News: Academic Publishing Weekly

ALA workers vote for union, more government grant shenanigans, and defining today's end user

Posted on May 29, 2026 in News

The Grant Shenanigans Continue…

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is asking Congress to remove a cap that frees up the agency to begin, as of next year, forward funding “all competing research project grant (RPG) awards.” The practice of forward funding requires applicants to receive the full amount of the grant—even if it’s a multi-year project where funding may have been historically awarded in smaller chunks across the life of the grant. The NIH claims this practice frees it from doling out, say, $200,000 over five years and instead allows it to commit the full amount immediately. But, per a report in Inside Higher Ed, the concern in the research community is the NIH’s annual budget will be eaten up by fewer grantees. More budgeted money going toward fewer projects means, well, fewer projects. The practice of forward funding has actually been accelerating over the last two years, according to a report from the Association of American Medical Colleges. Along with the fewer awards, institutions are faced with more complications in planning for graduate programs and budgeting.  

And it doesn’t stop there. Researchers separately are sounding the alarm that the NIH has been quietly making grantees “request permission in advance” for co-authorship from foreign scholars, per reporting from Science. America first, amiright? And NASA has reportedly alerted grantees with Chinese co-authors that its rules might have been violated. Neither agency has published formal guidance on these requirements and instead is notifying grantees individually. Cue ensuing confusion. While the article notes that some oversight to protect national security is necessary, the sudden shift has grantees worried that agencies are adopting a blanket approach to flagging authorship without regard to the research itself.

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Who, or What, Is a “User” These Days?

Love them or hate them, the terms “end user” and “user” are changing again, according to a post by Silverchair’s Stephanie Lovegrove Hansen on The Scholarly Kitchen. Driving these changes is AI, of course, and Lovegrove Hansen counsels academic publishers to catch up or get left behind. “User” is employed liberally in the post—referring to human and non-human web traffic alike. Bots, for example, accounted for “roughly half” of inbound traffic to the Silverchair Platform in early 2026, says Lovegrove Hansen. And as we’ve all witnessed, bot traffic these days is increasingly AI-driven. The key? Distinguishing between bots that are crawling content for training purposes versus bots originating from search and user agents. On the human side of the equation, AI-supplemented search performed by actual people, or users, is also revealing new characteristics. Publishers that have developed AI discovery tools are seeing a much higher engagement rate among site users. Think of how an initial query leads to further search refinement as opposed to a user who arrived via a keyword search and then bounced away. The post goes on to discuss the implications of these new user characteristics, the importance of trust in content, and how publishers should be positioning themselves going forward.

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ALA Workers Vote Yes for Union and the 2026 AUPresses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show

American Libraries reports that the employees of the American Library Association (ALA) voted to unionize, approving the ALA Workers United (ALAWU) union. In a healthy victory, the vote came out to 77-4; of the organization’s 154 employees, 93 were eligible to vote. Once the National Labor Relations Board certifies the union, the bargaining process will begin. In a statement, ALA Executive Director Dan Montgomery noted, “This is a pivotal moment for the Association and a valuable opportunity to build meaningful collaboration around workplace matters that impact our staff and our members.” The Association of University Presses (AUPresses) debuted its Book, Jacket, and Journal Show for 2026. With over 500 submissions, the “show honors the recent thoughtful and creative work of design and production teams” at university presses. AUPresses updated its website with this year’s selections, putting the works on “virtual display” in all their illustrated and typographic glory.

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Wiley Adopts Image Integrity Software and Charting OA Book Usage

Wiley announced the integration of “Imagetwin’s leading AI-powered image integrity software” into its research publishing platform Research Exchange. The software joins Wiley’s existing “research integrity checks” on the platform, allowing users to determine issues of “image duplication, manipulation, plagiarism, and AI-generated content” before publication. The move follows a pilot phase where multiple Wiley journals employed the software. Sam Parker, Wiley’s Director of Integrity Platforms, stated, “With this integration, we’re giving our editorial teams the tools they need to proactively catch these issues before they reach publication.” In other news, the OAPEN Foundation and open scholarship nonprofit OpenAIRE will collaborate to offer COUNTER-conformant usage data on open access books in the OAPEN library. Aiming “to provide publishers, libraries, and funders with insights into the reach and use of OA books and metadata,” the partnership will work to bolster open scholarly communication.

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Are There Too Many Publisher Organizations?

Publishing executive Michael Cairns reflects on the number of industry groups in publishing and how it slows communication, collaboration, and change. Writing for Publishing Perspectives, Cairns charts the (many) existing organizations across the academic, trade, standards, bookselling, and library sectors, and argues that these siloed entities often “[serve] institutional preservation more than advancement.” Sharing observations from across industry, Cairns believes that the bureaucracy of multiple, competing organizations leads to contradictions and fragmentation. In response, he points to media industries that have already consolidated and provides suggestions for how to do the same in publishing—despite the many challenges.

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. The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben (Greystone Books)
3. We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore (Liveright)
4. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) by Dean Spade (Verso)
5. The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit (Haymarket Books)

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