The primacy of reading examines how recent changes in university and tertiary education system put pressure on scholars to strategically plan and pursue individual research careers.

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These changes primarily rewarding the ability to publish articles in scholarly, preferably "high impact" journals. In today’s university system, scholarly reading is pushed to the margin. This tendency is detrimental to the scholarly project to complement other forms of knowledge production in society and undermines the legitimacy of academic research work.
This publication portrays scholarly reading not so much as a form of leisure activity or some inherited privilege that accrues to a limited group of secluded professionals, but suggests that scholarly reading needs to be recognized as being of central importance for the systematic but specific production of knowledge in universities.
To counteract the tendency to underappreciate scholarly reading in the university governed on basis of rankings, ratings, auditing, and meritocratic norms, The primacy of reading provides a comprehensive argument in favour of reading as an integral and irreducible part of scholarly work. Scholarly reading builds communities, enables understanding, breeds and refine literary skills, and offers a number of auxiliary benefits, thus serving the knowledge society in indispensable ways.

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Alexander Styhre, Ph.D., is chair of organization theory and management, Dept. of Business Administration, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg.