Redesigning Paper as the Unit of Scholarly Intermediaries

Abstract

The traditional academic paper was designed as a human-readable unit of knowledge under conditions of textual scarcity and print-based dissemination. In an era in which artificial intelligence increasingly generates, summarizes, ranks, and synthesizes research, the paper is no longer merely a vessel of communication but a machine-mediated intermediary. This article argues that the core unit of scholarly communication must shift from a narrative-dominant article to a structured, evidence-dominant research object. Building on recent analysis of publication systems and comparative insights from health sciences, engineering, and economics, I propose a redesign of the paper around explicit claim registries, assumption transparency, and machine-readable evidence mapping. Rather than diminishing theory, this shift repositions theory as a schema that organizes cumulative evidence within an AI-mediated knowledge ecosystem.

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