News: Academic Publishing Weekly

New AI tools and criticism, Ithaka S+R's research data services report, and publishing award updates

Posted on March 28, 2025 in News

Higher Education and Publisher Responses to Executive Orders

As APW readers know, the Trump administration has enacted a series of executive orders that target higher education, libraries, and museums. This week, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) gathered member responses and advocacy efforts from the past couple months, including actions and statements from the Modern Language Association, the American Historical Association, and AUPresses. In addition, Emerald Publishing and the EveryLibrary Institute will collaborate on a series of webinars for academic librarians on the “ongoing actions taking place at the federal and state level that impact academic libraries.” The sessions will focus on “practical, actionable strategies and ideas for maintaining the ability to serve institutions and patrons effectively in an increasingly complex environment.” Further, Terri Teleen, President of the Americas for Emerald Publishing, and Kathleen McEvoy, Senior Policy Fellow at EveryLibrary Institute, wrote a Scholarly Kitchen article outlining this initiative and additional ways to support academic librarians during this time.

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T&F AI Translation, New EBSCO AI Features, and Denouncing Meta’s AI Training Piracy

To start, Publishers Weekly expanded on Taylor & Francis’s recent AI translation announcement, sharing background on the project and criticism from authors and translators. Intending to translate books with niche or smaller audiences into English, the initiative has undergone a year of “rigorous testing,” and all works will be reviewed by T&F editors and the books’ authors. In terms of criticism, author and translator groups argue that the tool was most likely trained on “unlawfully scraped data” and decried the use of AI tools that devalue the work of translators. Next, EBSCO released two new AI features. AI Insights provides (you guessed it) insights on full-text articles while Natural Language Search (NLS) “improves the researcher’s experience when using their natural language, enhancing context handling and overall search accuracy.” Last, Publishing Perspectives covered denouncements from the Publishers Association and Cambridge University Press & Assessment on Meta’s pirating of materials to train its large language models (LLMs). The article references a recent The Atlantic piece (paywalled) that delves into the extent of the copyright violations. To no one’s surprise, people are pissed!

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Journal Home Update and Preserving Clarivate’s Ebook Central

First up, ResearchGate and Taylor & Francis (T&F) will expand their open access Journal Home collaboration, “increasing coverage to 595 journals.” The partnership allows users to better find funding in T&F open access agreements, and, in this expansion, will now include the Open Access Agreement Upgrade (OAAU) for included Taylor & Francis journals. In other T&F news, the publisher shared an update on its OA funding model Pledge to Open. Now approaching its two-year anniversary, the pilot prioritizes opening books that intersect with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The update features data on the initiative’s global impact and upcoming plans for the project. Last, following Clarivate’s subscription strategy announcement in February—and the immediate backlash from librarians—the community-based archive Portico will now “preserve books available to academic libraries through [Clarivate’s] Ebook Central.” This deal with Clarivate will “[ensure] the long-term preservation of this expansive collection” and cover future books added to the platform.

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It’s Awards Season! (I Think? No, But Seriously, Is It? Because It Feels Like a Year-Round Thing?)

Kicking off this collection of awards news is IOP Publishing’s (IOPP) annual Outstanding Reviewer Awards to “recognise reviewers whose peer review reports have been exceptional over the past year” and celebrate peer review’s essential role in the research lifecycle. IOPP selected the winners out of 35,000 reviewers; the full winners list is available here. Next, PEN America announced the longlists for its 2025 Literary Awards, including nonfiction, translated works, and literary excellence in science writing. Works from Princeton University Press, the University of New Mexico Press, and more made the cut. In addition, the new-ish Women’s Prize for Nonfiction award—new since last year, at least—released its shortlist. The winner will be announced in June and earn a cool $38,627 (£30,000). Last, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) shared its University Press Rising Star winner, Sam Johnson, Assistant Commissioning Editor at Edinburgh University Press. The award highlights the contributions of early career ALPSP members.

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Ithaka S+R’s Report Indicates Needed Support and Awareness of Research Data Services

After two years of study, Ithaka S+R released its final report on research data support services. Conducted with almost 30 US and Canadian institutions, the full report gathers institutional data and aims to develop strategies for strengthening data services infrastructure. The findings indicate an overall lack of knowledge of what constitutes data services on campus, as “researchers are often unaware of data services as a form of assistance.” Further, interviews reveal that researchers experience a lack of support and incentive to publish data, noting that “those with the power to require increased data publication (e.g., funders, publishers, institutions, etc.) do not acknowledge the trade-off involved in prioritizing data publication above other considerations.” The report also shares issues with securing data permissions and researcher preferences for data services.

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