Amateur to professional
Journalology #128
Hello fellow journalologists,
The time has finally come to pull the trigger and make (at least some) of the Journalology newsletter a paid subscription product. I first mooted this idea back in June — it took a lot longer than I was expecting to get everything set up on Substack.
I earn my living as a self-employed publishing consultant, speaker and coach. The Journalology newsletter has helped me to build a personal brand, but it’s also become a significant opportunity cost as it’s rather time consuming to create.
From next week, free subscribers will be able to read the ‘News headlines’; all the sections that follow will require a paid subscription to access.
Over the past month I’ve written three essays on hot topics in scholarly publishing:
In the future, this type of essay will, more often than not, also be behind the paywall.
I make this change with a heavy heart. I hope you’ll understand my decision, even if you’re slightly frustrated by it. You see, the mortgage needs paying and the kids (somewhat unreasonably) expect to be fed.
If you would like to upgrade your subscription, you can do so here. You can either subscribe individually or use the Group subscription option, which will allow you to purchase access in bulk for multiple email addresses.
If you would like your entire organisation to be able to read the newsletter, please email me directly [james at journalology dot com] and hopefully we can come to an arrangement.
News headlines
Oxford University Press announces agreement to acquire Karger
Oxford University Press (OUP) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Karger Publishers. The transaction is expected to complete in December. Following closing, this acquisition will see OUP welcome Karger to its wider organization, bringing together a shared commitment to quality and scholarly integrity, and extending the reach and impact of Karger’s leading academic and research publishing in medicine and health sciences.
JB: If you missed my assessment of this story, you can read it here.
Elsevier’s global survey reveals researchers lack time to do research but see AI as transformative
Researcher of the Future - a Confidence in Research report was conducted by Elsevier to examine how researchers are adapting to rapid technological, cultural, and institutional change. The study explores four key areas: the transformative role of AI in research, the pressures researchers face in maintaining research integrity, evolving ways of working including increased collaboration and changing attitudes on relocation, and, finally, increasing expectations for researchers to demonstrate the impact of their work.
JB: You can read the report here. The infographic provides a quick overview and the databook contains the full story (172 slides!). It’s worth spending some time looking through the full slide deck as there are some interesting nuggets in there. For example:
Slide 143: “Researchers with fewer years experience (<7 years) are less likely to think publication related measures are best measures of impact. In contracts more researchers with 20+ years’ experience are likely to think these are the best measures of impact.”
Slide 159: “Seven in ten researchers in the physical sciences (70%) and life sciences (71%) say there is more emphasis on mission-oriented research”
Preprint site arXiv is banning computer-science reviews: here’s why
The oldest and best-known preprint repository, arXiv, has announced that it will no longer accept review or position papers in computer science. The website will make exceptions only for papers that have been previously accepted by a peer-reviewed venue, such as a journal or conference… arXiv management says the move was made necessary by a surge in low-quality papers, including many that appear to be written using generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
JB: This may be a sign of things to come. AI-generated review and opinion slop could overrun preprint servers (and journals).
Dozens of board members resign from big-data journal after mass staff firings
More than three-fifths of the editorial board of a biomedical sciences journal resigned after the publication’s operations moved from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, China, and the editors and software team were fired with 30 days’ notice. GigaScience is published in partnership between Oxford University Press and GigaScience Press, the publishing division of BGI, a genomics company based in Shenzhen, according to their website.
JB: The Editor-in-Chief of Gigascience wrote a blog about the changing of the guard back in September.
Chinese scientists increasingly lead joint projects with the UK, US and Europe
To understand how scientific leadership is changing, researchers analysed authorship data from nearly six million scientific publications. The team analysed ‘author contribution’ statements on journal manuscripts, in which each author’s role is described. When such statements weren’t available, the team developed a model that could predict leadership roles on the basis of author experience, citation histories and the ideas researchers brought from their previous work, says James Evans, a co-author and computational sociologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois.
JB: Science ran a related story last week: U.S. Congress considers sweeping ban on Chinese collaborations. I wrote about the growth of Chinese research and the implications it could have for the open access transition a few weeks ago.
q.e.d Science – an AI review tool for authors
Various AI-based platforms that analyze manuscripts are now being developed, and bioRxiv and medRxiv plan to integrate with these to provide options for authors in much the same way we do journals and other traditional peer review services. Our first pilot is with q.e.d Science, a service that uses generative AI to analyse the claims and supporting data presented in manuscripts and identify ‘gaps’ that warrant further work or revision of the claims. q.e.d Science then offers solutions to mitigate or address these gaps, helping researchers refine their claims and strengthen their conclusions. It also highlights the original aspects of the manuscript by comparing it with other papers and creates an overall report.
JB: q.e.d Science launched last month. The lack of a period after the ‘d’ continues to annoy me. Nevertheless, this is an interesting development that’s worth keeping on our collective radar. I’m hoping that independent researchers will test tools like this to verify they deliver on the claims that they make. I’m sceptical, but willing to keep an open mind at this point.
In future Journalology newsletters, the stories that appear below the ‘News headlines’ will only be viewable by paid subscribers. Upgrade your subscription (as an individual or as a group) to maintain access.
Publishing integrity
Ghost-writing also threatens the integrity of scientific research: When a paper is ghostwritten by a corporation with a clear interest in promoting or exonerating a profitable product, the paper may have been inappropriately influenced by that interest. One might therefore think that academics would be motivated to expose and expunge such practices, especially when lives are potentially at stake. But the truth seems to be otherwise.
JB: Most of the examples quoted in this opinion piece published in Science are from the 2000s. Is ghostwriting less of a problem than it was in the past? An editorial published last month in Child and Adolescent Mental Health suggests that industry influence is still an important issue:
To maintain the credibility of the academic community and public support for science in this age of misinformation, it is essential that the highest standards of transparency are sought when there is any engagement or collaboration with companies whose primary motivation is the interests of shareholders, rather than the interests of children and young people.
When I was an editor, many years ago, I used to routinely check the metadata in the Word file. I once found the words “Please send to marketing department for approval” in a review that had been spontaneously submitted. Needless to say, we didn’t publish it.
Sleuths flag ‘complete mismatch’ in data of BMJ stem cell study
A week after The BMJ published a highly publicized paper claiming stem cell therapy can reduce the risk of heart failure, sleuths have unearthed what they are calling “serious” inconsistencies in the data. The paper claims the phase III clinical trial published October 29 included over 400 patients in Shiraz, Iran, and tested whether stem cell therapy lowers the risk of heart failure after a heart attack… Almost all the patient’s weights — 288 of 334 reported cases — were integers, and multiples of five kilograms were “heavily over-represented,” Brown wrote in another PubPeer comment.
Prevention of Endogamy in the Editorial Boards of University Journals
Editorial endogamy, the over-representation of scholars affiliated with a journal’s host institution on its editorial board, is a widespread phenomenon in university journals (UJs). This practice is often shaped by institutional traditions, resource limitations, internal loyalty, promotion incentives, and opaque selection practices. While some degree of institutional representation is inevitable, excessive editorial endogamy raises concerns about peer review integrity, international visibility, and negatively impacts the credibility and inclusivity of scholarly publishing.
JB: I first learned about editorial endogeny in this Scholarly Kitchen post. Editorial endogamy is a similar, but distinct, concept.
Women’s Representation as Authors of Retracted Scientific Papers
Women’s underrepresentation in retractions due to misconduct and fraud is in keeping with previous studies, suggesting that men are more likely than women to be involved in fraud and misconduct in research… Likewise, we found that women rarely have to retract papers due to ethical issues. On the other hand, the most common reasons for retractions by women are not the responsibility of the women, for instance due to errors committed by editors or publishers. Overall, this suggests that women may be better at following ethical and scientific integrity principles than men when conducting and publishing their research.
Artificial intelligence
Getting the measure of business research downloads — and the rise of AI
In analysis produced by SSRN for the Financial Times, papers uploaded in the past 12 months are ranked here according to how frequently they have been downloaded by governments, companies and other non-academic users. This makes it possible to see what topics and forms of research align most closely with societal concerns... In this year’s analysis, finance and technology dominate the papers downloaded, reflecting the interest from readers including investors, regulators and decision makers in ideas that are topical and have practical applications. Sustainability also features, but more modestly.
Science Communication after Science Publishing
Since the volume of necessary communication is now too great for most human researchers to handle in most disciplines in most years, most communications of research findings, evidence and conclusions will be shared by communications between machines. Not only will research communication be born digital, it will be born machine interoperable. Standardised tool sets will emerge for communicating the key elements. These will not be in a narrative form: the tools that assemble them from the lab notebooks of the researchers will create the ontological structures, the semantic analysis and the metadata required to make them indexable and searchable. Metrics around usage and re-usage in other work will index the contribution being made to collaborative science.
Platforms and technology
2025 Report: Technology Needs of Small and Medium Journal Publishers
The survey results indicate that small-to-mid-sized publishers currently heavily rely on vendors to support their core publishing activities, and will likely require greater support in the future, particularly to maintain operational efficiency, mitigate research integrity risks, and remain competitive in online search. While working towards these aims, many smaller publishers are encountering tensions associated with budget and human resource constraints, particularly in terms of managing their technology stacks. The results suggest that many smaller publishers may be open to the potential for AI solutions to help them save time. However, sentiments towards AI were mixed.
JB: You can access the report here. If you work for a small publisher or vendor this 40-page report is a must read.
River Valley Technologies Unifies Publishing Data with Customizable Live Reporting Tools
River Valley Technologies, a leader in transformative XML-based, end-to-end publishing solutions, expands their customized reporting tools, DARVi and ReView’s custom reporting, designed to eliminate data silos and give publishers real-time insight across all stages of the publishing workflow. Built to consolidate data from both River Valley and third-party systems, the tools offer a unified reporting experience, transforming fragmented datasets into actionable intelligence.
Open access and open research
Can a CC License Constrain Fair Use or Other Copyright Limitations or Exemptions?
Many academics and publishers who release work under Creative Commons licenses — especially the Non-Commercial or No Derivatives variants — are alarmed to discover that their content may still be scraped or analyzed by companies developing large language models. Some have reacted by suggesting that their chosen CC BY-NC license forbids such use by for-profit entities. But legally, this is not how it works.
JB: Everyone should read this clear explanation from Lisa Hinchliffe. And perhaps also browse this helpful list of Scholarly Kitchen on licensing put together by David Crotty.
BioOne and Max Planck Society Sign 3-Year Agreement to Include Subscribe to Open Pilot
BioOne’s Subscribe to Open pilot brings together 71 journals from 54 societies, museums, and research organizations worldwide into a conditional open access framework —representing the largest number of independent publishers under a single S2O offer to date. This agreement ensures that all 84 Max Planck Institutes maintain reading access to the full BioOne Complete’s collection of over 230,000 biological sciences articles while simultaneously advancing open access objectives. Success of this pilot will also connect Max Planck Institute-affiliated researchers with broader audiences throughout the international biosciences community.
JB: Is there a list somewhere of the S2O pilots and what their outcomes are?
Embracing the complexity of ‘100% OA’: from percentage to participation
The culmination of all this work is a new position paper from OASPA. This final output from our 2025 project conveys how success in delivering open access for more than 50% of research articles (the inspiration for naming our ‘Next 50%’ project) reveals the limitations of what is, for many, today’s business-as-usual.
JB: It certainly is complex, not least because bibliometric evidence suggests that closed is growing faster than open right now (see graph in the next story).
Evident in the data collected is that significant progress has been made over the last ten years toward full Open Access. The charts provided in this dashboard illustrate that gold is the greatest contributor to progress across global regions, top article-producing countries/regions, disciplines, and publications based on research funded by the top global funders. This dashboard also demonstrates a significant increase in the opportunity for an author to choose gold OA across the ten-year period.
JB: The dashboard has recently been updated with 2024 data. It seems strange to me that the narrative quoted above makes no mention of the sharp uptick in “subscription-only” content; the graph below is from the STM dashboard (which uses Scopus data).
The STM OA dashboard includes hybrid OA in its “Gold” category (which is different to the way Unpaywall uses the word “Gold”. Confusing.). STM has also replaced “Closed” with “Subscription-only”, presumably because the optics look better that way.
Company reports
Wolters Kluwer 2025 Nine-Month Trading Update
Learning, Research & Practice recorded 2% organic growth (9M 2024: 3%), with good organic growth in digital subscriptions and open access revenues partly offset by declines in print formats and nonrecurring revenues. Excluding print, the unit’s organic growth would have been 5% (9M 2024: 5%).
Peer review
Publishers join the Review Commons peer review process
This collaboration between like-minded editorial teams aims to provide better service to authors and reduce the burden on reviewers. Instead of each journal working independently and potentially engaging in redundant peer review cycles, Review Commons builds a “distributed system,” where editorial teams from partner journals assist in running the journal-agnostic peer review process, drawing from their pools of expert reviewers.
Manuscript Submissions Are Up! That’s Good, Right?
Academic publishing has long been a popularity contest: each journal is an exclusive club to which many are drawn, but only a few get invited in. The best clubs feature the most brilliant editors, the most interesting research, and – by extension – the choosiest manuscript selection process. It therefore makes good sense to measure the success of your club by the length of the queue outside, quantified by the number of manuscripts submitted by hopeful authors each year… To abuse the exclusive club metaphor from above a little more: our club has a strict dress code, but our success metrics demand we let everyone in and then have the bouncers wrestle the hippies in flip-flops off the dance floor.
JB: Surely the bouncers would ‘encourage’ the hippies to transfer themselves to the club next door, owned by the same proprietor, which charges them an Artistic Performance Choreography fee (and probably upsells them dancing lessons to help them to improve their moves)?
More seriously, Tim Vines raises some excellent points in his essay. Some publishers already impose a barrier to entry by charging a submission fee. Tim’s proposal to mandate open science practices as a way of preventing spam submissions is much more appealing, but would be harder (and more expensive) to implement.
New journals and partnerships
American Physiological Society to Assume Publishing Operations for Function in 2026
The American Physiological Society (APS) will assume full publishing operations for Function beginning with the 2026 publication year. The transition marks the journal’s move from its current publishing arrangement with Oxford University Press (OUP) to APS’ in-house Publications Division. This strategic shift reinforces APS’ commitment to strengthening Function’s position as a leading open-access journal for physiology and to enhancing the publishing experience for authors, reviewers and readers.
JB: Function has only published around 200 research and review articles since it launched in 2020 (i.e. around 35 per year). Its impact factor is 3.8 (lower than Scientific Reports) and it’s ranked 17/87 in the Physiology JCR category. This is at odds with the statement of intent in the launch editorial:
FUNCTION looks forward to working with you to publish your best work in the most attractive way possible and give it the context and prominence it deserves.
Moving Function away from OUP is therefore an interesting, and perhaps understandable, decision.
Physiology departments are less prevalent than they once were and the discipline itself is in decline (my PhD is in neurophysiology, so I’ve been monitoring this trend over the decades).
In that regard, it’s worth briefly mentioning that the APS recently launched a campaign entitled Physiology: The Science Life Depends On “to elevate awareness of physiology’s crucial role in science and advocate for sustained research funding.” However, physiology isn’t the only traditional life science discipline that’s struggling to create a modern identity for itself, as the next story illustrates.
ASBMB to launch Insights in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, a new broad based journal
Building on its historic leadership to chronicle discoveries in molecular life science, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) today announced the upcoming launch of a new gold open access journal, Insights in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IBMB). IBMB will join the recognized ASBMB family of journals dedicated to publishing outstanding science and offering swift, constructive review by and for scientists.
JB: The ASBMB currently publishes three journals. Why launch a new OA journal, you may ask? This graph from Dimensions, which plots article output (research + review) for the three ASBMB journals, may give us a clue.
Social media
Sentiment analysis of research attention: the Altmetric proof of concept
Social media platforms are not passive channels of dissemination; they are dynamic environments where research is mobilized to persuade, challenge, or signal credibility. Our findings showed that AI can play a critical role in uncovering how research is received and repurposed in these contexts, offering a more nuanced understanding of attention and influence in our society.
Societal impact
Within ALPSP’s SDGs and Publishing special interest group, a subgroup focuses specifically on measurement. We are learning together—sharing progress, challenges, and lessons from other industries. A key step is establishing a baseline. That is why EASE developed an SDG checklist: publishers or editors answer yes-or-no questions on specific actions, save their results, and revisit later to track progress. This accommodates diversity—from large publishers to single journals—by allowing reporting on relevant actions while still showing overall commitment. Measuring progress is complex, but practical tools are emerging to make it clearer and more manageable.
JB: A checklist? Excellent! We always need more checklists.
DEIA
Editorial boards of top Internal Medicine and allied super-specialty journals lack adequate representation from low and lower-middle-income countries. This deficiency has significant implications, affecting knowledge production, policy development, and the overall progress of science and research on a global scale. Urgent measures are required to establish a fair and inclusive scholarly publishing system that caters to researchers from all regions.
This paper explores the concept of semantic multilingual search: an emerging approach that retrieves information by meaning rather than by exact wording, enabling users to search in any supported language and discover relevant work across other languages. We believe that this approach, if applied to the scholarly knowledge commons, could significantly enhance the discoverability of research outputs in a very multilingual environment. It is important to note that this is not a translation technology, but rather a way of associating meaning to related content across different languages.
Selling and marketing
The untapped potential of community
And yet, many societies have not fully realised the commercial potential of this engagement. Too often, opportunities to create new revenue streams through targeted sponsorship, advertising, and partnership initiatives go unexplored – often due to misassumptions of what this means for the reader/member experience.
JB: The size of the opportunity will depend on the subject area. In most cases it’s more ‘icing’ than ‘cake’.
Couperin.org provides additional APC data for 30 institutions
The new data set provided by Couperin covers publication fees for 965 articles, total expenditure amounts to 2,516,027€ and the average fee is 2,607€.
And finally…
This is the end of an era. I’ve written around 140 newsletters on an amateur basis, often in the early hours of Sunday morning. I now need to up my game and make these missives professional, worthy of your time and money.
It’s easy to forward an email around a department. If you want to do that occasionally, that’s fine. I’m unlikely to send the lawyers after you. I hope, however, that there’s enough value in these newsletters for a significant proportion of readers to be willing to support my efforts. Substack makes it very easy to manage group subscriptions, which is one of the main reasons why I moved Journalology onto this platform.
If you are the head of a department, perhaps you might consider getting your team an early Christmas present by subscribing as a group?
Thank you in advance for your support.
Until next time,
James
P.S. Another advantage of Substack is that I can “pause” the subscription timer while I’m away on vacation or travelling. This means that if you subscribe for 1 year now, you probably won’t need to pay again until the start of 2027.