Reports and White Papers

“2025 Library Systems Report”

The library technology industry showed its maturity in 2024. Businesses have become increasingly stable and robust products delivered rich functionality. But decades of consolidation have created a narrower slate of competitors, resulting in a smaller number of products available for each type and size of library. The marketplace is seeing more specialized solutions but fewer options. . . .

Companies continue to tailor products to the diverging service needs and collections of public, academic, school, and special libraries. . . .

While the main players haven’t changed, there is increasing demand for these big companies to develop additional layers of technology that efficiently address collection discovery, resource sharing, digital preservation and management, and community engagement. . . . .

Private equity involvement in the library technology industry continues to diminish as more companies fall under permanent financial stewardship.

https://tinyurl.com/2v2bupbn

“New STM Draft Report: Classifying AI Use in Manuscript Preparation”

While publishers have long offered guidance on disclosing human assistance—such as language editing—recent advances in generative AI have significantly expanded the ways in which machine tools can support manuscript preparation. From writing and editing to generating images and diagrams, the use of AI in scholarly publishing is evolving rapidly. . . .

This lack of consistent standards risks undermining trust in scholarly communication. To support the integrity of the academic record, the draft classification offers a clear framework to help publishers define, evaluate, and guide the transparent use of AI in manuscript preparation in the context of their individual editorial processes.

https://tinyurl.com/2druekkw

Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps

This is the fourth installment of the Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps, our bi-annual ranking of the top 50 AI-first web products (by unique monthly visits, per Similarweb) and top 50 AI-first mobile apps (by monthly active users, per Sensor Tower). Since our last report in August 2024, 17 new companies have entered the rankings of top AI-first web products

https://tinyurl.com/n3hvc8wz

“Open Infrastructures for Responsible Research Assessment: the CoARA Working Group publishes Its First Report”

The OI4RRA report stresses that transitioning to OIs requires institutions and stakeholders to identify the advantages that OIs offer in comparison with closed systems. These can be summarised in four key contributions.

In contrast to the traditional focus on publications and journal-based metrics, OIs support the consideration of a broad range of scholarly contributions in research evaluations.

OIs have the ability to integrate data-driven indicators with the nuance of contextual and narrative based information.

Thirdly, interoperability paired with community-driven governance for evaluations promote the uptake of best practices and foster trust.

Lastly, an emphasis on transparent data automation streamlines workflows, allowing researchers to devote more time to actual research.

https://tinyurl.com/vasmmrsh

Open Infrastructures for Responsible Research Assessment: Principles and Framework

“Unveiling the Report Findings from IOI’s Study on the State of Open Research Software Infrastructure”

Key recommendations

Surface hidden information – One of the biggest challenges we discovered during the study is a scarcity of available, standardized, and meaningful data. This information gap limits the visibility of what is happening in research software and in the development of infrastructure to support it. There is a pressing need to give time and attention at the field level to identify and subsequently gather the needed data to fill the information gaps.

Strengthen the scaffolding – As the field matures, its actors need stronger scaffolding to support norms and activities. Scaffolding, in this instance, can be defined as elements that, with appropriate instantiation, might become the backbone (social, technical, administrative) infrastructure supporting the field. There is a need to shift the priority from creating to integrating and maintaining, and to encourage and enable consolidation, specialization, mergers, and handoffs.

Grow the market – One of the challenges we have noticed is that research software infrastructures are leaning on the same funding sources, and those funding sources may not last. We’ve seen this in other fields as well. There is a need to figure out how to identify the research software users and how those users connect to customers. Understanding how that user connects to the dollars necessary to keep the research infrastructures running is also essential. This is not about profit but keeping things running and having a dependable system.

Invest in coordination – Research software is still in its infancy and lacks well-established practices, scaffolding, and market structures. With these conditions, no single actor can succeed alone in this evolving field, especially amid today’s challenging fiscal and political landscape for open science. Philanthropic funders can step in with targeted investments that build the foundational architecture of research software infrastructure. Such investments would bolster individual projects, programs, and organizations and create the necessary environment — providing time, space, tools, and structured support — across training, packaging, hosting, socialization, and advocacy) to collaborate across disciplines and geographies.

https://tinyurl.com/bddnzd7c

The State of Open Research Software Infrastructure

STM: Trusted Identity in Academic Publishing: The Central Role of Digital Identity in Research Integrity

As the digital landscape evolves, the foundational trust that has long supported academic publishing faces new vulnerabilities. Rising cases of identity fraud and integrity breaches are challenging the scholarly community to protect research integrity without imposing unnecessary burdens on genuine contributors. In response, STM Solutions released Trusted Identity in Academic Publishing: The Central Role of Digital Identity in Research Integrity, a new report analyzing the role of digital identity in scholarly publishing and presenting a foundation for the development of guidelines and recommendations to enhance trust through technology.

https://tinyurl.com/5n9y8v75

Report

DLF: "2023 NDSA Storage Survey Report Published"

Some major takeaways from the report include:

The amount of preservation storage required for all managed copies appeared to stabilize relative to previous surveys. Fewer organizations reported higher allocations of storage, but the anticipated need for storage over the next three years remains elevated.
Only 28% of respondents currently participate in a cooperative system – down from 45% in 2019 – and 63% indicate they are not considering a distributed storage cooperative. The use of commercial cloud storage providers rose from 46% in 2019 to 55% in 2023.
Heavy use of an onsite storage element was reported by academic institutions (91%), archives (88%), and government agencies (71%). It also shows that use of onsite storage is most often combined with use of either independently managed offsite storage or commercial cloud storage managed by the organization.
Leading commercial offsite storage providers used by academic institutions are Amazon Web Services (56%), and APTrust (16%). For archives, Amazon Web Services (36%) and Preservica (21%) are the most prevalent. Non-profits, museums, historical societies and public libraries use Amazon Web Services 45% of the time.
52% of respondents said their organization is considering their environmental impact during storage planning.

https://tinyurl.com/4627ffy3

"SPARC Releases Second Vendor Privacy Report Urging Action to Address Concerns with SpringerLink Data Privacy Practices"

SpringerLink provides a case study in the encroachment of the broader surveillance-based data brokering economy into academic systems. Among other findings, the report documents risks related to the 200 named third parties that are allowed to collect information from users of the site (along with what appear to be additional unlisted companies found only in our public website analysis). . . .

To fully understand how data may be used, librarians would need to read the 200 additional privacy policies from third parties that would likely stretch into the thousands of pages, a task complicated by numerous broken links to these policies at the time of publication.

https://tinyurl.com/wdkmha3z

Navigating Risk in Vendor Data Privacy Practices: An Analysis of Springer Nature’s SpringerLink

"Open Access and Transparency: EDP Sciences Releases 2024 Transparency Report for Mathematics Journals"

EDP Sciences and SMAI (Société de Mathématiques Appliquées et Industrielles) have just published their latest transparency report for 2024, marking the fourth consecutive year of open access (OA) publication under the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model – and the fourth transparency report. . . .

The 2024 report highlights several key achievements and ongoing developments:

Sustained Open Access: All six journals remain open access in 2024. . .

Moderate subscription price increases: Subscription prices for the journals increased by 2% in 2023 and 2024, a modest adjustment reflecting inflation while maintaining affordability.

Stable article output and usage: In 2023, the six journals published 449 articles, comparable to the previous year, with full-text downloads remaining steady at 436,655. . . .

Financial sustainability: The number of subscriptions continued to increase. Revenue from traditional subscriptions covered 51% of the publication costs in 2023, with additional funding from institutions and supporters. The average publication cost across the journals is €950 per article, and a concerted effort to reduce costs is ongoing. . . .

Impact of national agreements, partnerships, and additional funding: The French National Open Access Agreement, in place until 2026, alongside a renewed partnership with Knowledge Unlatched, continues to provide crucial financial support. Further backing from the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Fonds National pour la Science Ouverte (FNSO) has played an essential role in securing the transition to open access.

https://tinyurl.com/yckm8fvz

2024 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report: Cybersecurity and Privacy Edition

These are, in many ways, tumultuous times. Global political movements and ideologies continue to erode social ties and disrupt state and national legislative processes. Wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East threaten to destabilize the global order. And new AI-powered technologies are evolving at breakneck speed, offering the world both the promise of new utopian capabilities and the threat of dystopian collapse. Against this backdrop of seismic change, higher education cybersecurity and privacy professionals must navigate new questions around what needs to be done to keep our institutions and our students safe and secure. This report summarizes expert panelist discussions on these and other emerging trends and offers reflections on where the future of higher education may be headed.

https://tinyurl.com/3ynda58w

"Open Book Futures InfoHub Scoping Report"

One of the deliverables of Copim’s Open Book Futures project is to establish a ‘knowledge base’ (or equivalent) to provide comprehensive resources on alternative funding models and modes of publishing, acquiring and archiving open access books, alongside new training and guidance on archiving and preservation best practice. The deliverable states that we will (a) develop resources for stakeholders, (b) consolidate existing resources, (c) promote business models best practice, and (d) showcase project work on metadata, experimental publishing and archiving. By providing a comprehensive tool suite of resources we will accelerate outreach to libraries, publishers, academics and the wider public, to advocate for, advise on and encourage open access publishing and initiatives.

This scoping report is the first step in this process. Drawing on the myriad of resources we know exist (produced within and outside the OBF project), it presents an overview of existing assets and guidance for OA book publishing, a gap analysis, and our initial recommendations for the OBF working group to consider, all of which will be used to scope the direction and final format of the ‘knowledge base’.

https://tinyurl.com/2xv52u6b

OCLC Research: Improving Open Access Discovery for Academic Library Users

The research findings shared in this report analyze the efforts made by library staff to make OA publications discoverable and explore user behaviors at seven institutions in the Netherlands. The findings can serve as a catalyst for academic libraries worldwide to engage in meaningful conversations about enhancing OA discoverability given local contexts and user needs.

Key Contributions of the Report:

Provides valuable insights into the measures taken by library staff in the Netherlands to facilitate the discoverability of OA publications.

Highlights library staff’s successful efforts to support user needs and explores opportunities to improve.

Identifies key stakeholders in the OA landscape and provides actionable suggestions for them to maximize the impact of their contributions.

https://tinyurl.com/2m8638y5

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI

Figure 2 presents our main results. The first bar shows that 39.4 percent of all August 2024 RPS respondents say that they used generative AI, either at work or at home. About 32 percent of respondents reported using generative AI at least once in the week prior to the survey, while 10.6 percent reported using it every day last week. About 28 percent of employed respondents used generative AI at work in August 2024, with the vast majority (24.1 percent) using it at least once in the last week and 10.9 percent using it daily. Usage outside of work was more common (32.7 percent), but slightly less intensive, with 25.9 percent using it at least once in the last week and 6.4 percent using it every day. Appendix Figure A.1 presents the share of respondents using specific generative AI products. ChatGPT is used most often (28.5 percent), followed by Google Gemini (16.3 percent).

https://tinyurl.com/mfhr6ujr

"3D Data Long-Term Preservation in Cultural Heritage"

The report explores the challenges and strategies for preserving 3D digital data in cultural heritage. It discusses the issue of technological obsolescence, emphasising the need for ustainable storage solutions and ongoing data management strategies. Key topics include understanding technological obsolescence, the lifecycle of digital content, digital continuity, data management plans (DMP), FAIR principles, and the use of public repositories. The report also covers the importance of metadata in long-term digital preservation, including types of metadata and strategies for building valuable metadata. It examines the evolving standards and interoperability in 3D format preservation and the importance of managing metadata and paradata. The document provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges and solutions for preserving 3D cultural heritage data in the long term.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.04507

"Clarivate Report Unveils the Transformative Role of Artificial Intelligence on Shaping the Future of the Library"

The report combines feedback from a survey of more than 1,500 librarians from across the world with qualitative interviews, covering academic, national and public libraries. In addition to the downloadable report, the accompanying microsite’s dynamic and interactive data visualizations enable rapid comparative analyses according to regions and library types. . . .

Key findings of the report include:

Most libraries have an AI plan in place, or one in progress: Over 60% of respondents are evaluating or planning for AI integration.

AI adoption is the top tech priority: AI-powered tools for library users and patrons top the list of technology priorities for the next 12 months, according to 43% of respondents.

AI is advancing library missions: Key goals for those evaluating or implementing AI include supporting student learning (52%), research excellence (47%) and content discoverability (45%), aligning closely with the mission of libraries.

Librarians see promise and pitfalls in AI adoption: 42% believe AI can automate routine tasks, freeing librarians for strategic and creative activities. Levels of optimism vary regionally.

AI skills gaps and shrinking budgets are top concerns. Lack of expertise and budget constraints are seen as greater challenges than privacy and security issues: — Shrinking budgets: Almost half (47%) cite shrinking budgets as their greatest challenge. — Skills gap: 52% of respondents see upskilling as AI’s biggest impact on employment, yet nearly a third (32%) state that no training is available.

AI advancement will be led by IT: By combining the expertise of heads of IT with strategic investment and direction from senior leadership, libraries can move from consideration to implementation of AI in the coming years.

Regional priorities differ: Librarians’ views on other key topics such as sustainability, diversity, open access and open science show notable regional diversity.

https://tinyurl.com/9azeessa

Pulse of the Library report

Ithaka S+R: Governance and Business Models for Collaborative Collection Development

This guide presents a series of takeaways and examples to illustrate the characteristics of successful collaborations as well as the potential risks they face. Rather than focusing on enabling technologies, we consider how collaborations start, evolve, function, engage members, and are sustained over time. To inform this guide we closely observed eight collaborations within the United States and Canada:

Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST): Founded in 2015, EAST’s more than 170 members together work to secure the print scholarly record in support of teaching, learning, and research, maximize retention commitments, and facilitate access.

HathiTrust: Launched in 2008, and now with 213 supporting members, HathiTrust’s mission is to contribute to research, scholarship, and the common good by collaboratively collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge.

Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation (IPLC): IPLC is a voluntary union of 13 academic libraries with strategic priorities including collaborative collection development, resource sharing and discovery, and leadership to change the scholarly communication system.

Ontario Council of University Library (OCUL): OCUL, an academic library consortium with 21 member libraries, supports collective purchasing, shared digital information infrastructure, advocacy, assessment, and professional development.

Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID): With over 1,200 members, ORCID is a global initiative to enable transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions, and affiliations.

Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN): Founded in the 1930s, TRLN is a collaboration of four research libraries from North Carolina committed to marshaling members’ financial, human, and information resources through cooperative efforts.

Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium (VIVA): Founded in 1994, VIVA, a consortium of 71 academic libraries in Virginia, supports cooperative purchasing, shared e-resources and print, and open and affordable course content initiatives.

https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.321102

| Artificial Intelligence |
| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"AI and the Workforce: Industry Report Calls for Reskilling and Upskilling as 92 Percent of Technology Roles Evolve"

"The Transformational Opportunity of AI on ICT Jobs" report finds that 92 percent of jobs analyzed are expected to undergo either high or moderate transformation due to advancements in AI.

Led by Cisco, created by Consortium members, and analyzed by Accenture, the new report identifies essential trainings in AI literacy, data analytics and prompt engineering for workers seeking to adapt to the AI revolution.

The AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium consists of Cisco, Accenture, Eightfold, Google, IBM, Indeed, Intel, Microsoft and SAP. Advisors include the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, CHAIN5, Communications Workers of America, DIGITALEUROPE, the European Vocational Training Association, Khan Academy and SMEUnited.

https://tinyurl.com/3hj8ypx2

"Copyright Office Releases Part 1 of Artificial Intelligence Report, Recommends Federal Digital Replica Law"

Today, the U.S. Copyright Office is releasing Part 1 of its Report on the legal and policy issues related to copyright and artificial intelligence (AI), addressing the topic of digital replicas. This Part of the Report responds to the proliferation of videos, images, or audio recordings that have been digitally created or manipulated to realistically but falsely depict an individual. Given the gaps in existing legal protections, the Office recommends that Congress enact a new federal law that protects all individuals from the knowing distribution of unauthorized digital replicas. The Office also offers recommendations on the elements to be included in crafting such a law. . . .

The Report is being released in several Parts, beginning today. Forthcoming Parts will address the copyrightability of materials created in whole or in part by generative AI, the legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted works, licensing considerations, and the allocation of any potential liability.

https://tinyurl.com/yc2fhthm

Updated Report to the U.S. Congress on Financing Mechanisms for Open Access Publishing of Federally Funded Research

This current report elaborates on:

Implementation to advance federal public access policies. Updated agency public access policies will go into effect by December 31, 2025, in accordance with the 2022 Memorandum.

Trends in scholarly publishing since the release of the November 2023 Report, including further discussion of business models to enable public access to federally funded research, as well as domestic and global developments in advancing public access to research results.

An expansion of the analysis of estimated article processing charges paid to publish federally funded research from 2016 to 2022, with further discussion of limitations associated with calculating these charges.

Efforts to advance research integrity, including through implementation of federal public access policies and open science practices.

Continuing trends in peer review as they relate to research integrity, equity, and sustainability.

https://tinyurl.com/yryw9ejv

2024 State of Open Infrastructure Report

In this inaugural report, we dive deep into the characteristics of open infrastructure powering research and scholarship and what (we believe) sets them apart from their competitors. We take a closer look at the governing bodies and decision-makers behind the technologies your community relies on. We share the latest data and analysis of over US$415M in grant funding powering open infrastructures and research surrounding them, and bring you the latest infrastructure and policy developments in regions such as Latin America, Africa, and the European Union. We highlight success stories and the key trends in the adoption of open infrastructure. We share the latest on trends we’re tracking, such as the global movement towards Diamond Open Access and the underlying infrastructure needs, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the intersection with open research, and "digital sovereignty" and its impact on research across borders.

https://tinyurl.com/ycxs547k

International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI

The interim report highlights several key takeaways, including:

General-purpose AI can be used to advance the public interest, leading to enhanced wellbeing, prosperity, and scientific discoveries.

According to many metrics, the capabilities of general-purpose AI are advancing rapidly. Whether there has been significant progress on fundamental challenges such as causal reasoning is debated among researchers.

Experts disagree on the expected pace of future progress of general-purpose AI capabilities, variously supporting the possibility of slow, rapid, or extremely rapid progress.

There is limited understanding of the capabilities and inner workings of general-purpose AI systems. Improving our understanding should be a priority.

Like all powerful technologies, current and future general-purpose AI can be used to cause harm. For example, malicious actors can use AI for large-scale disinformation and influence operations, fraud, and scams.

Malfunctioning general-purpose AI can also cause harm, for instance through biassed decisions with respect to protected characteristics like race, gender, culture, age, and disability.

Future advances in general-purpose AI could pose systemic risks, including labour market disruption, and economic power inequalities. Experts have different views on the risk of humanity losing control over AI in a way that could result in catastrophic outcomes.

Several technical methods (including benchmarking, red-teaming and auditing training data) can help to mitigate risks, though all current methods have limitations, and improvements are required.

The future of AI is uncertain, with a wide range of scenarios appearing possible. The decisions of societies and governments will significantly impact its future.

Report

https://tinyurl.com/3h7bdvzr

"MIT Press releases Direct to Open (D2O) Impact Report"

The MIT Press announces the release of a report on its Direct to Open (D2O) program detailing the impact that it has had in its first three years. Launched in 2021, D2O is a sustainable framework for open access monographs that shifts publishing from a solely market-based, purchase model where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model. . . .

To date, D2O has funded 240 books: 159 in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), and 81 in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art/Design, and Mathematics (STEAM). The data show that, on average, open access HSS books in the program are used 3.75 times more and receive 21% more citations than their paywalled counterparts. Open access books in STEAM fields are used 2.67 times more and receive 15% more citations than their non-open counterparts, on average. . . .

At a time when average print runs for academic monographs are often in the low hundreds, books in the D2O program are reaching larger audiences online than ever before—averaging 3,061 downloads per title and bringing important scholarship to international audiences.

https://tinyurl.com/4cwet48f

Open Access Projects in Europe: From a General Perspective to Monographs and Ebooks

The development of policies in favour of open science and the transformation of publication channels for academic literature and research produced with public funding by researchers and authors in higher education, combined with technological and financial developments in open access models for scholarly publication and the interest shown by funders for a long time in journals and articles and more recently in monographs and textbooks, continue to reshape the face of academic publication.

Cécile Swiatek Cassafieres, a member of the Executive Board of the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBEReurope.org), will provide a general overview of the main European trends, initiatives and projects in this area, focusing on the diamond model and its current prospects, before addressing the case of ‘books’ in open access, from the angle of monographs on the one hand, and textbooks on the other. A presentation of LIBER’s own initiatives will illustrate the Association of European Research Libraries’ support for such developments.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11149567

Next Generation Metrics for Scientific and Scholarly Research in Europe

The field of evaluating academic activities is vast, complex, and highly dynamic, as are the roles of any data and indicators used to support these evaluations This Next Generation Metrics for Scientific and Scholarly Research in Europe paper, explores how universities can and should use currently available metrics and data to assess their research evaluation processes, in conjunction with qualitative expertise and information.

The authors have chosen to focus on the aspect of academic evaluation that shows great potential for significant advancements in the coming years: the use and advancement of next-generation metrics for responsible research evaluation, encompassing open science, societal impact, and innovation.

The paper aims to support universities in shaping their metric policies in alignment with their own missions, rather than relying solely on standard metrics and data availability. The paper furthermore intends to serve as a framework for universities to determine priorities to work on in specific domains for the application of contextually relevant indicators and metrics.

The authors place strong emphasis on the reuse of existing expertise on metrics as well as on collaboration, both among universities and between universities and funding agencies to achieve these goals.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11123148

"DIAMAS Report Investigating the Financial Sustainability of Institutional Publishers and Service Providers"

The report shows that although institutional publishers and service providers are diverse — in terms of their missions, sizes, services they provide and tasks they perform, access to funding options and the choices they make — they face similar challenges, such as the need for more financial resources, the lack of stability and permanence in personnel and the dependence on parent organizations. Along with public national or regional funders, parent organizations, which provide significant in-kind support (personnel, services), are the main local supporters of Diamond open access (OA).

https://tinyurl.com/ypnefum2