News: Academic Publishing Weekly

Silverchair acquires Clarivate's ScholarOne, academics' perspectives on GenAI, and current research trends

Posted on November 1, 2024 in News

Silverchair Acquires Clarivate’s ScholarOne

Silverchair, an independent platform partner for publishers, has acquired ScholarOne Manuscripts & Conferences (ScholarOne) from Clarivate. Of note, the ScholarOne “platforms [are] used by more than 9,000 scholarly journals and conferences to review millions of manuscripts and conference abstracts each year.” Roger Schonfeld of The Scholarly Kitchen commented on the acquisition, considering Clarivate’s motivations for selling ScholarOne. In particular, Schonfeld observed that Clarivate is moving away from providing publisher services and that offering up its publishing enterprise product avoids competition with other publishers in the market. On the flip side, ScholarOne aligns with Silverchair’s core audience and offers a “golden opportunity for Silverchair to scale up.” Schonfeld spoke with Will Schweitzer of Silverchair and Bar Veinstein, Oren Beit-Arie, and Amy Bourke-Waite of Clarivate, who provided additional perspectives on how the acquisition benefits both companies.

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AI News Round-Up: Ithaka S+R Report, Cambridge’s Approach to AI Licensing, and Springer Nature Hires a Chief Digital Officer

Ithaka S+R is analyzing how publishers, librarians, and other academics view generative AI, building on a report published earlier this year. In its new study, Ithaka S+R found that most interviewees “see a future in which generative AI becomes embedded in workflows across the publication lifecycle, making positive contributions to existing goals, processes, and infrastructures for scholarly publishing.” The report recommended that stakeholders develop a standard definition of ethical AI and prioritize collaboration across sectors. Next, Cambridge University Press & Assessment (CUPA) reached out to 20,000 writers for permission to license their work to AI developers. CUPA’s managing director Mandy Hill shared that the decision is a “huge extra investment” and will lead to longer deal procedures. Nonetheless, Hill stressed that authors should view licensing as a “positive decision for them to be involved in, rather than feel it’s something that’s been done to them.” Hill revealed that, thus far, the majority of authors opted in for licensing. Lastly, Bayer’s Saskia Steinacker will take on a newly created role as Chief Digital Officer at Springer Nature. Steinacker’s responsibilities include “lead[ing] the creation of state-of-the-art products and solutions to support researchers, authors, editors, and reviewers across the research and publishing lifecycle.”

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Is eLife’s Impact Factor at Risk?

In other Clarivate news, indexing of the journal eLife in the Web of Science is currently “on hold.” Clarivate pointed to concerns over eLife’s publishing model and the journal’s publications being “decoupled from validation by peer review.” Clarivate will perform an investigation of the journal using its current quality standards, but eLife is at risk of no longer receiving a Journal Impact Factor. In response, eLife’s management stated that the decision “stifles attempts to show how publishing and peer review can be improved using open science principles, and instead gives the appearance of ongoing support for established and ineffective publishing models that have needed to change for so long.” [Science]

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Assessing Research Trends in Academia

A new report from Digital Science examines how research transformation influences academics and current business models. The report includes interviews with community members and a survey of 380 respondents—faculty, academic librarians, research officers—from 70 countries. Topics include trends and attitudes toward AI, research metrics, and security. Digital Science found that despite growth in research collaborations, obstacles persist for open research adoption and AI upskilling. Mark Hahnel, VP Open Research, and Simon Porter, VP of Research Futures, underscored that, “Reflecting on the findings, we believe academic institutions can position themselves to deliver meaningful research in the era of three key developments – AI, open research and research impact.” [Research Information]

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Cundill History Prize Names Winner and JSTOR Partners with Argentina’s Prometeo Editorial

One hundred books from Argentine publisher Prometeo Editorial are now available open access on JSTOR as part of a multi-year partnership between JSTOR, the Latin Americanist Research Resources Project (LARRP), and Libreria Garcia Cambeiro. Since added to JSTOR in March, the titles “have been used more than 10,354 times so far by users at 585 institutions in 76 countries.” Next up, Kathleen DuVal won McGill University’s Cundill History Prize for Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, published by Random House. Lisa Shapiro, Dean of the Faculty of the Arts at McGill, commented, “Kathleen DuVal’s winning book truly embodies the Cundill History Prize’s aims: it is not only an outstanding achievement in historical scholarship, it also engages the reader and dramatically reorients our perspectives on North America.”

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