News: Academic Publishing Weekly

Bloomsbury reorganizes business lines, Wiley lends a hand for publishing operations, and Frontiers releases AI guidance

Posted on April 17, 2026 in News

Bloomsbury Announces Major Reorg

On paper, the last five years look pretty remarkable for London-based Bloomsbury Publishing. A whopping 35 acquisitions have helped the publisher double sales to £361 million, more than double profits to £48.8 million, and drove headcount from 736 to 1,238, per a company release. This year, Bloomsbury is embarking on a major reorg of its business lines. A previously matrixed structure with three editorial units supported by global sales, marketing, and publicity teams will shift into three vertical units each with its own dedicated editorial, sales, licensing, and marketing. A managing director will lead each of the verticals, which include Bloomsbury Global Academic & Professional, Bloomsbury USA, and Bloomsbury Consumer UK. With the restructure, effective June 1, 55 positions in the UK and US will be cut. “By aligning our business units more closely with our key markets, we can respond to changing tastes and customer preferences, strengthening our international and digital capabilities, and leverage new technologies,” said Bloomsbury Chief Executive Nigel Newton in a statement.

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Congressional Hearing Examines State of Scientific Publishing

The scientific publishing industry was held under the microscope this week when the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology’s investigations and oversight subcommittee held a hearing to examine a variety of issues. Witnesses providing testimony included Kate Travis, managing editor of Retraction Watch, Carl Maxwell, senior vice president for public policy at the Association of American Publishers, and Dr. Jason Owen-Smith, Executive Director, Institute for Research on Innovation & Science, at the University of Michigan. The wide-ranging discussion hit upon open access, the publishing incentive structure, paper mills, research integrity, reproducibility, and, of course, research budget cuts.

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A Small Publisher and a Society Turn to Wiley for Operational Help

Liverpool University Press (LUP) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers have both struck new agreements with Wiley that reflect a strategy to streamline operations at each of the publishers. LUP is adopting Wiley’s Research Exchange platform to consolidate submissions, peer review, and integrity screening in order to scale its journals program with less administrative burden on editors. Meanwhile, ASME is handing over sales, marketing, and much of its publishing operations to Wiley, which will also assume existing customer relationships, allowing the society to focus on editorial development and long-term sustainability.

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Publishing Coalition Forms against Book Banning

Nothing unites like a common enemy! Publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary organizations have come together to oppose House Resolution 7661, which excludes the use of federal funding for “sexually oriented materials” in public schools and libraries. The bill advanced in March; the next step will be a floor vote in the House. Released this week, the coalition’s statement has more than 100 signatories, including Penguin Random House, the Association of University Presses (AUPresses), and the American Library Association. The statement reads, “[HR 7661] confuses obscenity with identity and stigmatizes vulnerable young people, particularly trans children and teens, based on who they are. It will continue to drain funding from our already underfunded schools and libraries. And it will threaten the creativity and critical thinking that are vital to education in the U.S.” PEN America offers action steps here.

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Do Preprints Have the Same Fate as Open Access?

Writing for The Scholarly Kitchen, Jonny Coates, former immunologist and leading expert in preprints and metascience, compares the (argued) failure of the open access movement to the current preprint infrastructure. Coates applies arguments from journalist Richard Poynder’s ebook on why open access “failed” to the preprint landscape, laying out issues of ownership, sustainability, strategy, and objectivity. In the end, Coates believes that the “preprint movement sits on the precipice,” and recommends action to avoid “drift[ing] into the same patterns of fragmentation, inequity, and co-option that have complicated the open access transition.” The discussion continues (at length) in the comments.

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New AI Guidance and OA Agreements

Frontiers published AI guidance for the publishing lifecycle, offering “practical, responsible routes for AI adoption.” The publisher states that the guidance addresses AI implementation across roles—editor, researcher, reviewer—and encourages checkpoints, accountability, and transparency. Considered a “living framework,” the guidance will be updated according to community feedback. Next, we close this week with rapid fire OA agreements. IOP Publishing reached its first nationwide open access agreement in Turkey with The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey’s (TÜBİTAK) National Academic Network and Information Center (ULAKBİM). The read-and-publish deal is set for three years. In addition, IGI Global and the University of Rhode Island (URI) entered an agreement that grants URI researchers a 5 percent discount on Article Processing Charges (APCs). Authors will publish their work under a CC BY license to “ensure their work is freely available to the public from the moment of publication.”

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

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