News: Academic Publishing Weekly

An AI-hosted podcast, editor resignations, and UT Press's 75th anniversary

Posted on January 10, 2025 in News

Scholarly Journals Release an AI Podcast and Springer Nature’s Latest AI Tool

Kicking off this year’s news is the launch of an AI podcast created by 67 Bricks. “AI Talks with Bone & Joint” features AI hosts that provide “bitesize audio summaries” of the journals Bone & Joint Open, Bone & Joint Research, and Bone & Joint 360. Emma Vodden, Director of Publishing & Innovation at Bone & Joint, commented, “We are excited to launch this innovative podcast which will give our users a useful summary of a paper and help expand the audience for our journals.” In additional AI news, Springer Nature developed a new AI tool for editors and peer reviewers. The tool works by “automating a number of editorial quality checks and alerting editors to potentially unsuitable manuscripts.” Springer Nature stressed that the tool is overseen by human specialists and is being “tested and verified on over 100 OA journals…and across over 100,000 submissions.”

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Editors Resign from Journal of Human Evolution and Acquisition News

Several editors of Elsevier’s Journal of Human Evolution have resigned in the latest mass departure from an academic journal. A resignation letter from the “joint editors in chief, all editors emeriti and all but one associate editor” cites concerns over Elsevier’s use of AI, production errors, and the drop of the dual-editor model. In response, Elsevier stated that AI is not utilized in “production processes.” Elsevier also underscored that it ceased a “production workflow that inadvertently introduced the formatting errors to which the editors refer.” Turning to acquisitions, Constellation Software’s Harris Computing purchased the library system software company SirsiDynix. The acquisition marks the end of SirsiDynix’s ownership by private equity firm ICV Partners. Library Technology’s Marshall Breeding described the move as “a definitive exit from ongoing cycles of private equity investment into a permanent position within a public company specializing in the administration of technology-focused businesses.” Lastly, Sage announced the acquisition of several business-centered titles from higher education textbook publisher Textbook Media Press.

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Academics Weigh in on Bluesky

How are academics faring as they make the move from X to Bluesky? According to Science’s Kai Kupferschmidt, researchers are seeing both benefits and drawbacks of the platform. For instance, scholars appreciate Bluesky’s lack of algorithmic bias, as it “shows all the posts from the accounts a user follows in chronological order, with the most recent first.” Joe Bak-Coleman, a researcher at the University of Konstanz, commented, “One thing that struck me is the visibility of people with smaller followings and early-career researchers.” Researchers also observed the small size of Bluesky, which although limits user interactions, can counter what Manlio de Domenico of the University of Padua terms the “typical rich-get-richer effect.” Nonetheless, the University of Manchester’s Mark Carrigan warned that Bluesky’s community-based nature may deteriorate if the platform incorporates monetized services. [Science]

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UT Press Turns 75 and Upcoming Reads for 2025

The University of Texas Press is 75! In celebration, Eliza Pillsbury of the Alcalde spoke to authors and staff about the press’s impact and approach to AI. Director Robert Devens highlighted the topics covered by the publisher’s more than 4,000 titles and its work with booksellers and authors. Pillsbury further noted that UT Press is “one of the ‘Campus Gems’” and plans to strengthen its relationships with other campus stakeholders. Next, Literary Hub shared 291 upcoming releases in its “Most Anticipated Books of 2025” list. Highlights include Viet Thanh Nguyen’s To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other from Harvard University Press and Robert Garland’s What to Expect When You’re Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife from Princeton University Press, both set to publish on April 8.

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The Public’s Understanding of Preprints and Reasons for Retractions

It seems the public is yet to understand the difference between preprints and peer-reviewed journal articles. Studies from University of Amsterdam’s Alice Fleerackers reveal that even being given the definition of a preprint does not improve understandings. Providing a definition of preprints also did not impact respondents’ opinions of a study’s credibility. Fleerackers stressed the need for “science communicators and journalists…to build some [public] understanding of what peer review does and doesn’t do.” Next, a new database includes over “14,000 studies that have been withdrawn from the preprint server arXiv since its launch in 1991.” Delip Rao, co-author of a study describing the dataset, explained that WithdrarXiv helps researchers understand why preprints may be removed from arXiv. Rao also hopes the database leads to the development of “automated tools that flag potential errors to researchers.”

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