News: Academic Publishing Weekly

A win for NEH grants, EBSCO and GetFTR team up, and university presses select titles for the US's 250th

Posted on May 15, 2026 in News

NEH Grants Are Reinstated

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) may be an unfortunate footnote in America’s recent history, but we’re still salvaging the wreckage. A New York federal court recently sided with the Authors Guild plaintiffs in a class action suit against DOGE and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The ruling orders the reinstatement of more than 1,400 grants DOGE terminated back in April 2025. That amounts to more than $100 million in congressionally appropriated funds. “Congressionally appropriated” is the key phrase here. Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York found that the grant terminations not only violated the First Amendment and the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment, which, according to the 143-page ruling (PDF), “prohibit[s] the United States from invidiously discriminating between individuals or groups,” but that DOGE had “no statutory authority” to terminate grants that had already been awarded.

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APC Crackdowns and Peer Review Payments

Despite a pending NIH plan to limit article processing charges (APCs) for open access publishing and some funders trying to eliminate them altogether, a post on The Scholarly Kitchen examines why policies like these are likely to have less impact than one might think. Simply put, the cultural, procedural, and legacy structures that support scholarly communications appear to be too resistant to sweeping changes. Funders, the post argues, are unlikely or unable to enforce every grant they issue and researchers can still find funding from other sources with fewer restrictions. Transformative agreements also deflect a funder’s influence by removing the APC from a researcher’s grant at a participating institution. And the dynamics in the lab between postdocs (who research and write the article and then eventually move on) and principal investigators (who receive the funding) also undermine funder compliance. Meanwhile, Inside Higher Ed looks at how paying peer reviewers for their work can help make article publishing more efficient. While programs at smaller journals have shown measureable improvements in peer review efficiency when reviewers are paid nominal fees, the lack of buy-in from big publishing and the apparent lack of on-the-record support from industry associations will likely keep initiatives like these from scaling. 

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Publisher Updates

EBSCO and GetFTR announced a partnership to deliver full-text access through EBSCO host, the vendor’s online research platform. The collaboration alerts researchers at more than 70,000 institutions of full-text access to materials on the open web, leading them to the resource on EBSCO host. The deal makes EBSCO “the first aggregator to partner with GetFTR.” In other publishing news, Taylor & Francis released its first sustainable impact report, outlining efforts to reduce its environmental footprint, support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and bolster equitable access to research. The report highlights community outreach efforts, publishing training programs, and “a 35% reduction in print supply chain emissions since 2019.” Last, in the latest update to India’s One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) strategy, the Royal Society of Chemistry journals portfolio joined the program. Announced in late 2024, the government-funded ONOS now offers researchers at 6,500 Indian institutions access to partnered journals, “empowering around 18 million researchers, students and educators in India.” Of the news, Dr. Helen Pain, CEO of the Royal Society of Chemistry, stated, “Science is always a global endeavour, and we are proud to be working closely with both the Indian government and the institutional partners we have forged relationships with over many years.”

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Appointment, Retirement, and Reflecting on America’s 250th

Wiley announced Jessica Kowalski as Executive Vice President and General Manager, Research, effective May 11. She follows Jay Flynn, who joined Wiley in 2010. Kowalski’s experience includes roles at Amazon Web Services, RELX, and, most recently, Microsoft. Next, the President of the Big Ten Academic Alliance Keith Marshall will retire in December of this year. Marshall acted as President for 10 years after more than 25 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Big Ten will soon start a national search to fill the role. Finally, in case you haven’t heard, the United States celebrates its 250th this year; members of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) curated a list of titles to commemorate the anniversary. The list is available on Bookshop.org and includes The Puritan Experiment from Brandeis University Press, Backcountry Resistance from University of South Carolina Press, and Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape from Temple University Press, to name a few.

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PEN America and ITHAKA S+R Share Reports

PEN America released a new report on book bans, finding an increase in bans on nonfiction titles. In the 2024-25 school year, the share of banned nonfiction titles “rose from 14% to a startling 29% of all banned titles,” according to the report. Publishing Perspectives breaks down the findings, noting that nonfiction books related to activism were the most highly targeted. Further, of the 3,743 unique titles banned across genres, those featuring marginalized identities and communities experienced the most challenges; almost 45 percent included characters or people of color and almost 40 percent featured LGBTQ+ characters or people. Ithaka S+R shared the 2025 results of its US Library Survey. Interviewing academic library deans and directors every three years, the survey “[tracks] core functions of the library over time.” The report lays out key findings, such as AI’s impact on library functions and decreasing investment in open access initiatives.

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 Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben (Greystone Books)
4. The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit (Haymarket Books)
5. We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore (Liveright)

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