Publishing a Knowledge Article without "Flag as new version" redirects users to Knowledge Home or the most recently opened tab

This is expected behavior and works as designed in Salesforce Lightning Knowledge.
Why this happens:

When the "Flag as new version" option is not selected during publish, Salesforce deletes the current published version of the article and replaces it with the draft version. Once the draft article record is deleted from the system, there is no article version record for Salesforce to redirect the user back to. As a result:

• In standard Lightning apps, users are redirected to Knowledge Home.
• In console apps, users are redirected to the most recently opened tab.

Recommendation: If you want to retain the article record and avoid this redirect, select "Flag as new version" when publishing a Knowledge article draft. This preserves the article record continuity and keeps the user on the article page after publish.