was at Springer Science + Business Media. I started in the finance department and spent some time learning the ropes in business controlling. That was my introduction to academic publishing.

A few years later, in 2010, I was offered the role of CFO at De Gruyter, where I later became Co-CEO and then CEO in 2018.

What are some memorable career lessons you learned?

I would mention two things. First, personal relationships matter a great deal in the workplace. That might sound obvious, but when I started out, I was so focused on getting the facts right that I tended to underestimate the importance of building trust and giving people the space to hear what I was saying.

Second, I am convinced that getting ahead often depends on luck, even if we don’t like to admit it. We like to believe we succeed purely because we’re great at what we do. If you want to progress in your career, showing up and doing the work helps, of course. But working hard is far from unique, and there’s certainly no shortage of smart and dedicated people out there.

In my experience, career progress often hinges on chance encounters and coincidences that easily could have played out differently. And this makes me feel fortunate to have reached a position where I can shape things. I think it’s a real privilege.

Could you tell our readers a little about what drives you as a leader of De Gruyter Brill?

We are in the process of turning two time-honored publishing houses into one new, future-proof company, and that is what I am devoting all my energy to now. I am genuinely excited about the opportunity to shape the foundations of something meaningful for the long term. We have a great team, and I am eager to build a place that attracts even more talented people, encourages them to grow, to progress in their career, and to create something great together.

I want us to continue being a partner to the academic community, ambitious, curious, and willing to act differently. I always wanted to be able to influence and shape things, and there’s a real sense of responsibility in this moment – I’m enthusiastic about what’s possible.

As a leader in academic publishing, what most excites you right now?

There’s so much going on right now, a lot of it is exciting, but it’s also hard not to be worried about some developments we are witnessing. I am particularly concerned about increasing attacks on academic freedom in a world of rising geopolitical tensions. The growing mistrust in science that we are seeing is not just a problem for us as an academic publisher, but for society at large.

At the same time, AI is changing everything. It’s opening up so many fascinating new possibilities for the dissemination and discovery of knowledge. The progress in the last two years has been incredible, and I am curious about developments we are going to see in the coming years, especially in combination with the move towards open access, which means that academic knowledge will be more easily accessible for everyone.

But of course, progress in AI is also raising serious and fundamental questions: What will it mean for research integrity? For the copyrights of authors and publisher? For the role of human researchers? For how we define and validate knowledge?

I believe our role as a publisher is to ensure quality and scientific verifiability in tandem with the academic community, to help defend academic integrity, support our communities, and ensure that the tools and services we build genuinely help researchers and strengthen the research process.

AI is all around us, be it in publishing workflows, or in the promise and potential threats of LLMs. How do you see AI affecting your publishing life, research integrity and the communities you serve?

AI is already part of everyday work in scholarly communications – supporting literature searches, streamlining workflows, assisting with writing, and more. But we also need to stay mindful of the risks. Peer review, for example, remains a cornerstone of academic publishing, now more than ever, and we must ensure it stays rigorous and trustworthy. Not despite technological progress, but by making thoughtful use of it.

The infrastructure around research is evolving rapidly, and we need to be deliberate in how we apply these tools. I’m convinced it’s not about replacing people – it’s about using technology to support them.

How is De Gruyter Brill positioned to serve the next generation of students, researchers, and professionals?

One of our strengths is that we’re big enough to have real impact but still focused enough to stay close to our communities.

We’ve now structured our business around three key areas – our academic publishing program, our arts & architecture portfolio, which caters to professionals and is part of our efforts to diversify our revenue streams beyond the library market, and our publishing services arm, Paradigm Publishing Services, which offers platform technology, marketing, distribution and other services to university presses, supporting a more inclusive and diverse publishing landscape.

Then there’s the depth and breadth of our program. We are uniquely positioned to serve researchers in the humanities and beyond at every step of the research cycle. We publish formats that other publishers increasingly shy away from, but that researchers need to advance the scholarly discussion in their fields. Besides monographs, we are the publisher of some of the most renowned encyclopedias, handbooks, and critical editions, in addition to much cherished digital tools like Brill’s Primary Sources Online.

And we’re investing in platforms and tools that make it easier for researchers and students to access and use our content. For us, it’s about staying relevant and useful in a digital-first world – while continuing to build on our core strength: publishing an excellent academic program as a trusted partner to the research community.

What do you anticipate the major challenges will be for De Gruyter Brill, and indeed the publishing industry, over the next five years?

Integration is a big one for us right now. Bringing two companies together takes time, and it’s a lot of work for everyone involved. We’re rolling out a new ERP system too, which adds another layer of complexity. Beyond that, the world around us is changing fast – geopolitical uncertainty, the unpredictable impact of AI, and the sheer volume of content being published. It’s impossible to forecast what the landscape will look like in five years, especially when the core of our business – knowledge – is being reshaped in real time. So, success will depend on our ability to adapt to change, and I am optimistic in this regard, because in a way, that is what we have always done.

As Open Access/Public Access mandates evolve across all forms of content, what does this all mean for your business? What are the benefits and risks with S2O?

We’ve been committed to Open Access for many years. It aligns with our mission to make knowledge widely accessible. Authors want their work to be read and cited, and OA helps with that. Open access continues to be one of our biggest growth areas – also for books – and we’re seeing strong momentum.

For De Gruyter, we are working toward a full transition of our journal portfolio to open access by 2028. After the merger, we are now also developing a joint OA transformation strategy. Given our portfolio, which tilts towards the humanities, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to transformation, so we will keep working with different OA models.

Subscribe to Open (S2O) is a model we strongly believe in because it offers a particularly inclusive and fair path to OA for journals in all disciplines. One challenge with S2O, of course, is long-term financial sustainability. We’re dependent on library budgets and annual renewals. But so far, the library community has been very supportive of the model, and we are thankful for that.

Is De Gruyter Brill actively engaged with accessibility initiatives?

Accessibility is a key part of how we think about inclusion and impact. We want our content to be used by as many people as possible without barriers in accessibility. That means working on accessible formats, improving our platforms, and making sure our teams are trained and aware.

We have many smart and talented people working on different aspects of accessibility and sharing their knowledge with the organization, like our internal working group for accessibility who did a lot of important work especially around eBooks.

What publishing innovations are you most proud of?

Coming from what was essentially a print business, the whole publishing house has modernized quite significantly in the last few years – from digitizing products and workflows and bringing platform production in-house, to exploring new business models and experimenting with AI. This implied significant financial investments (and risks), a lot of convincing, and cultural change. Doing all of it while staying true to our strong roots in humanities publishing was not a small feat.

I am proud of how we have rolled out DG2O, De Gruyter’s Subscribe to Open Program. It is a significant contribution to open access transformation in the humanities, and by relying on the existing subscriber base instead of APCs for authors it is a particularly fair and inclusive model, in line with our values as a publisher.

We have also built a technical infrastructure to convert primary sources and major reference works that are particularly needed by Humanities and Social Sciences scholars into innovative digital resources. We have developed digital versions of critical text editions, encyclopedias, and bibliographies. And we are involved in pilot projects in the digital humanities.

For example, we have launched the “Journal for Digital History” in collaboration with the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) which has capabilities that go far beyond the usual scope of HSS journals. In partnership with the Center, we are now also working on a digital book format that enables the embedded publication of multimedia content as well as interactive, reusable datasets.

Last but certainly not least, we have launched our new, joint content platform degruyterbrill.com just a few months after having merged the two companies, built by a great in-house development team. I’m proud of how open we’ve been to change, especially in a field that’s traditionally slow to evolve. And that spirit is now also reflected in our new (award-winning!) brand design, which is as bold and forward-looking as the company we’ve become over the past years.

In a climate of distrust in academic structures and science, how do you see De Gruyter Brill helping your scholarly communities navigate fear and complexity?

Trust is everything in academic publishing. A human partnership, between an author and an editor, is at the core of what we do, and I am convinced it is going to stay that way. What sets us apart for a publisher of our size is the personal connection we have with our authors. Our editorial teams are subject specialists — they speak the same language as the researchers they work with. That creates a level of dialogue and quality control that’s hard to replicate. Peer review, transparency, and a commitment to high standards are all part of that. We’re not just a platform, we’re a partner.

Our commitment to partnership extends to current attacks on academic freedom. We believe rigorous research is needed now more than ever to address the pressing questions of our time, and we unequivocally stand by our company mission and values. Like everyone, we are sailing on rough seas now, but it is our goal to support our authors in these difficult times and provide a safe haven for their scholarship.

What do the next generation of academic publishing jobs look like to you? How will publishing jobs evolve in an AI ecosystem?

It really depends on the role. Jobs will require more digital skills, and academic publishing will continue to benefit from people coming in from outside the industry with fresh perspectives. But I also think the core of publishing – community, communication, collaboration – will remain. It’s still a people business. The key is to integrate new tools and technologies in a way that supports this process, and our mission to spread knowledge, in partnership with the communities that create it.

If you were to pick one part of your daily job as your favorite, what would it be?

It’s the moments when things come together – when a new product launches, when a project succeeds – that remind me how fortunate I am to be in a role where what I do, what we do, truly matters. I really enjoy working with my colleagues in the management team, and I am excited to see people at all levels grow and succeed in their careers. We have internationalized the publishing house significantly, which has played a big role in my own development, and I value the opportunity to now help others access those kinds of experiences as well.