Jon Treadway, Director at Great North Wood Consulting, delivered the opening keynote, outlining the challenges facing scholarly communication. He highlighted the shift towards isolationism in the geopolitical landscape, impacting scientific collaboration. Treadway emphasized that scholarly communication remains inefficient and fragmented, with AI advancements posing both opportunities and risks. He cautioned that AI’s rapid progress demands vigilance and noted that Open Access has yet to reach its full potential due to siloed discussions rather than collaborative efforts. 

The first panel focused on ensuring transparency and trustworthiness in research. Panelists included Leslie McIntosh, Vice President of Research Integrity at Digital Science; Laura Wilson, Head of Research Integrity & Ethics at Taylor & Francis; Jennifer Wright, Head of Publication Ethics & Research Integrity at Cambridge University Press; and Doug Melville, Technical Product Manager at Sage. Key concerns discussed were AI’s impact on research, the need for transparent licensing conditions, and the challenge of ensuring research security. The panel emphasized that publishers play a critical role in upholding standards, holding the “gold” in narratives and research culture. Collaboration across the industry, especially in disambiguating author identities and spotting bad actors, was stressed as vital to safeguarding integrity.

Ann Campbell, Technical Solutions Manager at Digital Science, and Katie Davison, Insights Analyst at Emerald Publishing, presented a case study on how they’ve worked together to leverage Dimensions on GBQ for data-driven insights. They demonstrated how combining Emerald Publishing’s strategic goals with Dimensions’ extensive dataset allowed them to uncover valuable insights about research trends, author collaborations, and institutional impact. By harnessing these insights, Emerald was able to identify key growth areas, refine their editorial strategies, and better align their publishing efforts with the needs of the academic community.

The second panel addressed how publishers are adapting their strategies in response to evolving social media platforms. The panel included Lou Peck, CEO & Founder of The International Bunch; Jitske de Vries, Head of Marketing at The Company of Biologists; Rowena Gordon, Senior Managing Editor at the British Ecological Society; Daisy Veysey, Social Media Manager at eLife; and Marion Schnelle, Social Media Manager at De Gruyter Brill. Discussions highlighted the emergence of platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky as an alternative to X (formerly Twitter). It was raised that in a poll of 6000 readers of Nature, 70% had moved over from X to Bluesky declaring the platform nicer, kinder and less antagonistic. The panel also raised a growing emphasis on community-building strategies over traditional marketing tactics among publishers. 

Next, Sarah Greaves, Director and Publishing Consultant at Sarah Greaves STEM Consulting, discussed the ongoing trend of consolidation in the publishing industry. She explored how mergers and acquisitions are reshaping the landscape, the potential benefits of improved efficiencies, and concerns about reduced diversity and potential monopolistic behaviors. 

Our lightning talks provided valuable insights into our latest innovations for publishers. Nicholas Bailey, our Senior Product Manager, introduced Dimensions Author Check, our new research integrity tool designed to help publishers verify potential authors, editors, and reviewers. Meanwhile, Mike Taylor, Head of Data Insights, showcased the Altmetric Journal Benchmark dashboard – a powerful resource for publishers seeking to measure success, benchmark their journals against competitors, and identify growth opportunities.

In the closing keynote, Jo Wixon, Director of External Analysis at Wiley, explored how publishers can actively contribute to advancing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She emphasized the growing importance of aligning publishing practices with global sustainability efforts, showcasing strategies for integrating SDG-related content and metrics into editorial workflows, peer review processes, and publication strategies. By adopting these practices, publishers can amplify research that addresses critical global challenges while enhancing their impact within the academic community.

Our 2025 Publisher Day highlighted both the opportunities and challenges publishers face in adapting to AI advancements, strengthening research integrity, and responding to shifts in social media landscapes. With increasing consolidation and technological disruption, the industry must work collaboratively to ensure the integrity, accessibility, and credibility of scholarly communication.

About the Author

Olivia King, Marketing Segment Lead, Publisher | Digital Science

Olivia King is Marketing Segment Lead for the Publisher segment at Digital Science. In this role, she manages the marketing activities and strategy across the Digital Science publisher solutions, including Altmetric and Dimensions. Before joining Digital Science, Olivia worked in journals marketing at Sage Publishing.

The post Publisher Day 2025: Key Insights on Integrity, Disruption, and Innovation in Scholarly Publishing appeared first on Digital Science.

Speakers

Session 1:

Helen Cooke, SVP – Publisher Markets, Digital Science
Helen joined Digital Science in 2021 and now heads up the publisher team, bringing 20+ years of experience from the academic publishing industry.  She has worked previously in sales and marketing positions to bring e-resources to libraries worldwide. Helen headed up the Journals Sales team at SAGE Publishing also working at GeoScienceWorld and Blackwell Publishing. For 8 years she was one of the owner/directors at Burgundy Information Services, working with varied publisher clients such as SPIE, Mary Ann Liebert, Canadian Science Publishing and CUP.

Jon Treadway, Director, Great North Wood Consulting
Jon works as an independent consultant specialising in business modelling and analysis, organisational review, and strategic planning. He works with organisations in the research sector and the cultural and creative industries. His clients include The BMJ, Cambridge University, Cochrane, ORCID, OASPA, SPARC Europe, Digital Science, Dryad, and the American Physical Society. Jon was previously Chief Operating Officer for Digital Science. He previously worked as a Senior Analyst at Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and Macmillan Publishing and ran the largest arts funding programme in Europe for Arts Council England. Jon is a qualified accountant and change management practitioner. 

Leslie D. McIntosh, PhD
Leslie D. McIntosh, PhD is VP of Research Integrity at Digital Science and leads FoSci, an initiative using forensic scientometrics to detect manipulation and strengthen trust in research. An academic-turned-entrepreneur, she founded Ripeta in 2017 to improve research integrity, which is now a key part of Digital Science. She has advised global governments, institutions, and organizations. Her work was the most-read RetractionWatch post of 2022. In 2023, her influential ideas on achieving equity in research were highlighted in the Guardian and Science.

Laura Wilson, Head of Research Integrity & Ethics, Taylor & Francis
Laura joined the publishing world in 2010, and has served as a council member on the Committee on Publication Ethics, as well as the Early Career Publisher member on the STM board. Laura is currently a member of the ALPSP policy and STM Membership committees.

Dr Jennifer Wright, Head of Publication Ethics & Research Integrity, Cambridge University Press
Dr. Jennifer Wright is the Head of Publication Ethics and Research Integrity at Cambridge University Press. She is also an elected COPE Council member and a registered advisor for the UK Research Integrity Office. Jennifer was previously an academic in the field of forest ecology and climate change (PhD University of Edinburgh, post-doc Oregon State University), and holds an MBA from Cranfield University”

Doug Melville, Technical Product Manager, Sage
Following a data career in public, private and third sector organisations in Scotland and Australia, Doug works closely with Data Science at Sage, managing the development of intelligence products to assist Research Integrity. Whilst new to publishing, having been at Sage for a little under two years, Doug has experience of working in Universities, and has a particular interest in risk modelling and early detection of anomalous behaviour from his time in Aviation Safety.

Session 2:

Ann Campbell, Technical Solutions Manager, Digital Science
As a Systems and Data Manager with deep expertise in Research & Innovation, Ann specialises in leveraging data to enhance research visibility, integrity, and impact. At Digital Science, she provides strategic insights and guided analysis using tools like Dimensions and Altmetric, helping funders, publishers, and academic institutions uncover trends and make data-driven decisions.

Her work focuses on data advocacy – integrating data across systems to support open research, research evaluation, and global sustainability goals, particularly the UN SDG agenda. With a background in implementing research and innovation systems, she has led process transformations that improve data reporting, compliance, and institutional rankings. Passionate about fostering a data-literate culture, she advocates for data-driven storytelling and breaking down silos to enable more effective decision-making across academia and scholarly publishing.

Katie Davison, Insights Analyst, Emerald Publishing
Squiggly career both outside of and within Emerald Publishing. I work in Data and Insight and involved in Emerald’s Open Lab, a team dedicated to helping our customers navigate the complexities of open access. Delighted to work in the critical thinking space of the research ecosystem, contributing to strategies and innovative approaches to address some of the challenges impacting academic research.

Mike Taylor, Head of Data Insights, Digital Science
Mike is Head of Data Insights at Digital Science, where he works with publishers and research enterprises to understand the impact of their journals and research.

Mike is an innovator in scholarly metrics and social impact. Prior to the development of altmetrics, he was working to understand how researchers were using emerging social media networks and other platforms to exchange information. Mike has conducted much research and has published papers and presentations on altmetrics and other forms of impact. He is working towards a PhD with Mike Thelwall at Wolverhampton University on Open Access publishing and social impact.

He has been involved in many open initiatives during his career, most notably contributing to the architecture of the Orcid repository and API prior to its launch during his time at Elsevier Labs.

Mike is the co-founder of ElevenOne Theatre and an active director, producer, writer and actor.

Session 3:

Lou Peck, CEO & Founder, The International Bunch
With 20+ years in the research ecosystem and 25 years of marketing expertise, Lou Peck specializes in strategy, training, and research, driving innovation through her leadership at The International Bunch. Her career includes impactful roles at the British Standards Institution, ProQuest, EBL Ebook Library, Kudos, Wiley and the Royal Society of Chemistry, where she has consistently empowered organizations to thrive. Since 2016, Lou has been a consultant providing critical insights and support for marketing teams across the research ecosystem. Lou lives in South Wales, UK, with her family and small ‘zoo’.

Jitske de Vries, Head of Marketing, The Company of Biologists
Jitske heads up the marketing team at The Company of Biologists, a not-for-profit publishing organisation. With a background in Business Communications, she has previously held sales and marketing roles, including for Elsevier and the European Association of Urology.

Rowena Gordon, Senior Managing Editor, British Ecological Society
Rowena manages the strategic development of two journals at the British Ecological Society. She specialises in communications and global equity in ecology. She has a Masters in ecology from Queen Mary University of London and has been working in publishing since 2017.

Daisy Veysey, Social Media Manager, eLife
Daisy is the Social Media Manager for the open-access journal eLife, where she is responsible for the strategy and management of the journal’s ever-increasing accounts. With a background in science communication, education, and public engagement, she takes on various other digital content and community engagement roles to support the organisation’s mission of improving research communication and culture.

Marion Schnelle, Social Media Manager, De Gruyter Brill
Marion oversees De Gruyter Brill’s social media strategy, running the publisher’s corporate accounts and steering nearly 100 editorial and imprint accounts post-merger. She has recently driven the company’s move from X to Bluesky. She holds a degree in English and Philosophy from the University of Leeds and previously worked on the Berlin Film Festival’s social media and in communications in the arts and higher education.

Sarah Greaves, Director and Publishing Consultant, Sarah Greaves STEM Consulting
Sarah has over 20 years of experience within STM editorial and publishing. After an academic career she worked at Nature Publishing Group for over 15 years in both editorial and publishing roles, launching Nature Communications and Scientific Reports before spending two years at Hindawi.  Sarah focuses on creating innovative new products and services aimed at solving key researcher pain points whilst ensuring the academic scientist remains at the heart of any publishing decision. 

Sarah is now a publishing consultant, non-executive director of the Royal Society of Chemistry & The Biochemical Society.

Session 4:

Jo Wixon, Director – External Analysis, Wiley
After exchanging an academic career for research publishing 20+ years ago, Jo has run journals, grown subject portfolios, built society partnerships, and led on portfolio strategy. Her team identify opportunities and risks in market trends, and policy, business model and technology developments to drive evidence-based strategic decision-making. Jo is also a HESI SDG Publishers Compact Fellow, and contributes to sustainability work at STM, ALPSP and EASE. For ALPSP, she is a Director, Vice-Chair of the Membership & Marketing Committee, and Co-Chairs the SDGs & Publishing SIG.

Nicholas Bailey, Senior Product Manager, Digital Science
Nicholas Bailey is an AI Researcher, Data Scientist and Senior Product Manager. In the past 3 years his efforts have been centred around research integrity, open science and scientometrics. He is the product manager for Dimensions Author Check, a state-of-the art tool for performing due diligence on published researchers. He is an expert in the way machines can learn and use language and, alongside his work with Digital Science, he researches deep learning at City St George’s, University of London. Nicholas regularly appears at conferences as an engaging speaker on technical topics and provides mentoring for early-career technologists. He lives with his wife and two children in Cambridge, UK.

The post Digital Science Publisher Day 2025: Speakers appeared first on Digital Science.

Programme

Session 1

9:40 – 9:50 am
Welcome & Introduction
Speaker: Helen Cooke, SVP Sales – Publisher Markets, Digital Science

9:50 – 10:20 am
Keynote 1: Scene Setting: Reflections on the Publishing Landscape
Speaker: Jon Treadway, Director, Great North Wood Consulting

*** 10:20 – 10:40 am: 20 MINUTE BREAK ***

10:40 – 11:20 am
Panel 1: Strengthening Research Integrity
Speakers:
– Leslie McIntosh, Vice President of Research Integrity, Digital Science
– Laura Wilson, Head of Research Integrity & Ethics, Taylor & Francis
– Jennifer Wright, Head of Publication Ethics & Research Integrity, Cambridge University Press
– Doug Melville, Technical Product Manager, Sage

*** 11:20 – 11:40 am: 20 MINUTE BREAK ***

Session 2

11:40 – 12:00 pm
Emerald Publishing: Dimensions GBQ Case Study
Speakers:
– Ann Campbell, Technical Solutions Manager, Digital Science
– Katie Davison, Insights Analyst, Emerald Publishing

*** 12:00 – 1:00 pm: 60 MINUTE LUNCH BREAK ***

Session 3:

1:00 – 1:10 pm
Lighting Talk 1: Benchmarking for Publishing Success
Speaker: Mike Taylor, Head of Data Insights, Digital Science


1:10 – 1:50 pm
Panel 2: Adapting to a New Social Media Landscape
Speakers:
– Lou Peck, CEO & Founder, The International Bunch
– Jitske de Vries, Head of Marketing, The Company of Biologists
– Rowena Gordon, Senior Managing Editor, British Ecological Society
– Daisy Veysey, Social Media Manager, eLife
– Marion Schnelle, Social Media Manager, De Gruyter Brill

*** 1:50 – 2:10pm: 20 MINUTE BREAK ***

2:10 – 2:20 pm
Lighting Talk 2: Consolidation in the Market – What it Means for Publishers
Speakers: Sarah Greaves, Director and Publishing Consultant, Sarah Greaves STEM Consulting

2:20 – 2:50 pm
Quiz:
Hosted by: Helen Cooke, SVP Sales – Publisher Markets, Digital Science

*** 2:50 – 3:10pm: 20 MINUTE BREAK ***

Session 4:

3:10 – 3:40 pm
Keynote 2: How Publishers Can Elevate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Speaker: Jo Wixon, Director – External Analysis, Wiley


3:40 – 3:50 pm
Lighting Talk 3: Spotlight on Dimensions Author Check
Speaker: Nicholas Bailey, Senior Product Manager, Digital Science


3:50 – 4:00 pm
Wrap up & Thank You:
Speaker: Helen Cooke, SVP Sales – Publisher Markets, Digital Science

*** DAY CONCLUDES ***

The post Digital Science Publisher Day 2025: Online programme appeared first on Digital Science.

Traditionally, September and October have always been one of the busiest – and most interesting – times to be in the publishing industry. Back in the day, September would be the deadline for the first of the following year’s issues to be collated by editors, while in more recent times big events like the ALPSP Conference, the Frankfurt Book Fair and Open Access Week have set the agenda for the remainder of the year and beyond.

In 2024, this period has perhaps more intrigue than most given a number of deadlines and political events occurring in the next 12 months or so, many of them revolving around open access (OA) and its further adoption. But will things pan out the way people anticipate, and are there solutions that can be used to help forge a path through so many uncertainties about the future?

Conference season

At the recent ALPSP Conference in Manchester in September, there was a good deal of discussion about how open access had developed this year, and its potential progress in 2025 and beyond. Perhaps unsurprisingly at a conference full of publishers, the mood was a little downbeat when it came to the theme of OA, but not for the reasons one might think. Reading between the lines, there was a frustration at the shifting sands many felt they had to constantly navigate, in the shape of changing or newly introduced policies, and a sense that innovation was being stymied as a result.

For example, the tone for OA seemed to have been set by the JISC report on transformative agreements (TAs) which was published in the UK earlier in 2024. This made for somber reading, with the headline prediction that while the UK’s transitioning to OA was faster than most countries, based on the journal flipping rates observed between 2018–2022 it would take at least 70 years for the big five publishers to flip their TA titles to OA. 

With this in mind, the fact that there were deadlines for Plan S set for 2025 around transition that seemed unlikely to be met, and with the OSTP memo in the US mired in committees and a potential change on the cards in the White House, the belief among many publishers was that the move to OA was not happening at the pace or in the direction that many thought it would.

Geopolitical calculations

In addition to what is happening in the UK, Europe and in the US, events further afield are also causing publishers to take stock of their medium-to-long-term strategies. The publication of authors based in Russia has declined sharply since the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, and collaboration between US authors and those based in China have also decreased, possibly due to policy changes by the Chinese government favoring publication in China-based journals, but also potentially due to fears about research security issues in the US and in other countries. 

China’s move to OA is also happening at a much lower level than many countries, which is significant as it takes up such a high percentage of published articles, passing the US a few years ago as the world’s most prolific publisher of research articles. As a result, despite the increase in the number of TAs being agreed with universities, publishers are still seeing a high degree of uncertainty in the transition to OA.

Forward motion

This uncertainty will be in the back of publishers’ minds when celebrating OA Week this year, coming as it does every year on the back of major conferences such as ALPSP and Frankfurt, and in the midst of fine tuning budgets for the following year. At Digital Science, we understand this predicament given how closely we work with publishers as customers, and also because many of us have worked in the publishing industry ourselves. As such, we have been analyzing how Digital Science solutions can help publishers steer a path forward on OA and transformative agreements, and have created this use case for Dimensions in support of our community.

This resource has been designed to reflect the period of change that the publishing industry is undergoing, supporting the need for publishers to create, evaluate and negotiate TAs by delivering a strong range of historical and predictive data through Dimensions. Using the Dimensions database – which now holds data on almost 150m publications as well as details on funding, grants and patents – publishers can easily find and analyze data surrounding authorship across categories such as country, geography, institution and funder. Understanding a given discipline’s current or future state of play can complement publishers’ own data and inform their strategies accordingly.

Solid state

The theme of this year’s OA Week – ‘Community over Commercialization’ – is a deliberately provocative one, and should engender a good deal of debate during the week and beyond. It should also broaden the conversation to adjacent areas such as open research and open science, as here we have policy and geopolitics making waves for everyone involved in the research ecosystem. 

The origin of some of these ripples can be seen in two upcoming reports from Digital Science. At the end of October, a new report on Research Transformation includes substantial input from those involved in academia on how OA is impacting on their work, while November sees the ninth annual State of Open Data report, tracking how researchers see open data issues developing as part of their work. Without giving too much away, both of these reports call for greater awareness of – and support using – the myriad of fast-developing technologies that are starting to impact academics and their institutions. As such, the community of interest that supports OA Week every year needs to work together in the ecosystem they all inhabit if those OA deadlines are to be met.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is an ALPSP tutor and has also served as a COPE Trustee.

The post Will 2025 be a turning point for Open Access? appeared first on Digital Science.

At this year’s World Conference on Research Integrity, a team of researchers from Digital Science led by Pritha Sarkar presented a poster with findings from their deep dive on conflict of interest (COI) statements. Entitled Conflict of Interest: A data driven approach to categorisation of COI statements, the initial goal was to look at COI statements with a view to creating a binary model that determines whether a Conflict of Interest statement is present or not in an article. 

However, all was not as it seemed. While some articles had no COI and some had one present, those present covered a number of different areas, which led the team to think COIs might represent a spectrum rather than binary options.

Gold standard

Conflict of interest is a crucial aspect of academic integrity. Properly declaring a COI statement is essential for other researchers to assess any potential bias in scholarly articles. However, those same researchers often encounter COI statements that are either inadequate or misleading in some way even if they are present. 

The Digital Science team – all working on research integrity with Dimensions – soon realized the data could be leveraged further to better explore the richness inherent in the nuanced COI statements. After further research and analysis, it became clear that COI statements could be categorized into six distinct types:

1. None Declared
2. Membership or Employment
3. Funds Received
4. Shareholder, Stakeholder or Ownership
5. Personal Relationship
6. Donation

This analysis involved manually annotating hundreds of COI statements with Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools. The aim was to create a gold standard that could be used to categorize all other COI statements, however despite the team’s diligence a significant challenge persisted in the shape of ‘data skewness’ – which can be defined as an imbalance in the distribution of data within a dataset that can impact data processing and analytics.

Fatal flaw

One irresistible conclusion to the data skewness was a simple one – that authors weren’t truthfully reporting their conflicts of interest. But could this really be true?

The gold standard approach came from manually and expertly annotating COI statements to develop an auto-annotation process. However, despite the algorithm’s ability to auto-annotate 33,812 papers in just 15 minutes, the skewness that had been initially identified persisted, leading to the false reporting theory for authors (see Figure 1 of COI Poster). 

To firm up this hypothesis, when the Retraction Watch database was analyzed, the troubling trend, including the discrepancy between reported COI category and retraction reason, became even more apparent (see Figure 2 of the COI Poster). 

Moreover, when the team continued with the investigation, they found there were 24,289 overlapping papers in Dimensions GBQ and Retraction Watch, and among those papers, 393 were retracted due to conflict of interest. Out of those 393 papers, 134 had a COI statement, however 119 declared there was no conflict to declare.

Conclusion

Underreporting and misreporting conflict of interest statements or types can undermine the integrity of scholarly work. Other research integrity issues around paper mills, plagiarism and predatory journals have already damaged the trust the public has with published research, so further problems with COIs can only worsen the situation. With the evidence of these findings, it is clear that all stakeholders in the research publication process must adopt standard practices on reporting critical trust markers such as COI to uphold the transparency and honesty in scholarly endeavors. 

To finish on a positive note, this research poster was awarded second-place at the 2024 World Conference on Research Integrity, showing that the team’s research has already attracted considerable attention among those who seek to safeguard research integrity and trust in science.

You can find the poster on Figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25901707.v2

Partial data and the code for this project are also available on Figshare.

For more on the topic of research integrity, see details of Digital Science’s Catalyst Grant award for 2024, which focuses on digital solutions around this topic.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is an ALPSP tutor and has also served as a COPE Trustee.

The post Shining a light on conflict of interest statements appeared first on Digital Science.

After a welcome and introduction from Digital Science’s MD of Publisher Sales, Helen Cooke, we kicked off the day with a keynote from Mark Hanhel, our VP of Open Research. Mark shared where he predicts experimentation will lead in the ever-changing global academic publishing landscape, and what Digital Science can do to support publishers with data, tools and insights. 

Following Mark’s keynote, we had a series of lightning talks to share product updates and roadmaps for our publisher solutions. Amye Kedall, VP of Product, presented exciting updates from Dimensions and Altmetric, and explained how Digital Science is adopting AI in our product development plans to help publishers drive discovery of content and do more with less. 

Claire Turner, SVP Commercial, shared Figshare’s updated roadmap format. She explained how the Figshare team plans to expand their capabilities to support capturing engaging content, streamline researcher experiences, enhance administrative workflows, and update core capabilities.

Next up was Juan Castro, CEO and Co-Founder of Writefull, who presented on Writefull’s AI-powered language and metadata solutions for publishers, and how they have streamlined the workflow of a leading chemistry publisher. 

After a networking break, we held our first panel of the day. The panel was moderated by Cathy Holland from Digital Science, who was joined by Andreea Moldovan from Sage, Jon Treadway from Great North Wood Consulting, Becky Moakes from Maverick, and Ian Potter from Frontiers. The panel had a lively discussion on the journey of adapting to AI in scholarly publishing – weighing up the positive and negative impacts, and looking ahead to see whether AI is, or will ever be, the new normal.

The next panel (pictured below) was moderated by Tyler Ruse of Digital Science. Pooja Aggarwal from Bloomsbury, James Butcher from Journalology, Ritu Dhand from Springer Nature, and Lisa Walton from BMJ. They discussed how the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are affecting publishing and editorial strategies, how to measure success in the SDGs, the importance of the SDG Publishers Compact, and what the path to 2030 could look like. 

Following a publishing industry quiz, we had our third and final panel of the day, which was moderated by Digital Science’s Nigel Thompson. Nigel was joined by Hannah Barnsley from the Royal Society of Chemistry, Simon Boisseau from Accucoms, Bernie Folan from OASPA, and Rhodri Jackson from Oxford University Press. The panel spoke about open access trends and models, the role wider initiatives play in supporting OA, and where they think the OA movement is heading.  

As the day drew to a close, Jessica Miles from Holtzbrinck Publishing Group delivered a thought-provoking keynote, reflecting on the past, present, and future of STM publishing workflows. She spoke about how the workflows have been shaped by distinct periods of digital transformation: from establishing infrastructure for digital content creation in the move from print to digital, to the expansion of the publishing workflow influenced by AI and machine learning, to how AI will impact the fundamental value proposition of STM publishing going forward.

We concluded the day by enjoying some networking drinks. Once again, we’d like to send our heartfelt thanks to everyone who attended and spoke at this year’s Publisher Day, and we look forward to next year’s event.

Want to learn more about our solutions for publishers? Visit our webpage, or get in touch with the publisher team at: publishing@digital-science.com

About the Author

Olivia King, Marketing Segment Lead, Publisher | Digital Science

Olivia King is Marketing Segment Lead for the Publisher segment at Digital Science. In this role, she manages the publisher marketing activities and strategy across the Digital Science publisher solutions, including Writefull, Altmetric, Dimensions and Figshare. Before joining Digital Science, Olivia worked in journals marketing at Sage Publishing.

The post Publisher Day 2024: The road ahead for scholarly publishing appeared first on Digital Science.

One of the world’s largest scientific societies and the premier home of chemistry professionals publishes over 80 journals spanning all disciplines of the chemical sciences.

The society’s Production Operations team is responsible for tasks like technical editing and proof review. As the organization grew, it needed more capacity, and they now leverage a global supply chain – including Writefull.

The team is also involved in developing and implementing new technologies, with a particular focus on how to make the best use of Artificial Intelligence. They looked into the concept of language modification done programmatically but were “really striking out with commercially available broad-sweeping tools. They did not perform well on our content.” What they needed was something that could suggest improvements to academic language usage, such as sentence structures in scientific writing or discipline-specific vocabulary. 

Supporting the entire publishing workflow

Then the organization was introduced to Writefull. They were immediately intrigued by the specificity it offers, as Writefull’s models can be tailored to a particular niche of scientific content. After a competitive RFP process, they decided to work with Writefull, and together they began developing some of the services they have since operationalized. 

Writefull’s full publisher solution offering supports each stage of the publishing pipeline, from submission to copy editing to quality assurance:

Over the years, the society has incorporated four unique tools from Writefull. A member of the Production Operations team explains: “We have a very rigorous method for evaluating the quality of each step of the production process. For example, one of the things we need to do when we evaluate quality involves scoring the language after copyediting. Traditionally, it would take a long time for one of our team members to complete a review like this, limiting the amount of content that could undergo quality review. But when we tailored Writefull’s Manuscript Categorization API to our requirements and benchmarked it against our own quality analysts, it reached over 95% alignment in categorising texts.” With such a high level of alignment, the automation of this task can significantly reduce the time spent on manuscript evaluation and allow more content to be reviewed for quality purposes.

The organization’s quality evaluation program also includes assessment of metrics such as whether author names and affiliations are present and correct. They use Writefull’s Metadata API to facilitate and partly automate this task, by extracting manuscript elements for post-editing quality assessment. This reduces the number of items in their quality evaluation that need manual review and the time spent reviewing them.

Another API they have adopted is Language Edit Assist (LEA), which auto-applies a highly customized subset of Writefull’s language edits to manuscripts prior to copyediting. The manuscript is then at a better starting point when it reaches the copyeditor, increasing efficiency in the editing process.

A transformative step

Writefull’s services have delivered multiple benefits to the society – including demonstrable time and cost savings. 

A prime example comes from its recent analysis of LEA results. 715 papers were randomly split into two workflows, with manuscripts of similar language quality levels present in each workflow. Prior to technical editing, one group had automatic edits applied by Writefull’s LEA service and the other group did not. Without LEA applied, 58% of the papers were classified as well-written (the highest quality level). But with LEA applied, 81% of the papers were classified as well-written – enabling the organization’s copyeditors to focus their time on high-value-added edits, instead of on basic grammatical fixes, such as articles, punctuation, and conjunctions.

Additionally, editors at the society evaluated 35,000 individual edits made by LEA. After refinement using internal data, edits applied without error were 99.04%, and edits introducing errors were 0.96% – showing a high level of accuracy.

“It has been transformative,” says a member of the Production Operations team. “The data we’ve obtained has really been useful because it’s highly customized to our work. Having quality information at the right time is so important, and there’s a limit to what human manual efforts can do and when they can do it. Being able to do it programmatically with a high degree of accuracy gives you a wealth of data – and that means you get new insights into how you’re operating the business and the strategic directions you should consider.”

From strength to strength

There has been a high degree of adoption, and the society and Writefull are working together to refine the processes further. 

They are now looking ahead at what this adoption and their new knowledge means for operational performance: “Is there some opportunity there for improving throughput or quality? What are the key metrics that this is going to impact? The next part is to manage that forward. We’re seeing the refinements boost the tools’ overall performance and increase staff buy-in further.”

Part of the project’s success is attributed to how well the organization and Writefull work together. Juan Castro, CEO and Co-founder of Writefull, reflects: “Many of the services we offer to publishers today are the fruits of our collaboration with this society. It is together that we have identified challenges, thought of solutions, and developed and vetted new technologies. I personally think LEA is the most exciting of all—it is such a powerful solution, which offers direct assistance. We look forward to many more future projects together.“

The society has found Juan and the wider Writefull team to be “very creative and collaborative, and they’ve really been engaged in coming up with innovative ways to overcome the challenges involved and achieve our goals. They’re a fantastic group to work with.”

If you’d like to explore how Writefull’s services could support your organization, request a demo. 

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The 2023 survey saw over 6,000 responses and the report that has now been published takes an in-depth look at the responses and purposefully takes a much more analytical approach than has been seen in previous years, unveiling unprecedented insights.

Five key takeaways from The State of Open Data 2023

Support is not making its way to those who need it

Over three-quarters of respondents had never received any support with making their data openly available. 

One size does not fit all

Variations in responses from different subject expertise and geographies highlight a need for a more nuanced approach to research data management support globally. 

Challenging stereotypes

Are later career academics really opposed to progress? The results of the 2023 survey indicate that career stage is not a significant factor in open data awareness or support levels. 

Credit is an ongoing issue

For eight years running, our survey has revealed a recurring concern among researchers: the perception that they don’t receive sufficient recognition for openly sharing their data. 

AI awareness hasn’t translated to action

For the first time, this year we asked survey respondents to indicate if they were using ChatGPT or similar AI tools for data collection, processing and metadata creation. 

Diving deeper into the data than ever before 

This year, we dive deeper into the data than ever before and look at the differing opinions of our respondents when we compare their regions, career stages, job titles and subject areas of expertise. 

Figshare founder and CEO Mark Hahnel said of this approach, “It feels like the right time to do this. Whilst a global funder push towards FAIR data has researchers globally moving in the same direction, it is important to recognize the subtleties in researchers’ behaviors based on variables in who they are and where they are.”

This year features extensive analysis of the survey results data and provides an in-depth and unique view of attitudes towards open data. 

This analysis provided some key insights; notably that researchers at all stages of their careers share similar enthusiasm for open data, are motivated by shared incentives and struggle to overcome the same obstacles. 

These results are encouraging and challenge the stereotype that more experienced academics are opposed to progress in the space and that those driving progress are primarily early career researchers. 

We were also able to look into the nuanced differences in responses from different regions and subject areas of expertise, illuminating areas for targeted outreach and support. These demographic variations also led us to issue a recommendation to the academic research community to look to understand the ‘state of open data’ in their specific setting.  

Benchmarking attitudes towards the application of AI 

In light of the intense focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and its application this year, for the first time, we decided to ask our survey respondents if they were using any AI tools for data collection, processing or metadata collection. 

The most common answer to all three questions was,“I’m aware of these tools but haven’t considered it.”

Although the results don’t yet tell a story, we’ve taken an important step in benchmarking how researchers are currently using AI in the data-sharing process. Within our report, we hear from Niki Scaplehorn and Henning Schoenenberger from Springer Nature in their piece ‘AI and open science: the start of a beautiful relationship?’ as they share some thoughts on what the future could hold for research data and open science more generally in the age of AI. 

We are looking forward to evaluating the longitudinal response trends for this survey question in years to come as the fast-moving space of AI and its applications to various aspects of the research lifecycle accelerate farther ahead. 

Recommendations for the road ahead 

In our report, we have shared some recommendations that take the findings of our more analytical investigation and use them to inform action points for various stakeholders in the community. This is an exciting step for The State of Open Data, as we more explicitly encourage real-world action from the academic community when it comes to data-sharing and open data. 

Understanding the state of open data in our specific settings: Owing to the variations in responses from different geographies and areas of expertise, we’re encouraging the academic community to investigate the ‘state of open data’ in their specific research setting, to inform tailored and targeted support. 

Credit where credit’s due: For eight years running, our respondents have repeatedly reported that they don’t feel researchers get sufficient credit for sharing their data. Our recommendation asks stakeholders to consider innovative approaches that encourage data re-use and ultimately greater recognition. 

Help and guidance for the greater good: The same technical challenges and concerns that pose a barrier to data sharing transcend different software and disciplines. Our recommendation suggests that support should move beyond specific platform help and instead tackle the bigger questions of open data and open science practices. 

Making outreach inclusive: Through our investigation of the 2023 survey results, we saw that the stage of an academic’s career was not a significant factor in determining attitudes towards open data and we saw consensus between early career researchers and more established academics. Those looking to engage research communities should be inclusive and deliberate with their outreach, engaging those who have not yet published their first paper as well as those who first published over 30 years ago. 

What’s next for The State of Open Data?  

The State of Open Data 2023 report is a deliberate change from our usual format; usually, our report has contributed pieces authored by open data stakeholders around the globe. This year, we’ve changed our approach and we are beginning with the publication of this first report, which looks at the survey data through a closer lens than before. We’ve compared different subsets of the data in a way we haven’t before, in an effort to provide more insights and actionable data for the community.

In early 2024, we’ll be releasing a follow-up report, with a selection of contributed pieces from global stakeholders, reflecting on the survey results in their context. Using the results showcased in this first report as a basis, it’s our hope that this follow-up report will apply different contexts to these initial findings and bring new insights and ideas. 

In the meantime, we’re hosting two webinars to celebrate the launch of our first report and share the key takeaways. In our first session, The State of Open Data 2023: The Headlines, we’ll be sharing a TL;DR summary of the full report; our second session, The State of Open Data 2023: In Conversation, will convene a panel of global experts to discuss the survey results. 

You can sign up for both sessions here: 

The State of Open Data 2023: The Headlines

The State of Open Data 2023: In Conversation

About the Author

Laura Day, Marketing Director | Figshare

Laura is the Marketing Director at Figshare, part of Digital Science. Before joining Digital Science, Laura worked in scholarly publishing, focusing on open access journal marketing and transformative agreements. In her current role, Laura focuses on marketing campaigns and outreach for Figshare. She is passionate about open science and is excited by the potential it has to advance knowledge sharing by enabling academic research communities to reach new and diverse audiences.

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How old is Open Access? In some ways it is as old as research itself, as at least some results have always been shared publicly. However, since the first journals were published in 1665, accessibility has been an issue, with distribution of paper journals limiting potential readership. When the internet came along, it lowered the barriers to access considerably and opened up the pathway towards Open Access. But that process has been a gradual one.

As a tutor for ALPSP and course leader for some of its industry training modules, I have to be wary of approaching topics such as Open Access. Not because it is especially contentious or difficult, but because as someone who has been involved in scholarly communications for over 20 years, it still feels relatively ‘new’ to me, whereas for most attendees it is simply part of the modern furniture of publishing.

However, as Churchill once said, the longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward, so this year’s OA Week seems as good a time as any to review how its development has progressed over the years. Luckily, in Dimensions we have a tool which can look at millions of articles, both OA and closed access, published over the last quarter of a century.

Back story

Pointing to a specific time to say ‘this is when OA started’ is difficult, as experiments with OA publishing arrived with the internet in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Perhaps the first rallying cry in support of OA came in 1994 when Stevan Harnad published his Subversive Proposal. However, in 1998 several things happened which started to shape the way OA would develop, including the setting up of a number of support networks for authors to advise how to follow the OA path, as well as the founding of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). New tools and services introduced then started to re-engineer how academic publishing operated, which were only amplified by the global adoption of the internet.

Such developments were followed in subsequent years by major declarations from academics and institutions in support of OA, mainly from European cities starting with ‘B’ – both Budapest and Berlin were the basis for such declarations that propelled Open Access forward and firmly onto the agendas of all stakeholders. Some countries and academic cultures adopted OA principles quickly such as Brazil, however it wasn’t until the 2010s that we started to see significant policy changes in Global North countries such as the US and the UK. 

These OA policies have now not only become commonplace, but have strengthened with initiatives like Plan_S in Europe and the OSTP (or Nelson) Memo in the US driving forward the transition towards fuller OA. It feels like the rate of change has increased in the last few years, but is this true and what does the picture look like globally?

Ch-ch-ch-changes

As we can see in the chart below using Dimensions, growth in OA research article publications has been relatively steady over the last 25 years, with a steeper rise in recent years followed by a shallower rise in 2022. This can perhaps be attributed in part to the introduction of Plan_S in 2018 and the introduction of funder mandates, but also the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic which drove OA publications upwards in 2020 and 2021, not least through the avenue of OA preprints.

However, appearances can be deceptive. While the chart may seem to plot a steady increase, the 12-fold rise over 25 years is significantly faster than the four-fold rise seen from all research articles, with all OA articles now making up well over half of all articles.

Looking more closely at the type of OA article recorded on Dimensions, if we look just at Gold OA research articles over time (ie. those published in journals, typically after payment of an article processing charge (APC)), we see a similar development, albeit with a slower take off and steeper rise in recent times.

However, if we look at Green OA research articles made available over the same period, we see a much more complex development, with higher rates of adoption in the early years of OA following a shallower trajectory before a huge spike in 2020, driven by the aforementioned pandemic. 

We can see the change more markedly below if we look at all publications (as opposed to just research articles) in more recent years, with Green and Gold running neck-and-neck until they diverged over the last decade or so. For many early proponents of Green Open Access who were opposed to the high profit margins enjoyed by many, this highlights how Green OA has failed in comparison to Gold Open Access. 

Looking ahead

What do these data tell us about the next 25 years? Perhaps the key takeaway is that shifts in behaviour of authors can be caused by concerted policymaking. Indeed, even the commitment to future mandates can be a catalyst for change as publishers prepare the groundwork quickly for upcoming changes. However, the biggest single shift towards OA happened during something wholly unforeseen (the pandemic), and as geopolitics is in its most volatile state in the whole 25 year period, maybe the biggest changes in OA are just round the corner. 

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About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is also a COPE Trustee and ALPSP tutor, and holds Masters degrees in Philosophy and International Business.

The post From subversive to the new normal: 25 years of Open Access appeared first on Digital Science.

Path to Open

Path to Open, a new open access pilot for book publications in the humanities and social sciences, has launched its collection this month, with 100 titles covering 36 disciplines from more than 30 university presses. This represents a major and much-needed step forward for Open Access publishing in general, and for the humanities specifically.

The pilot began in January as a collaboration among university presses, libraries, and scholars. It has emerged at a moment when students, administrators, and political leaders in the United States openly doubt the value and relevance of the humanities.¹ Their questions stem at least in part from a widespread misunderstanding of the term “humanities”, the disciplines it includes, and the inquiries posed by its scholars.

Such misunderstandings are perhaps not surprising. Scholarly books, often referred to as monographs, have served for decades as the primary mode for sharing research findings in the humanities but are currently distributed in ways that privilege a narrow audience.²

University presses – long-time champions and producers of monographs – have lost crucial institutional support, leaving many in difficult financial circumstances. The resulting high prices for monographs often exclude scholars, students, and others without affiliation at well-funded research libraries, and the problems multiply for those outside the established book distribution networks of North America and Western Europe.

Compared with STEM disciplines, the humanities receive little public funding for research and publication, making the move to open access much more challenging.

A commitment to finding new ways of sharing monographs drives the development of Path to Open. As Charles Watkinson and Melissa Pitts have noted, academic stakeholders “have long seen the value in investing significant resources to sustain science infrastructures that contribute to a common good. It is essential to their mission that they collaborate and invest with that same care in the crucial infrastructure for humanities research embodied by the network of university presses”.

Path to Open seeks to create an infrastructure that allows more publishers – especially small and mid-sized university presses – to experiment with open access distribution while also boosting the circulation of research from a community of diverse humanities scholars. The initiative is distinctive among open access models because, as John Sherer explains, it proposes a “compromise between the legacy model of university press publishing and a fully funded OA model”.

Path to Open operates as a library subscription – administered exclusively by JSTOR – that guarantees payments of at least US$5,000 per title to participating publishers, to help offset potential losses in digital sales. With the launch of the online collection this month, presses also have the option to sell print editions of all books, as well as direct-to-consumer e-books.

A sliding scale for subscription costs provides more equitable access to libraries of varying sizes and budgets, and more than 60 libraries have joined to date, including members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The initial 100 titles transition to full open access by 2026, and new titles will be added in each of the following three pilot years to reach an expected total of 1,000 open access books by 2029.

The model aims to reduce financial risk for presses while also acknowledging lingering hesitation about open access publication within the humanities community. As John Sherer finds, many authors fear that “an OA monograph would be viewed less favorably than a traditional print monograph would in the tenure and promotion review process”.

Monographs take years to produce, and they function quite differently from journal articles in the scholarly ecosystem. Many of these books maintain their relevance for years, even decades, past the original publication date. Over the life of the pilot, JSTOR will track various usage metrics for all titles in the collection both before and after the transition to open access.

The partnership with JSTOR provides a unique opportunity to gather data in a controlled environment, with hopes of gaining much-needed insights into the behavior of readers, the effect of open access on print sales, and the timing of peak impact for monographs in various disciplines. Understanding such issues is key to strengthening the vital infrastructure that supports humanities research and to ensure its place alongside open STEM scholarship.

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has committed to providing a robust and transparent structure for community engagement with Path to Open. In consultation with the Educopia Institute, ACLS is developing a forum to encourage dialogue among key stakeholders, including publishers, libraries, scholars, and academic administrators. Inviting scholars into these conversations is critical for a shared understanding of how open access affects humanistic disciplines, institutions of higher education, students, and individual academic careers.

Our hope at ACLS is that an inclusive dialogue about Path to Open will generate greater understanding of the stakes for various constituents within the humanities community, and guide decisions for the future of scholarly publishing in sustainable and equitable ways.

¹ Nathan Heller, “The End of the English Major,” The New Yorker, February 27, 2023.

² See also Michael A. Elliott, “The Future of the Monograph in the Digital Era,” The Journal of Electronic Publishing 18, no. 4 (fall 2015).

About the Author

Sarah McKee, Project Manager, Publishing Initiatives | American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)

As Project Manager for Publishing Initiatives, Sarah McKee works to support a healthy ecosystem for the creation and dissemination of humanistic scholarship across disciplines and institutions. She previously administered Digital Publishing in the Humanities, sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and based at Emory University’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, and served as managing editor of the born-digital New Georgia Encyclopedia at the University of Georgia Press. She is an advisory board member for the Next Generation Library Project and is a co-author of the report Multimodal Digital Monographs: Content, Collaboration, Community (2022).

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