News: Academic Publishing Weekly

The biggest publishers in the world, thoughts on ChatGPT for its three-year anniversary, and podcasts join Altmetric

Posted on October 17, 2025 in News

Another Week, Another Attack on Higher Ed and Scholarly Publishing

Where to begin? Earlier this month, the Trump administration sent a “compact” to nine universities (the University of Texas at Austin, MIT, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Brown, Penn, the University of Virginia, the University of Arizona, and the University of Southern California), which, if signed, promised federal funding in exchange for policies like limiting the number of international students, requiring standardized testing, and the removal of departments that “spark violence against conservative ideas.” This week, Trump expanded that invitation to all higher education institutions via his platform of choice, Truth Social. As some speculate, this move might be in response to institutions like Brown and MIT already rejecting the deal. In addition, the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) stepped in, releasing a statement on the “current flood of US federal government policy upheavals.” Also signing the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Statement on the compact, AUPresses writes: “the Compact simultaneously tramples academic freedom and denigrates the humanities, both of which are essential to the work of our members and their authors.”

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The Biggest Publishers in the World and the Latest in Industry Revenues

There’s a new biggest publisher in town, according to Publishers Weekly’s annual ranking of the world’s largest publishers. After seven years at the top of the list the RELX Group has been bumped by ThomsonReuters, per 2024 revenues. Thomson recorded $6.43 billion while RELX dropped a bit to $6.2 billion. Meanwhile, McGraw Hill made it back into the top 10 now that its figures are posted publicly. Moving to year-to-date financials, the Association of American Publishers’ latest StatShot report says overall publishing industry revenues are down slightly by 2.1% to $7.6 billion when compared to same time last year.

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Wiley and Frontiers Unveil AI Platforms and Services

This week Wiley announced the integration of scholarly content and “AI-powered” research initiatives all on one platform, Wiley AI Gateway. Wiley aims for the platform to combine trusted, peer reviewed academic research with the latest AI tools, allowing researchers to make use of AI initiatives with reliable scholarship. So far, Gateway’s AI tools include Anthropic’s Claude, AWS marketplace, Mistral AI’s Le Chat, and Perplexity. The platform is currently available to beta users, and publishers Sage and American Society for Microbiology (ASM) have signed on to add their content. But Wiley’s not the only one making AI moves. Open science publisher Frontiers announced Frontiers FAIR² Data Management, “the world’s first all-in-one, AI-powered service for research data.” Following the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), the project ensures datasets are reusable, discoverable, and “AI-ready” for researchers. In the announcement, Frontiers outlines the service’s goals and feedback thus far.

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A ChatGPT Retrospective, Mining LLM Prompt Data for Usage Clues, and Cambridge Calls for Big Change in Academic Publishing

On the eve of its three-year launch anniversary, the Chefs over at the Kitchen checked in on ChatGPT to see whether all the early hoopla has panned out. Post author Phill Jones notes that the next phase of AI is still difficult to discern, with developments in discovery, summarization, and workflows showing signs of “maturing and becoming more integrated.” Even so, Jones wonders whether agentic AI will come into better focus as the next big thing. Over at Choice’s own LibTech Insights blog, Editor Daniel Pfeiffer digs into a recent economic report written by OpenAI, Harvard, and Duke researchers. The study mines a large dataset of one million conversations between users and ChatGPT to see how the LLM is actually being used. We won’t spoil it here, but the takeaways are actually pretty surprising. Meanwhile, Cambridge University Press has released a report calling for immediate and sweeping changes in academic publishing. Research Information has this grim prediction from Mandy Hill, Managing Director of Cambridge University Press: “Academic publishing is at a critical juncture. It is not breaking yet, but will without major change.” Hill notes that barriers to open access may be persisting, but there are even deeper, systemic issues that threaten “the whole research ecosystem.”

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Podcasts on Altmetric and GetFTR and Web of Science Join Forces

Grab your headphones (or mic stands)—podcasts are coming to Altmetric. Digital Science announced this week that its research engagement platform Altmetric now includes podcasts as an attention source, adding to mediums like social media, blogs, patents, and more. Digital Science outlined how this move will positively impact academics, publishers, and funders, with Miguel Garcia, VP of Product at Digital Science, noting, “With Altmetric podcast tracking, we recognise that these real-world conversations play a critical role in shaping public understanding and acceptance of research.” In other news, Get Full Text Research (GetFTR) has joined forces with the Web of Science (WoS). The move adds “full-text indicators” and “smart links” to content onto the WoS platform, thereby “helping researchers discover and access trusted full-text content more efficiently.” GetFTR notes that the partnership will aid researchers by increasing full-text access and publishers by bringing more visibility to their output.

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