News: Academic Publishing Weekly

Trouble for academic journals, OA deal updates, and books for Pride Month

Posted on June 6, 2025 in News

Disruption Looms for Academic Publishing

Recent directives by senior officials at the US Department of Veterans Affairs are restricting medical researchers’ publishing activities. Sent over email, the restrictions bar affiliated scientists from “publish[ing] in medical journals or speak[ing] with the public without first seeking clearance from political appointees of Donald Trump.” According to The Guardian, the emails appear to be in response to a piece written by VA pulmonologists addressing the health implications of “cancelled contracts, layoffs and a planned staff reduction” at the VA. Next up, scholarly publishers are experiencing an overload of unwanted bot traffic. Nature explained that bots “attempt to ‘scrape’ large amounts of content from websites” and seemingly aim to use the data to train AI models. Nature further underscored that bots can often bypass access restrictions and blocking all bot activity can disrupt users. Librarians are dealing with similar issues, as outlined in a recent episode of The Authority File podcast. Last, The Scholarly Kitchen highlighted Heather Staines’s presidential address given at the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) Annual Meeting. Key topics included the current US political environment, AI, and the importance of diversity and showing up collaboratively.

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Open Access Partnerships Galore

First up, Springer Nature is partnering with Malaysia’s Higher Education Electronic Resources Consortium (KONSEPt). Researchers affiliated with Malaysia’s 20 public universities will be provided with read and publish access to “more than 2,000 hybrid journals across the Springer Nature portfolio.” Springer Nature also entered an Open Publishing Agreement with the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The agreement enables researchers to freely publish in any hybrid journal in Springer Nature’s portfolio and is the “publisher’s first truly unlimited and uncapped open access agreement in the Americas.” Next, Frontiers signed a one-year transformative agreement with the University of Padua, allowing researchers to publish OA in Frontiers’ journals. Last, Clarivate is working with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN). The partnership “provides 55 Canadian universities with expanded access to the Web of Science and is designed to enhance inter-member research collaborations.”

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Scientific American Hires EIC and cOAlition S’s Head of Strategy Announces Departure

Robert Kiley announced his departure as Head of Strategy at cOAlition S. cOAliton S underlined several of Kiley’s contributions during his seven years with the initiative, including his work on the Transformative Journal programme, Rights Retention Strategy, and beyond article-based charges Working Group. cOAliton S shared that its Strategy and Implementation Group “will assume responsibility for the design and execution of the coalition’s strategy in the forthcoming years.” Turning to Scientific American, David M. Ewalt has been named editor-in-chief. Described as a “longtime advocate for data-driven reporting,” Ewalt is also a journalist, author, and editor. As editor-in-chief, Ewalt will “also oversee [Scientific American‘s] digital version, scientificamerican.com, and other branded products.”

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Updated Diamond OA Guidelines and New Project Aims to Sniff Out Bad Research

A project from The Center for Scientific Integrity, operator of Retraction Watch, aims to detect problematic medical research. Nature reports that the Medical Evidence Project received a $900,000 grant from Open Philanthropy and will “root out flawed papers that have a serious impact on medical guidelines by skewing meta-analyses.” The project will also allow the community to provide anonymous tips, and all findings will be shared publicly. James Heathers, the science-integrity consultant heading the project, revealed he hopes to “find ten meta-analyses contaminated by flawed papers per year.” In other news, last week marked the release of the DIAMAS Diamond OA Recommendations and Guidelines for Institutions, Funders, Sponsors, Donors, and Policymakers. The recommendations encourage stakeholder collaboration and address research environments, funding, and “the dynamics of authority, patronage, and legitimacy.”

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Books for Pride and Rounding Up This Year’s Best Titles

Happy Pride Month! To celebrate, Library Journal shared ten titles featuring LGBTQIA+ themes and topics. Selections span fiction and nonfiction and include Barbara Jane Brickman’s Suffering Sappho!: Lesbian Camp in American Popular Culture from Rutgers University Press. Choice’s content vertical, Toward Inclusive Excellence, also published a list of forthcoming titles in queer studies. In more bookish news, Barnes and Noble spotlighted the best books of 2025 thus far. Categories include history, literary fiction, science and technology, and more.

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