Scholarly Journals – DigitalKoans

“Guest Post — How the Growth of Chinese Research Is Bringing Western Publishing to Breaking Point”

China is dedicating an increasing share of its growing GDP toward research. In just ten years, it jumped from publishing fewer papers than the US to 60% more. Meanwhile, the volume of (predominantly western) editors and reviewers has hardly grown. . . . Bringing together volume, turnaround time, retraction, and several other pieces of data, this piece argues that we are sleepwalking toward an avoidable breaking point. . . .

At the time that Plan S was conceived, the paper output of Western Europe was about 300k papers larger than China’s. Now, it is 200k papers smaller. Europe’s ability to influence the business decisions of publishers, such as the transition to Open Access via Plan S, is diminishing. A transition to Open Access is now largely in the hands of Chinese policymakers, especially for categories in Physical Sciences and Engineering.

https://tinyurl.com/542a95ma

“Scholarly Publishing’s Hidden Diversity: How Exclusive Databases Sustain the Oligopoly of Academic Publishers”

Global scholarly publishing has been dominated by a small number of publishers for several decades. This paper revisits the data on corporate control of scholarly publishing by analyzing the relative shares of scholarly journals and articles published by the major publishers and the “long tail” of smaller, independent publishers, using Dimensions and Web of Science (WoS). The reduction of expenses for printing and distribution and the availability of open-source journal management tools may have contributed to the emergence of small publishers, while recently developed inclusive databases may allow for the study of these. Dimensions’ inclusive indexing revealed the number of scholarly journals and articles published by smaller publishers has been growing rapidly, especially since the onset of large-scale online publishing around 2000, resulting in a higher share of articles from smaller publishers. In parallel, WoS shows increasing concentration within a few corporate publishers. For the 1980–2021 period, we retrieved 32% more articles from Dimensions compared to the more selective WoS. Dimensions’ data showed the expansion of small publishers was most pronounced in the Social Sciences and the Arts and Humanities, but a similar trend is observed in the Natural Sciences and Engineering, and the Health Sciences. A major geographical divergence is also revealed, with English-speaking countries and/or those located in northwestern Europe relying heavily on major publishers for the dissemination of their research, while the rest of the world being relatively independent of the oligopoly. Finally, independent journals publish more often in open access in general, and in Diamond open access in particular. We conclude that enhanced indexing and visibility of recently created, independent journals may favour their growth and stimulate global scholarly bibliodiversity.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0327015

“Bridging the Gap: Improving Data Sharing Practices in Surgical Research”

Of the 1094 articles, only 141 (12.89%) included DSS, with higher rates in clinical trials (18.05%) compared to cohort studies (5.20%). Studies funded by government or industry and open-access articles (18.95%) were more likely to include DSS. Journals with higher impact factors were more likely to comply. Thematic analysis revealed recurring issues of gatekeeping, conditional data access, and privacy concerns. Out of 96 corresponding authors contacted, only 18 shared data.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2025.04.036

“Ask The Chefs — New Court Decisions Issued in Cases Addressing AI Training and Copyright”

Last week saw the release of two court decisions in cases addressing the use of copyrighted material for training of artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, Bartz et al., v. Anthropic, and Kadrey et al., v. Meta. We asked the Chefs for their thoughts on these decisions and the potential impacts on publishers and authors. . . .

[Roy Kaufman] Of the 40-plus AI training cases in the US, we now have preliminary decisions in three. And have moved backwards in terms of clarity. To vastly oversimplify the results, training AI is non-transformative infringement (Thomson Reuters v Ross), training is transformative and mostly fair use with a major caveat (Bartz), or training is mostly not fair use– but was fair use in this case because the lawyers did not plead correctly (Kadrey).

[Rick Anderson] First, as to the “fair use” nature of using copyrighted texts to train AI large language models: it seems clear to me that such applications represent a transformative use of the copyrighted content.

[Todd Carpenter] My expectation is—and has been for some time—that these cases will drive the AI vendor community (or at least those with the resources) to seek content agreements with the publishing world as quickly and efficiently as possible.

https://tinyurl.com/4w8ttcux

AAAS Report: “What Scientists Need to Know About Sharing—and Protecting—Their Published Work”

When authors publish papers behind a paywall, reuse is generally limited. In contrast, paid open access typically comes with a Creative Commons (CC) license that delineates how others can use the content of the paper. . . .

But only about half of the 224 scientists who responded to a AAAS survey released today [Survey Reveals Researchers’ Interests,Concerns and Knowledge Gaps]—two-thirds of whom work in the United States—consider themselves familiar with the terms of these licenses.

https://tinyurl.com/4cn2ey6y

Paywall: “NIH-Funded Science Must Now Be Free to Read Instantly: What You Should Know”

From 1 July, researchers funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be required to make their scientific papers available to read for free as soon as they are published in a peer-reviewed journal. . . .

Several publishers, including Elsevier and Springer Nature, require that papers published in closed-access journals remain available only to subscribers for an embargo period — 6 or 12 months, for instance — before they can be placed in repositories such as PubMed Central. . . .

These publishers might steer authors towards their OA journals (or the OA parts of their hybrid journals) to comply with the policy. .. .

“Authors should know that in advance, and if they don’t want to pay the APC, but still want to comply with the NIH policy, then they have to go somewhere else,” [Peter] Suber says.

https://tinyurl.com/5dbwzw9n

“ChatGPT in Academic Writing: A Scientometric Analysis of Literature Published Between 2022 and 2023”

This paper reviews the disruptive role of ChatGPT in academic writing, focusing on its implications for scholarly practices and emerging ethical challenges. Using document co-citation analysis (DCA), it maps the thematic and intellectual structure of the discourse on ChatGPT in academic knowledge production. Drawing on a dataset of 171 peer-reviewed articles from Scopus, the analysis, conducted using CiteSpace, identified 10 major thematic clusters, including ethical risks, practical applications, and pedagogical innovations. The resulting high-modularity network (Q = 0.8989, S = 0.9466), comprising 866 nodes and 2,274 edges, ensured methodological rigor and thematic clarity. The findings reveal widespread recognition of ChatGPT’s value in enhancing writing and supporting innovative educational frameworks, especially for non-native speakers. Concerns persist regarding hallucinated references, plagiarism, authorship ethics, and the reliability of AI-detection tools. Our paper accentuates the need for proactive oversight and policy development to ensure responsible integration of generative AI in research and education.

https://doi.org/10.1177/15562646251350203

“Understanding the Influence of Predatory Journals Articles Included within Systematic Reviews: A Scoping Review”

The primary objective of this study is to understand the extent of our current knowledge on how predatory publishing impacts evidence syntheses. The secondary objective is to collect and implement a set of strategies to minimize the inclusion of predatory journals. . . . Different strategies were discussed [in relevant articles|, such as tools to assess quality and common indicators of predatory articles, information on indexing and its significance, and a team based approach with experts in the field to establish correct research protocols.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2025.2523389

“How Are Us Institutions Putting Public Access Into Practice? Insights from Our ‘Reasonable Costs’ Institutional Research”

Today, we [Invest in Open Infrastructure] are releasing the results of this collaboration in three documents:

“Between the Memo and the Mandate: Institutional Perspectives on Public Access Readiness”: a summary of the survey responses, including which policies and practices institutions already have in place, and what units are responsible for different actions.

A packet of workflows, constructed in collaboration with colleagues at each institution, illustrating a variety of approaches to sponsored project administration for different institution sizes and types. . . .

“Preparing for Public Access: Mapping Institutional Workflows for Sponsored Research Success”: a full methodology and results summary from conducting the surveys and interviews and constructing the workflows. . . . This document also contains four appendices containing the text of each of the two surveys and two interviews.

https://tinyurl.com/bdzptfkk

“Scoop: Trump Admin Cuts Contracts with Scientific Publishing Giant”

The Trump administration has terminated millions worth of funding for Springer Nature, a German-owned scientific publishing giant that has long received payments for subscriptions from National Institutes of Health and other agencies, Axios has learned.

https://tinyurl.com/yww23ks8

“Large Language Models for Automated Scholarly Paper Review: A Survey”

Large language models (LLMs) have significantly impacted human society, influencing various domains. Among them, academia is not simply a domain affected by LLMs, but it is also the pivotal force in the development of LLMs. In academic publication, this phenomenon is represented during the incorporation of LLMs into the peer review mechanism for reviewing manuscripts. LLMs hold transformative potential for the full-scale implementation of automated scholarly paper review (ASPR), but they also pose new issues and challenges that need to be addressed. In this survey paper, we aim to provide a holistic view of ASPR in the era of LLMs. We begin with a survey to find out which LLMs are used to conduct ASPR. Then, we review what ASPR-related technological bottlenecks have been solved with the incorporation of LLM technology. After that, we move on to explore new methods, new datasets, new source code, and new online systems that come with LLMs for ASPR. Furthermore, we summarize the performance and issues of LLMs in ASPR, and investigate the attitudes and reactions of publishers and academia to ASPR. Lastly, we discuss the challenges and future directions associated with the development of LLMs for ASPR. This survey serves as an inspirational reference for the researchers and can promote the progress of ASPR for its actual implementation.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.10326

“‘It’s Messy and It’s Massive’: How Has the Open Science Debate Developed in the Post-COVID Era?”

he COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the global adoption of open science (OS) practices. However, as the pandemic subsides, the debate around OS continues to evolve. This study investigates how the pandemic has shaped the OS discourse and identifies key issues and challenges. Interviews were conducted with influential stakeholders across the research and publishing communities. The findings show that while many areas of debate remained constant, the ways in which they were discussed exposed underlying systemic challenges, which must be addressed if OS is to progress. These issues included the scope and definition of OS; regional variations in its implementation; the relationship between OS and fundamental questions of the purpose and practice of science; and the need to reform incentives and reward structures within the research system. A more complex understanding of OS is required, which takes into account the importance of equity and diversity and the challenges of implementing OS in different cultural and geographical contexts. The study emphasises the importance of shifting scientific culture to prioritise values such as quality, integrity, and openness, and reforming rewards structures to incentivise open practices.

https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.162577.1

Royal Society of Chemistry: “Changing with the Times: Our Evolving Approach to Open Access”

In 2022, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) announced our ambition to transition all of our RSC-owned journals to open access (OA) within the next five years. This ambition made us the first chemistry publisher to publicly commit to a fully OA future.

Since then, we embarked on a global programme to engage with our community and to understand the ways in which we could collaboratively build a fully OA future, overcoming local challenges and supporting stakeholders to adapt to open access. Based on the conversations we had across the world and in response to shifts in the global research landscape, we are evolving our OA strategy. Rather than a universal transition to 100% open access by 2028, we are moving toward regionally tailored approaches to OA and models that support diverse pathways to openness, based on local needs, funding landscapes, and infrastructure.

https://tinyurl.com/mrxn2bvj

Open Access Publishing in an African Context: Notable Improvements and Recurring Challenges”

Open access publishing has been promoted as a pivotal means of bridging the gap in knowledge access and usage. Despite the growing support for open access publishing globally, little is known about African scholars’ engagement with open access publishing and the barriers limiting their open access publishing practices. Using a survey research design, data was collected from 241 researchers from selected universities in Africa, such as Nigerian, Kenyan and South African universities. The data was collected using online surveys and analysed using the descriptive statistics of frequency counts and percentages. The study reveals that while most of the respondents had published open access articles (78.01%) and had a positive perception of the quality of open access journals (73.45%) and editorial teams, more than half were still limited by article processing charges (58.51%) as they had no funding for their research. Although African researchers are embracing open access publishing more now than they were historically, barriers such as article processing charges and the prolonged response time from reviewers continue to pose a serious challenge to open access uptake in Africa. This study proposes five recommendations for improving open access uptake in African and Global South countries.

https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352251351113

“Why Engage with Transformative Agreements in Scholarly Publishing? Analysis of Customer and Publisher Press Release Statements”

How open access (OA) should be supported has been a frequent point of debate during the last three decades as different pathways have been created and evolved. One particular point of contention has been the use of institutional contracts between customer institutions and academic journal publishers, so-called transformative agreements (TAs), where subscription-based reading access is bundled with OA publishing rights. This study explores the motivational reasonings given by customers and publishers engaging with TAs. This study provides a thematic content analysis of customer and publisher statements from 95 press releases announcing new TAs involving five large scholarly journal publishers. Existing literature on motivational reasoning for open science, OA, and TAs was reviewed in order to create an initial set of codes to be used, which was complemented with an inductive process producing additional codes based on categorisation of reasonings that did not fit within the initial codes.The study found that TAs were supported for a variety of reasons, where both customers and publishers stressed better research dissemination, facilitating a transition towards OA publishing, and improved workflow management for publishing and invoicing. Customers emphasized economic and equality aspects while publishers did so to a notably lesser degree. This study complements the active area of bibliometric studies on TAs with a rich qualitative study based on a set of press releases that have not been used for this type of research, establishing a solid foundation for future studies to build upon.

https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/crxn3_v1

Paywall: “The Tower of Babel in Science Communication on Social Media: An Analysis of Linguistic Diversity in Twitter Mentions of Scientific Publications”

To unravel the linguistic dynamics of science communication on social media, this study presents a large-scale, cross-disciplinary analysis of language use in over 21 million Twitter mentions of 6.7 million scientific publications. While English dominates—accounting for 90.8% of all mentions and serving as a bridging language for the international dissemination of research—90 non-English languages contribute to a rich and diverse multilingual ecosystem.

https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.70002

Diamond OA 2025: The World of No-Fee Open Access Journals

Diamond OA 2025 looks at the world of5no-fee gold open access or “diamond” OA as of the start of 2024, working from the same database as Gold Open Access 2025. This book also offers a quick look at funding sources for diamond journals published by traditional publishers and OA publishers that aren’t universities or societies. Contents include profiles for subjects, segments, regions (with brief notes on countries with fewer than ten diamond OA journals) and each of 80 countries with at least ten diamond OA journals.

https://tinyurl.com/mr3hjc7w

Open Access Version

“Nature Looks to Open Up ‘Black Box’ of Science by Publishing Peer Review Files”

The scientific journal Nature wants to show people the nitty gritty of academic publishing. In a Monday editorial, the journal announced it would include peer review files with the papers it publishes, offering access to once behind-the-scenes processes in which reviewers critique scientific papers and authors respond with changes. Publishing peer review files at Nature has been optional since 2020; starting Monday, it is now automatic.

https://tinyurl.com/73eskzhw

“Wiley, Significantly Expands Profit Margins, and Reaffirms Fiscal 2026 Growth Targets”

“We delivered another strong year of execution as we met or exceeded our financial commitments, drove profitable growth in our core, expanded margins and free cash flow, and extended further into the corporate market through AI licensing and partnership, science analytics, and knowledge services,” said Matthew Kissner, President and CEO. “Our multi-year journey of continuous improvement and innovation is yielding material gains in profitable revenue growth, margin expansion, and cash generation, and we remain steadfast and confident in our continued progress.” . . .

Q4 Research revenue of $281 million was up 4% as reported and 3% at constant currency driven by solid growth in recurring revenue publishing models (calendar year 2025 journal renewals) and open access offsetting continued softness in backfiles, archives, and other ancillary products. Q4 Adjusted EBITDA of $97 million was up 4% as reported and at constant currency due to revenue growth. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter rose modestly to 34.7%.

Full year Research revenue was up 3% as reported and at constant currency driven by growth in publishing and solutions. Research Adjusted EBITDA was up 4% or 5% at constant currency with margin up 30 basis points to 32.1%. Key performance indicators remained strong for the year, with submissions up 19% and output up 8%.

https://tinyurl.com/46fr734z

“Clarivate Unveils the 2025 Journal Citation Reports”

The JCR includes data from a total of 22,249 journals across 254 categories

Over 6,200 of these were published via gold open access

Scholarly journals from 111 countries are recognized and receive a JIF, including 14,591 in the sciences and 7,559 in the social sciences, as well as 3,368 journals in the arts and humanities

618 journals receive a JIF for the first time

This year’s release excludes citations to and from retracted content when calculating the JIF numerator, ensuring that citations from retracted articles do not contribute to the numerical value of the JIF. However, retracted articles will still be included in the article count (JIF denominator), maintaining transparency and accountability. This policy affects 1% of journals.

https://tinyurl.com/rd6ujpkc

“PKP 2024 Annual Report”

This year’s report showcases the incredible reach and impact of PKP’s work:

Over 52,000 journals now use OJS, up from 44,000 last year

Our software is active in 161 countries and supports over 60 languages

Major funding from Open Research Europe ($1.2M) and the ALMASI Project (€150K) is helping us accelerate development and infrastructure improvements

Our partnership with the Open Book Collective is expanding support for Open Monograph Press (OMP)

https://tinyurl.com/mr3uucc5

Report

“Guest Post: Will JAG’s New Models Give Libraries and Publishers a Better Seat at the Federal Funding Table?”

On June 12, the Council on Governmental Relations (COGR) hosted a town hall webinar on behalf of JAG [Joint Associations Group]. The group of subject matter experts, with an eye to American leadership in science and technology, presented two provisional models for reforming indirect cost reimbursement. Described as “bookends,” the two recommendations represent the ends of a spectrum, leaving open the possibility of a hybrid model somewhere in between.

Both models aim to eliminate frequent indirect cost rate negotiations while ensuring taxpayer accountability for research investments. They also attempt to increase transparency, reduce administrative burdens, and provide more accurate accounting of recoverable costs.

https://tinyurl.com/yn48c7wj

Gold Open Access 2025 Articles in Journals 2020-2024

This book is the tenth full study of serious gold open access: open access articles in open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. This and previous editions are available as free PDF ebooks or paperbacks priced to cover production costs [https://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html]. Thanks to SPARC’s continued support, I was able to update the database to include all journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals as of very early January 1, 2025 (UMT) and to add 2024 counts and earlier counts as needed. Diamond OA 2025: The World of No-Fee Open Access Journals should appear in July or very late June 2025.

https://tinyurl.com/3ckc4ce6

“Data Released in This Year’s Independent Nature Index Research Leaders Tables Shows a Shift in Global Research Landscape”

China has extended its lead in research output, according to data released in the latest Nature Index Research Leaders(data refers to full year 2024 data only – see notes to editors). The country’s Share, the Nature Index’s key metric of author contribution to high-quality research, reached 32,122, a 17% increase on 2023, with the region now having eight institutions in the top 10 compared to 7 in 2023. Asian countries as a whole enjoyed greater dominance, with drops seen from Western institutions in the number of top positions held within the rankings.

Other key regional analysis from this years’ table showed:

South Korea and India were the only two other countries in the top 10, other than China, to increase their adjusted Share from 2023 — by 4.1% and 2% respectively. South Korea rose to 7th place in the overall rankings, overtaking Canada. . . .

Share for the second year in a row with Canada, France, Switzerland, the UK and US, all recording declines of at least 7%. Australia and Germany showed declines of less than 3%. . . .

Harvard University recorded an 18% drop in adjusted Share, although it held 2nd place, but Stanford University and MIT both fell in ranking – Stanford from 15th to 16th place, and MIT from 14th to 17th place. The US National Institutes of Health also saw a change, falling out of the top 20 to 24th place.

https://tinyurl.com/58jvz8kk

“Managing Retractions and their Afterlife: A Tripartite Framework for Research Datasets”

Retractions serve as a critical, albeit last-resort, post-publication correction mechanism in scholarly publishing, playing an important role in upholding the integrity of the scientific record. By formally retracting flawed or misleading research, the scientific community mitigates the harm caused by errors or misconduct that may have escaped detection during peer review. While retractions of research articles have been extensively discussed across scientific disciplines and are well-integrated into most publishers’ workflows, the retraction of research datasets remains underexplored and rarely implemented. This paper seeks to address this gap by reviewing recent developments in this area, analyzing a sample of publicly available retracted dataset records considering existing recommendations and guidelines, and putting forward a few points for discussion—particularly for cases where datasets have been published and correction is no longer feasible, or when all efforts to amend the dataset have been exhausted. These considerations are framed into three main categories: (1) preventive actions and timely response, (2) purposeful damage control, and (3) community engagement and shared standards. Although still preliminary, this framework aims to help entertain future debates and inform actionable strategies for addressing the unique challenges of managing retracted datasets where scientific rigor has been compromised. By contributing to the discussion on dataset retractions, this work seeks to better equip data curators, repository managers, and other stakeholders with tools to enhance accountability and transparency throughout the data preservation process, while also helping to mitigate the error cascade effect in science.

https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v19i1.1062