Public-good curation
Journalology #127
News headlines
Cureus loses its impact factor
Yesterday, the fate of Cureus — which published 25,000 articles last year — was quietly announced by Clarivate and the news was not good for the journal’s publisher, Springer Nature. Cureus has been removed from Web of Science, which described it as an “Editorial De-listing”. Meanwhile, Heliyon, a Cell Press journal published by Elsevier, is still in limbo 13 months after its ‘on hold’ status was made public.
JB: What happened to Heliyon is the most interesting part of this story in many ways. Heliyon is the Cell Press equivalent of Scientific Reports. It was the third largest journal in 2024 and this year will publish roughly 15,000 fewer research articles after being put ‘on hold’ by Web of Science in September last year. This means that Heliyon’s publisher, Elsevier, has missed out on around $30m of APC revenue this year alone.
Meanwhile, Scientific Reports continues to grow and looks set to publish around 45,000 research articles this year, which would generate around $100m in revenue for Springer Nature (depending on waivers etc.; APC is $2690).
The graph below tells the story well. The dotted lines represent year-to-date article numbers.
Will Scientific Reports suffer a similar fate to Heliyon and other large fully OA journals at some point in the future? The commercial stakes are very high. Publishers are learning the hard way that research integrity prevention is mission critical.
New Wiley Guidelines Give Researchers Clear Path Forward in Responsible AI Use
As the research publishing industry experiences rapid AI adoption, these guidelines will serve as a model for responsible AI integration across the sector. They emphasize that AI use should not result in automatic manuscript rejection. Instead, editorial evaluation should focus on research quality, integrity, and transparency, using disclosure as a routine, intentional practice. Beyond establishing standards, the guidelines provide practical examples, workflow integration tips, and decision-making frameworks.
JB: You can read the guidelines here. The cynic in me thinks “authors don’t read guidelines”, but Wiley has at least tried.
Widespread image reuse, manipulation uncovered in animal studies of brain injury
More than 200 papers on ways to prevent brain injury after a stroke contain problematic images, according to an analysis published today in PLOS Biology. Researchers found dozens of duplicated Western blots and reused images of tissues and cells purportedly showing different experimental conditions — both within a single paper and across separate publications.
JB: You can read the PLOS Biology paper here. It’s a fascinating story and an excellent piece of scholarship. I spent more time reading this article than any other included in this week’s newsletter.
Future of chronic disease journal in limbo after cuts at CDC
Most of the government editorial staff at Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD), an academic journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for more than 2 decades, have been told they’re being terminated, leaving the publication’s future uncertain, Science has learned. Reduction-in-force (RIF) notices were sent to six of the journal’s federal staffers earlier this month, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees CDC, confirmed to Science. PCD’s website currently notes five federal staffers, including the editor-in-chief, although it may not be a full list; the site names another 10 contractors supporting the journal’s operations.
Other news
Publishing integrity
Web of Science company involved in dubious awards in Iraq
But Hassan, who has had 21 papers retracted, was one of several Iraqi scientists and institutions winning accolades at the ministry’s high-profile Iraq Education Conference 2025 in Baghdad earlier this month. At the award ceremony on October 11, a deputy minister said a Clarivate team helped develop the selection criteria for the awards, which were based on Web of Science data. Like the other winners, Hassan received his two trophies from the minister, Naeem Abd Yaser Al-Aboudi, after a Clarivate representative announced his name from the stage.
JB: This is a bad look for Clarivate. Retraction Watch also published ‘A new low’: Researchers at Iraqi university must cite colleagues, school journals in papers, which is a similar case to the one I included in last week’s newsletter. It would be worth checking your organisation’s exposure to these institutions, just in case.
Problems with eLife’s new article type: Replication studies
I think that we won’t get replication studies in biosciences unless they are explicitly incentivised - and judged on their methodological quality rather than their results. Meanwhile, because of the field’s obsession with novelty, research progress stalls as people keep trying to build on results without knowing whether they provide a solid foundation. My prediction: give it a year, and see how many Replication Studies have been accepted for peer review in eLife. I’ll be surprised if it’s more than zero.
JB: I’m in broad agreement with Dorothy Bishop here. I doubt these will be popular. Let’s hope we’re both wrong.
Reproducibility Failure in Biomedical Research: Problems and Solutions
This review examines the factors that contribute to irreproducibility in conducting, reporting, and reviewing research and assesses the effectiveness and desirability of interventions aimed at improving reproducibility. It highlights the need for balanced scientific reforms that strengthen reproducibility without stifling innovation or introducing unintended consequences. A critical appraisal of the role of meta-research is essential to ensure sustainable improvements in research quality.
JB: This article is authored by Tamarinde Haven and John Ioannidis and is published in Annual Review of Medicine. The current volume is listed as open access, but I hit a paywall. I’m not sure what I did wrong.
Guidelines and checklists are widely used to augment memory, improve quality and consistency, ensure thoroughness and efficiency, structure repetitive tasks, and to reduce errors, omissions, ambiguities, and misunderstandings. These characteristics make them ideal for reporting the designs, activities, and results of medical research. In fact, EBM is built around developing and using guidelines and checklists. As an early participant in the clinical guideline movement, I learned a lot about how and how not to prepare guidelines. I describe my lessons here.
JB: Editors love guidelines and checklists. There are 692 of them in the Equator Network database. This guideline on how to write guidelines is very meta should make it easier to reach the 1000 mark by Christmas.
In this report we describe a review mill run by well-established, Italian physicians in the fields of gynecology and oncology, mostly affecting papers with clinical implications; this is an alarming development as it means that the quality of research literature in this area may be damaged because peer review has been compromised.
New guide makes the case for the social good of librarians, editors, and other information curators
The People’s Case for Curators makes the case for “public-good curators” including librarians, editors, research integrity officers, specialist journalists. Their careful, principled work helps society find reliable information through transparent and accountable processes, standing in stark contrast to the hidden, algorithm-driven curation that shapes social media feeds.
JB: You can read this Sense About Science report here. Maybe this newsletter displays the characteristics of a public-good curator?!? Here’s the definition:
Public-good curators are individuals committed to transparency about where they source and how they evaluate information. They help society navigate our world’s complex information landscape by protecting pathways to trustworthy answers and inviting good questioning.
Artificial Intelligence
The findings of this study provide a foundation for further research to systematically evaluate discrepancies between self-reported and software-detected AI use in BMJ Group manuscript submissions... Based on our findings, we recommend that journals consider implementing a more structured AI disclosure question during manuscript submission, including dropdown menus specifying AI tools and tasks. This may improve the quality or extent of disclosure by prompting authors to consider particular steps of their research.
JB: OK, but bear in mind the next article in this list, too.
Understanding Reader Perception Shifts upon Disclosure of AI Authorship
As AI writing support becomes ubiquitous, how disclosing its use affects reader perception remains a critical, underexplored question. We conducted a study with 261 participants to examine how revealing varying levels of AI involvement shifts author impressions across six distinct communicative acts. Our analysis of 990 responses shows that disclosure generally erodes perceptions of trustworthiness, caring, competence, and likability, with the sharpest declines in social and interpersonal writing. A thematic analysis of participants’ feedback links these negative shifts to a perceived loss of human sincerity, diminished author effort, and the contextual inappropriateness of AI.
JB: Academics under-report AI use. This preprint explores why. In short, academic readers are less likely to trust text that has been ‘improved’ by AI.
Do Academic Libraries Have a Strategy for AI?
Libraries worry most about truthfulness: hallucinations, fabrications, summaries that mislead more than they inform. They fear the opacity of the machine, and what it might mean for students who may lack the critical skill set to parse good information from bad. Publishers, on the other hand, fear loss of ownership: the possibility that their intellectual property will be ingested into large language models without consent or compensation.
JB: I enjoyed this essay, but this quote provides a caricature. I know of many publishers who primarily worry about truthfulness too.
Platforms and technology
With a clear direction, in ten months the team has already delivered the ScholarOne Gateway redesign for author and reviewer experiences, built the Relay API to rapidly onboard integration partners, launched research integrity partnerships with CACTUS, Signals, Clear Skies, and the STM Integrity Hub, and begun the critical editor experience redesign.
JB: The real eye opener in this article is that Will Schweitzer, the CEO of Silverchair, tracks “his energy levels through Apple Watch data to identify which colleagues give him the most energy in collaborating”. Note to self: I must remember to drink a strong coffee and use enthusiastic mannerisms the next time I meet Will at a conference. He won’t want to speak to me again, otherwise.
2025 Frankfurt Publishing Pulse Check
Perhaps the most interesting finding from our survey is the confidence gap between publishers and non-publishers (technology vendors, service providers, consultants/advisories). 8 of the 13 (62%) publishers who responded told us that current market conditions are worse than they were this time last year, while 7 out of 19 (37%) non-publishers thought that conditions are worse right now. Publishers are feeling the strain of research integrity issues, shifting business models and squeezed library budget.
JB: The sample size is small, but the headline mirrors my anecdotal experiences talking to publisher clients.
Open access and open research
The Weaponisation of Openness? Toward a New Social Contract for Data in the AI Era
But as with many well-intentioned revolutions, openness has more recently been weaponised. What began as a movement to democratise knowledge has instead become justification for a new kind of extraction — this time not of oil or minerals, but of meaning. This phenomenon has become especially evident with the rise of generative AI, which relies on its voracious appetite for public data to train its models and refine its predictions. In the process, the very datasets, research repositories, and public web archives that were designed to serve the public interest have been harvested to train the large language models now controlled by a few corporations in a handful of countries.
JB: Surely ‘open’, by definition, means that anyone can use the data, even dictators, racists, and AI companies.
The recommendations presented in this document aim to provide a basis for keeping the publication process as free as possible from barriers for authors in order to enable an inclusive and epistemically just scientific publication system.
DEIA
The Next Disruption is Listening — In Every Language
Could it be that while we are building pathways for sharing knowledge, we aren’t doing the same for understanding it? We have made significant strides in making research open but much of that progress is designed for people who speak one language — English. Journal articles and data sets remain inaccessible to those who think, teach, or solve problems in a language other than English.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Concerns From JAMA Network Peer Reviewers
Prior research suggests that EDI concerns in manuscripts garner more editorial attention when peer reviewers can flag those issues before publication. Beginning in March 2023, JAMA Network journals invited peer reviewers to check a box when manuscripts prompted EDI concerns and to explain such concerns in confidential comments to the editor. We examined JAMA Network peer reviewers’ use of the EDI concerns checkbox and used JAMA Dermatology as a case study to categorize concerns described in confidential comments.
Sales and marketing
iMeta: Boosting academic sharing and collaboration via social media
iMeta is a comprehensive open-access journal, launched in 2022 in partnership with Wiley by the microbiology and bioinformatics research community… iMeta has emerged as a model for how emerging journals can rapidly build influence by embracing innovative communication strategies. Central to its approach is leveraging diversified social media platforms, such as WeChat, Bilibili, X, YouTube, and BlueSky.
JB: Your marketing team should read this. It’s an excellent case study.
Evolving Our Open Access Strategy: AIP Publishing Concludes the Subscribe to Open Pilot
Financially, the journals met their revenue target thresholds for both 2024 and 2025, but there were a few institutions who canceled their subscriptions. While S2O offered a level of stability, it did not provide a path for scaling or monetizing the journals’ steady expansion. With operational costs increasing, this balance was not sustainable for the long term. AIPP’s S2O pilot showed that collective support for open access can maintain a journal’s performance, but it did not provide a mechanism for meaningful growth in submissions, usage, or revenue. As a result, AIP Publishing determined that continuing S2O was not the most sustainable or effective way to serve our community, particularly alongside newer, more flexible models.
JB: This sums up many of my concerns about S2O. Operational costs are increasing (research integrity checks, AI investment etc.) and publishers, even society publishers, need to grow their portfolios in order to maintain market share. It’s worth remembering that AIP Publishing announced their new business model, AIP Fusion, last month; running S2O in parallel would have been a confusing sales message [AIP = American Institute of Physics].
Optica Publishing Group today announced that the Journal of the Optical Society of America B (JOSA B) will pilot the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model in 2026. This innovative publishing approach leverages the existing subscription framework to make research articles freely available to readers worldwide—without shifting publishing costs to authors.
The Royal Society Moves to Subscribe to Open
Overall, we would like S2O to become deeply embedded in the STEM publishing ecosystem. It is cost neutral and a relatively small change through which libraries can enable entire journals to become open access. This combination of simplicity and transparency has generated enthusiasm for S2O among librarians the world over. Publishers now need to demonstrate to those librarians that in addition to being aligned with their missions, S2O delivers a return on investment that justifies their expenditure. With sensible features that make the S2O proposition work well for both libraries and publishing houses—like multi-year agreements, “premium benefits” for S2O supporters, and collective sales packages—S2O will continue to grow as a trusted and durable model for delivering open access.
JB: This thoughtful essay from Rod Cookson is well worth reading if you’re interested in the S2O model. I can see why libraries might like the idea of S2O, but is it good for publishers from a financial sustainability point of view? Rod and his team clearly think so. AIP Publishing is not so sure.
New journals and partnerships
De Gruyter Brill launches new journals Transport Phenomena and Open Transport
De Gruyter Brill is launching two new scholarly journals, Transport Phenomena (TP), and Open Transport (OT). Transport Phenomena (TP) and Open Transport (OT) share the same mission and scientific scope – publishing the latest advances in fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and mass transfer, and welcoming contributions from all areas of the physical and biological sciences, applied mathematics, and every branch of engineering.
JB: This announcement caught my eye for three reasons.
First, it’s unusual for a publisher to launch a hybrid journal and a fully open access journal that cover the same topic at the same time. Normally the fully open access journal is launched as a transfer destination after the hybrid journal has established itself.
Second, De Gruyter Brill has a strong humanities and social sciences focus (plus an interest in engineering and allied disciplines). Launching two new journals in this subject area suggests a scope-expansion strategy.
Third, the editor-in-chief of Transport Phenomena is the former editor of Physics of Fluids, who left his post earlier this year. Physics of Fluids is published by AIP Publishing and is one of the fastest growing hybrid journals, as the below graph from Dimensions shows.
Note how “Closed” is growing much faster than the open options (also note that AIP Publishing says “Open science isn’t just a goal, it’s our mission”).
Why is closed growing so fast in a journal published by an organisation that’s actively promoting a transition to open science? In part it’s because Physics of Fluids is attracting lots of papers from China and the vast majority of those authors are choosing to publish using the subscription route (see my recent essay The rise of China and the fall of open access for more about this trend).
So far this year Physics of Fluids has published 5200 research articles; 71% of those articles have at least one author from China. 98% of papers from China are classified as “Closed” using the Unpaywall definition compared with 84% of articles that don’t have any authors from China.
AAAS announces addition of Cancer Communications to Science Partner Journal Program
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is pleased to announce its partnership with Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center (SYSUCC) to publish Cancer Communications as a Science Partner Journal. Cancer Communications publishes basic, clinical, and translational cancer research. The journal welcomes submissions concerning clinical trials, epidemiology, molecular and cellular biology, and genetics.
JB: This announcement made me sit up because the Nature Portfolio has a series of journals that have the “Communications” prefix (including Communications Biology). Cancer Communications is now published by one of its closest competitors (AAAS), and sounds as though it’s a spin off of the highly successful Nature Communications, but isn’t.
Careers
STM launches “Publishing Decoded” educational resource center
Publishing Decoded showcases the extensive, often invisible infrastructure work that scholarly publishers provide to support the modern research ecosystem. The accessible microsite serves as an educational resource for journalists, policymakers, funders, and academic stakeholders, explaining how academic publishing operates today and the expanded role that modern publishers play in research.
JB: Bookmark this page and include it in your onboarding material for employees who are new to the industry.
And finally…
Christmas will soon be upon us. If you’re struggling to know what to buy the medical editor in your life, you may want to consider pre-ordering Bare-knuckle Surgeon. Here’s the novel’s blurb:
Incompetent surgeons, corrupt royal colleges, nepotism and quackery. The medical establishment - a small coterie of self-serving doctors - went unchallenged. Until 1823, when a young surgeon, son of a farmer, who’d survived being at sea, mastered bare-knuckle fighting, and escaped assassination, did what no doctor had dared. Risking ruin, Thomas Wakley established The Lancet, an uncompromising radical journal which scandalized the establishment and initiated modern health care. Why him? What made him do what thousands hadn’t? Based on true events, this novel tells how this ingenious man overcame adversities, driven by his passion for reform.
Until next time,
James
Great summary as always! Super-helpful link to the STM intro resource for those joining the scholarly publishing industry - I am adding this to my basic training track.