News: Academic Publishing Weekly

ALA shares the latest State of America's Libraries report, CACTUS adds automated image integrity checks, and CAUL reaches 100,000 OA articles

Posted on April 24, 2026 in News

The State of America’s Libraries

Happy National Library Week! In commemoration, the American Library Association (ALA) published its State of America’s Libraries: A Snapshot of 2025 report. Good news first: Attempts to censor library materials and services fell to 713 recorded attempts, compared to 821 attempts in 2024. However, 4,235 unique titles were banned or challenged in 2025, “nearly 2,000 more titles than 2024 and only five fewer than 2023’s record,” according to the report. Even more alarmingly, more than 90 percent of censorship attempts “were initiated by pressure groups, government officials, and decision makers,” up from 72 percent in 2024 and indicating a “well-funded, politically driven campaign to suppress the stories and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals and communities,” according to Sarah Lamdan, executive director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. The report also lists the Most Targeted Titles of last year, with Sold by Patricia McCormick in the number one spot.

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This Week’s AI Corner

CACTUS Communications announced the integration of automated image integrity checks into its products through a partnership with Imagetwin, an image analysis AI tool. The tool joins CACTUS’s Paperpal Preflight, an editorial workflow platform that provides quality, compliance, and integrity checks. Pointing to an increase of “image-related integrity challenges,” CACTUS states that the partnership will allow users “to detect duplicated and manipulated images, identify plagiarised figures across publications, flag AI-generated or altered visuals, and conduct these checks earlier in the manuscript lifecycle.” In other AI news, IGI Global Scientific Publishing announced Dr. Jennifer Lewis-Gallagher as Vice President of AI Business Development. Bringing close to 20 years of STM publishing experience to the role, Dr. Lewis-Gallagher will work to “expand collaboration across corporate, industry, and technology partners to advance the ethical integration of high quality, peer reviewed scholarly content within AI systems.”

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How Restrictive Federal and State Policies Are Impacting Research

ITHAKA S+R released the findings from a fall 2025 survey on how recent state and federal policies are impacting academic researchers. Collecting over 4,000 responses, the US national survey found that close to a third of respondents have avoided certain research topics in response to the restrictive policies. In addition, the survey revealed that 8 percent of respondents had a federal grant canceled last year. More than 10 percent sought to find positions out of state or overseas or left the academy altogether in response to the policies. The report also described a lack of confidence felt by researchers toward university presidents’ and boards’ willingness to defend their academic freedom. One respondent shared, “I have no confidence, whatsoever, that my administration will support faculty if academic freedom is under assault. In fact, they have indicated the opposite. In the past few weeks, administrators have told faculty to not speak, teach, or research certain things.”

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Product Launch Galore

EBSCO Information Services had a busy week. The research, ebook, and discovery service provider launched Art Source Ultimate, a full-text database for research and education in global art and architecture. The “largest full-text research database of its kind,” Art Source Ultimate includes over 970 full-text journals and magazines covering a wide range of disciplines, periods, and art styles. EBSCO also announced AgeLine with Full Text, a “research resource focused on adults 50 and over that explores the social, psychological, economic and health aspects of aging.” With more than 100 journals on aging-focused research, the interdisciplinary resource aims to support researchers, students, and educators studying social gerontology. Finally, Digital Science shared Compass by Dimensions, a publication impact tracker for medical affairs professionals. The tool combines Dimensions citation data and Altmetric attention metrics to monitor the distribution and impact of research. Rather than spread across multiple locations, Compass allows users to “search, analyze, benchmark, and report” all in one place.

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Publisher Agreements and an OA Milestone

Frontiers, the Center for Science Communication and Achievement Transformation of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and China Educational Publications Import & Export Corporation Ltd (CEPIEC) entered an agreement in the name of open scholarship. The deal outlines the promotion of publicly funded open access research, the support of data repositories, and the bolstering of research integrity. In addition, NSFC-funded papers accepted by Frontiers will receive a 10 percent discount on article processing charges (APCs). In other news, The Company of Biologists committed to GetFTR (Get Full Text Research), joining a “growing network of publishers working to connect research discovery directly to trusted full text.” The partnership will grant easier access to the publisher’s content “across an expanding network of research and discovery tools,” including Scopus, Scite, and Web of Science. Last, the Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL) announced that it reached 100,000 OA articles published through a CAUL consortium agreement and $500 million saved for researchers in APCs. CAUL first entered open access agreements in 2020 with two publishers; the organization now works with more than 25.

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. The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary by Terry Tempest Williams (Grove Press)
5. Mutual Aid: New and Expanded Edition: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) by Dean Spade (Verso)

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