News: Academic Publishing Weekly

OpinionArchives finds a new home, journal submissions up last year, and AI use on campus is still...complicated

Posted on April 3, 2026 in News

Coherent Digital Acquires OpinionArchives

Coherent Digital, a digital content platform specializing in the collection of hard-to-find and ephemeral academic material, announced it has acquired OpinionArchives, a service that provides access to an archive of opinion journalism. Currently, the repository includes more than a million pages of content from media brands such as The Nation, Harper’s, and the National Review. Following the deal, Coherent said it will relaunch the OpinionArchives platform, add new titles and formats including podcasts, videos, and blogs, and allow faculty and institutions to see publication-level engagement and impact. “Opinion writing plays a critical role in shaping public understanding and the historical record,” said Joe Collins, CEO of OpinionArchives, in a statement. “I look forward to working with Coherent to advance the work Michelle Anciello and I began over twenty years ago.”

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Checking in on AI Use in Universities

Yale Library is testing an AI integration that uses an MCP (model context protocol) that connects to the bibliographic data in its catalog. The integration essentially combines two search efforts into one. Instead of using an external AI assistant to begin a query on a topic and then initiate a second search on the library’s website, a student can use the library’s AI assistant to search the catalog directly. The MCP open standard allows for connecting chat-based tools such as ChatGPT or Claude to a data collection. In this case, Yale chose Anthropic’s Claude. “To put it simply, it will allow your AI helper to provide you with responses that are deeply informed by the complex data in Yale Library’s catalog,” said Michael Appleby, Yale Library’s director of software engineering, in a statement. Early results from the test indicate that students using the library’s helper are less concerned about the reliability of AI-generated results.

Meanwhile, on the country’s opposite coast, that same concern is at the heart of a study performed by California State University across all 22 of its campuses. While AI use is widespread, according to a report from The Chronicle of Higher Education that examined the results of the study, most survey respondents said AI-generated results must be verified. Students are also “skeptical about its role in education, and more than 80 percent worry about its implications for future job security.” Faculty are just as conflicted. The Chronicle notes that “7 percent report that they do not talk about AI, 22 percent discourage it, and 18 percent forbid its use entirely. Conversely, 6 percent require AI use and 19 percent encourage it; 28 percent say they are neutral.” Proceed at your own risk, I guess?

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‘Crocodile Effect’ Study Gains New Sponsors and Expands Scope

Research Information is keeping tabs on the effort by digital research distribution platform Kudos to measure the impact of the dreaded “crocodile effect”—how those AI-generated search summaries, aka zero-click search, are gobbling up referral traffic. Earlier this year, Kudos launched a research study and high-profile publishers have been eagerly signing on as sponsors. The latest to join include AIP Publishing, IEEE, Clarivate, and Cactus Communications, bringing the total number to 15. And RI reports that Kudos is expanding the scope of the report to provide tailored usage and impact findings for academic libraries as well as publishers.

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Report Card Season: Journal Submissions Up in 2025

MDPI released its 2025 Annual Report, sharing updates on research integrity, global operations, and partnerships. In addition, the publisher reported its submission and journal impact data from last year, seeing a 12 percent increase in manuscript submissions to more than 669,000. This aligns with Springer Nature’s first annual report as a public company, also published this week. Research Information summarized the (very fancy) report, noting that submissions grew by over 30 percent to 3.1 million; over 50 percent of its 539,000 primary research articles published were open access. Springer Nature covered usage and downloads, citations, satisfaction levels with authors, and AI tools. Emerald Publishing also had reports top of mind, publishing its first Responsible Publishing Report 2025, which describes “the organisation’s actions and outcomes from 2025 as it continues to work towards a fairer, more sustainable and impactful research ecosystem.”

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My Two Favorite Subjects: Codes of Practice and Lawsuits

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) published a revised Transfer Code of Practice (Version 5.0). For the uninitiated, the Transfer Code of Practice ensures a smooth transition when titles change hands from one publisher to another, allowing easier access for readers and librarians and minimal disruptions to the publication process. This revision—the first since 2019!—looks particularly at “the transfer of open access titles and refines language to provide more clarity to readers.” You can read the revised code in full here. Moving to lawsuits, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), News/Media Alliance (N/MA), International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM), and Authors Guild (AG) banded together in the filing of an amicus brief in support of the music publishers in the Concord Music Group v. Anthropic case. Like most AI suits, the group “alleges that Anthropic unlawfully used copyrighted musical works to train its AI product Claude.” The publishers argue that Anthropic should not be able to claim a case of fair use or profit off content based on the training of unlicensed works. As argued in the brief, “The central question in this case is whether a for-profit multibillion-dollar company should be able to systematically copy human-authored works without permission and use those works to train AI models to generate content that displaces the works so taken. The answer is no.” Well!

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The IPA and PEN America Announce Awards Shortlist and Winners

The International Publishers Association announced the shortlist for its 2026 Innovation in Publishing Award, which celebrates “companies, groups, and individuals whose work, platform, products, or practices help the industry adapt to new circumstances and challenges.” The list includes a literacy learning system, AI company, nonprofit organization to encourage reading, and more. The winners will be announced in early July. Next, PEN America heralded the winners of its 2026 Literary Awards, which covers poetry, essay, translation, and more. Nicholas Boggs’s Baldwin: A Love Story took home the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography and The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains by Pria Anand earned the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, to name a few.

Independent Press Top 5 Bestsellers: Nonfiction
The American Booksellers Association and the Independent Publishers Caucus recently collaborated on an independent bestsellers list, which includes books from independent presses and sold in indie bookshops. Below are the top five nonfiction titles this week. Find this week’s full list of fiction and nonfiction independent bestsellers.

1. The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon (Liveright)
2. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions)
3. The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit (Haymarket Books)
4. The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary by Terry Tempest Williams (Grove Press)
5. Mutual Aid: New and Expanded Edition by Dean Spade (Verso)

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