News: Academic Publishing Weekly

AI in Africa, university press updates, and the 21st century's top cited papers

Posted on April 18, 2025 in News

The Future of AI in Africa

Following this month’s Global AI Summit on Africa, the African AI company EqualyzAI rolled out tools trained on and producing results in multiple African languages. Developed using a “Pan-African data collection network,” EqualyzAI’s products are “linguistics-guided, people-focused, and data-owner-informed.” Offerings include tools that aid teachers, support financial literacy, and allow “organisations and governments [to] extract actionable insights from years of archived audio, video, or scanned documents.” Continuing on the topic of African-centric AI, the World Economic Forum reports that AI developments will largely be shaped by young people in the region. The Forum notes that the large numbers of young Africans joining the workforce “positions the continent to influence artificial intelligence (AI) development and governance.” In addition, the Forum highlighted a $60 billion fund and AI scaling hub introduced at the Global AI Summit, the Smart Africa Alliance organized to bolster global collaboration on AI, and future events that will provide opportunities to “elevate African leadership on AI.”

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University Press Partnerships and AUPresses’s Virtual Annual Meeting

First up, the University Press of Kansas (UPK) announced a collaboration with the Audio-Reader Network. Under the partnership, Audio-Reader will develop audiobook versions of UPK titles. UPK director Tim Paulson explained, “With our new partnership, we can directly publish audiobooks in commercial channels and provide audio content for free through Audio-Reader’s channels.” Next, Rockefeller University Press published an open access journal with the International Alliance for Primary Immunodeficiency Societies (IAPIDS). Overseen by former editors of Springer’s Journal of Clinical Immunology, the new Journal of Human Immunity features discounted article processing fees (APCs) for IAPIDS members and those in low- and middle-income regions. China’s Tsinghua University Press (TUP) also revealed that it is expanding its Journal Home partnership with ResearchGate. Eleven of TUP’s journals will be available on the Journal Home site, and the collaboration will “increase the visibility of 10,000+ research articles, spanning nano research, AI, computing, engineering and life science.” Last, the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) provided a preview of its 2025 virtual Annual Meeting. The event will be held June 9-12 and session topics include mentorship, indexing, and “Marketing Sensitive Topics.”

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AAP Files Amicus Brief in AI Lawsuit Against Meta and Protecting Open Access Content from AI Training

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has filed an amicus brief in an update to the closely watched AI case against Meta. The brief argues that Meta’s use of authors’ copyright-protected titles does not fall under fair use and addresses alternative licensing options. Next, Stephanie Decker, professor of Strategy at Birmingham Business School, UK, considered how to safeguard open access content from AI training. Specifically, Decker suggested that OA licenses should address machine reuse and “could mandate that AI tools trained on OA papers need to include citation capabilities.” Decker also acknowledged the impact AI models have on the wider research landscape, such as disrupting attribution and interdisciplinary research opportunities. In sum, Decker concluded that it is “time for OA proponents to engage in public debate with academic associations, universities and national funding agencies” on AI reuse.

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Springer Nature Meets OA Milestone and Leiden University Announces PhD Position on Paper Mills

Leiden University’s Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) and the University of Sheffield have created a PhD position to study paper mills. Wiley will sponsor the position and the candidate will assess “the scale and operation of paper mills, as well as of the complex interplay between the superstructure of incentives and varying research norms in scholarship that enable them.” The resulting research, published OA, will aid policymaking, scholarly publishers, and “inform academic evaluation criteria.” In other news, Springer Nature achieved its 2021 goal to make 50 percent of its primary research available OA. The publisher stressed that the key is to have “a range of levers at your disposal” and highlighted its transformative agreements, fully-OA journals, and Cureus portfolio. Nonetheless, Springer Nature underscored that more collaboration is needed to “address disparities in access to funding, resources, and support.”

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Awards Round-Up and Most Cited Papers of the 21st Century

Book awards continue this week with the announcement of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia’s 2024 Athenaeum Literary Award winners and PEN America’s Literary Awards finalists. PEN America will name the winners on May 8, along with the recipients of the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award, and PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing. Turning to the MIT Press, the publisher announced new Faculty and Alumni Book Awards, along with this year’s winners. Lastly, Nature’s news team compiled a list of the 25 most-cited papers published this century. Although citation numbers differ based on the five databases analyzed, the papers with the most citations center on “artificial intelligence (AI); approaches to improve the quality of research or systematic reviews; cancer statistics; and research software.”

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