News: Academic Publishing Weekly

CUP names new executive director, EBSCO and OverDrive team up, and a new LibGuide on the environmental impacts of AI

Posted on June 12, 2026 in News

Leadership Changes and Award Winners

Columbia University Press (CUP) has named Gita Manaktala as its new Executive Director. Her role begins on September 8 and she succeeds Jennifer Crewe, who worked at CUP for forty years, serving as Associate Provost and Director for the last ten. Crewe, who announced her retirement in March, also had the distinction of being the first female director of an Ivy League press. Manaktala arrives at CUP after 30 years at MIT Press, most recently as Executive Editor at Large, which followed her tenure as Editorial Director. While at MIT Press, Manaktala grew the press’s publishing program from 200 to 300 titles annually and led new initiatives in digital publishing and open access.  

The Women’s Prize Trust has announced the winners for its Women’s Prize in Fiction and Non-Fiction. Virginia Evans won for her novel, The Correspondent and Lyse Doucet got the Non-Fiction nod for The Finest Hotel in Kabul. Each author received a £30,000 award. According to the Trust, the Women’s Prize was created to “remedy the imbalance in coverage, respect and reverence given to women writers versus their male peers, creating a platform for exceptional writing by women to shine.”

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EBSCO and OverDrive Announce Platform Integrations

OverDrive and EBSCO have announced that they are integrating OverDrive’s ebooks via its Libby app into EBSCO’s Knowledge Base and EBSCO Discovery Service. According to the two companies, “The integration simplifies management of digital collections by allowing librarians to select OverDrive collections from the EBSCO Knowledge Base and automatically populate them into their catalogs.” Ebooks and audiobooks will be listed along with a library’s other resources and allow users to link directly to Libby to borrow the titles.  

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The UK and Germany Take on Google AI Summaries

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority is requiring Google to allow publishers to opt out of having their content show up in Google’s AI summaries—aka zero-click search. In the meantime, Germany’s Regional Court of Munich ruled that Google is now liable for any misinformation that appears in those same summaries. In the U.K.’s case, the new rules provide some leverage for publishers to negotiate how Google uses their content. Per a report from Publishing Perspectives, Germany’s court directly addresses the increasing use—and influence—these summaries are having on information seekers. The court deemed the summaries as substantive enough to sway public opinion.  

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AIP Publishing Adds AI Review Layer for Conference Proceedings

AIP Publishing has partnered with Hum, an AI content infrastructure company, to add a review layer to the publication of conference proceedings for more efficient quality control. According to AIP, its publication of proceedings, now at 100,000 articles across 1,700 volumes, is scaling quickly and integrity checks of submissions are a growing challenge. Hum’s Alchemist Review product will automate the flagging of issues, allowing editorial teams to make quicker quality control decisions at a larger scale.

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Statement on OMB News and China Leads in Research

Following last week’s Scholarly Kitchen post on the news, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) released a statement opposing the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) proposal for federally funded research. The statement argues that the new criteria grants power to politicians to block projects “regardless of their merit.” In addition, it denounces the “restrictions on international exchange,” explaining that curbing international collaboration will only harm US research. A number of member societies and associations signed the statement, including the Association of University Presses (AUPresses). Speaking of international research, China continues its reign as a leader in high quality research. Based on the latest Nature Index Research Leaders tables, China remains in the number one spot and had a 22 percent increase in research output in the last year. In addition, Japan and South Korea both experienced the second biggest jumps in research output in the top 10 list, with almost 10 percent increases. The United States came in second, with a 4 percent uptick.

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New Journal on Research and Trust Badges for Preprints

F1000 added “trust marker badges” to its VeriXiv preprint server, becoming the “first major preprint platform to display comprehensive research integrity verification directly on published preprints.” The badge allows readers to see which verification checks the research went through and passed. Next, Taylor & Francis teamed up with the Research-on-Research Association (RORATION) to create an open access journal of research on research. Aptly named, the Journal of Research on Research (J·ROR) will investigate “how research is funded, organized, conducted, communicated, and evaluated.” Through RORATION, the journal will be community-owned, allowing it to transform according to the readers, authors, and their values. Submissions are currently open.

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Tracking AI: Student Use and Environmental Impacts

The spring semester may be over, but we’re still thinking about student use of AI. Inside Higher Ed published the latest results of its Student Voice: Amplified survey, revealing a mixed bag of use and concerns. Interviewing more than 1,000 undergraduate students, the survey reveals that while more students have started using AI for schoolwork in the past year, 20 percent “remain resisters.” Their greatest worry? Becoming too dependent on AI—40 percent of respondents voiced concerns over AI reducing their ability to “think independently.” The survey dives into topics like institutional response to AI, influence on careers, and more. Next, Ithaka S+R shared a LibGuide on the environmental impacts of AI. The LibGuide contains a myriad of formats—podcast episodes, reports, videos, articles—aimed “to help users attain a baseline understanding of the varied environmental consequences behind AI technology.” Topics include water use, emissions, mining, and sustainable paths forward.

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 Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government by Barbara McQuade (Seven Stories Press)
3. The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon (Liveright)
4. The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben (Greystone Books)
5. The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail by Eric Jay Dolin (Liveright)

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