News: Academic Publishing Weekly

AI used to evaluate AI research, sustainable print practices, and AAP's annual StatShot report

Posted on August 23, 2024 in News

Reviewers Are Using AI for Peer Review…And AI Researchers Aren’t Happy About It

Well, well, well—looks like computer and technology scientists are seeing the consequences of their own research. Stephanie M. Lee of The Chronicle of Higher Education covers a recent trend of peer reviewers using AI tools to evaluate papers, particularly impacting researchers in AI. According to a recent survey, “Up to 17 percent of reviews submitted to prestigious AI conferences in the last year were substantially written by large language models (LLMs).” Lee shares perspectives from several academics who strongly suspect that their work was assessed by an AI chatbot, highlighting key indicators like broad overviews and formal language. Of course, as Lee mentions, this raises copyright issues by uploading confidential papers into LLMs and throws a wrench into a peer review system already overwhelmed by high submissions. As Arjun Guha, associate professor of computer science at Northeastern University, notes, “That we computer scientists made this thing that is now sort of ruining our review process — yeah, it’s quite ironic.”

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One Year of Pledge to Open and Cengage’s GenAI “Student Assistant” (Beta) Launch

Taylor & Francis’s Pledge to Open, a collaborative funding pilot for research on global issues, will publish 26 open access books in its first year. Launched in July 2023, the project aims to share scholarship on topics like the climate crisis, women’s rights, racism, and more through open monographs. T&F plans to continue the program with the second year launching in September. For more on Pledge to Open, listen to The Authority File podcast series with T&F’s Jamie Hutchins. In other news, more than 5,000 students will have access to the beta version of Cengage’s GenAI-powered Student Assistant this fall. According to Cengage, the tool “guides students through the learning process, providing access to relevant resources right when they need them, with tailored, just-in-time feedback, and the ability to connect with key concepts in new ways to improve student learning.” Perhaps most interesting is Cengage’s decision to test different large language models “to ensure the most optimal model is being used for each discipline” and to “[create] a better learning experience for the student.” And, in case you were wondering, no, the tool does not give answers to students (the announcement makes that quite clear). Cengage aims to expand access to Student Assistant next spring.

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Ushering in Sustainable Print Practices

Jill O’Neill, Educational Programs Manager for NISO (the National Information Standards Organization), writes for Scholarly Kitchen on current sustainability practices for print publications. O’Neill provides an overview of the print sustainability initiative in recent years, including the impact of the 2023 European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). As O’Neill outlines, publishers and academic presses are moving to solutions like print-on-demand, smaller front list print numbers until “market demand [is] known,” and sustainable paper and packaging materials. Long live print (sustainably, of course).

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Diamond Open Access: The Canadian Perspective

Maxime Bilodeau of University Affairs dives into the growing adoption in Canada of diamond open access, which, as we know, “enables researchers to publish in journals or other platforms free of charge using an open access license.” As it turns out, diamond OA is a “core principle” of the Quebec-based research fund, Réseau québécois de recherche et de mutualisation pour les revues scientifiques (Quebec Research and Sharing Network for Scientific Journals). Government office Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) created the fund this year to help scientific journals in Quebec implement the open model. As Bilodeau notes, Canadian librarians and academic publishers have increasingly advocated for the principles of open publishing and research amidst souring feelings toward article processing charges (APCs). Bilodeau also highlights the potential flaws of transformative agreements and questions around diamond OA’s staying power.

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US Publishing Revenue for 2023

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) published StatShot Annual this week, capturing publishing figures in higher education and overall for 2023. In general, book and course material revenue in US publishing reached almost $30 billion, a less than 1 percent decline from 2022. Higher ed materials saw a 1.5 percent increase to close to $4 billion. Looking at formats, digital (audio and ebooks) “accounted for 16% of all revenue for 2023, representing an increase of 6.3% on a year-over-year basis.” Okay, so maybe not “long live print.”

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