News: Academic Publishing Weekly

United2Act Phase 2, OA Recommended Practice opens for comments, and industry award updates

Posted on September 5, 2025 in News

Safeguarding Research Integrity: United2Act Phase 2 and the Potential of AI Detection

United2Act published a white paper describing the first phase of its work tackling paper mills. Achievements include creating a “comprehensive training toolkit, guidance on improving post-publication corrections” and positive feedback on its research manifesto. Moving forward, co-chair Dr. Nandita Quaderi underlined, “Phase 2 of United2Act is about putting the resources we’ve developed through the initiative into practice.” Turning to research integrity and AI, a team of researchers developed an AI tool to detect “questionable” journals. As reported by Science, the AI tool accurately determined roughly 1,000 of around 15,000 journals to be questionable. However, the tool also generated over 300 false positives and 1,782 false negatives. Nonetheless, Daniel Acuña, the researcher who managed the study, believes the AI tool “could help users save time and accomplish fairer, more proactive reviews of journals than the subjective classifications done solely by human evaluators.” Acuña also intends to release the tool commercially on ReviewerZero under the name Journal Monitor.

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NISO Opens Draft of Recommended Practice for Comments, Plus the Release of the STM Digital Carbon Calculator

The National Information Standards Organization’s (NISO) Open Access Business Processes Recommended Practice is open for industry commentary. The Recommended Practice features a “shared glossary,” along with recommendations regarding metadata. Working Group Co-Chair Amanda Holmes further shared, “By establishing standards for communication, reporting, and metadata, this Recommended Practice aims to make open access publishing workflows more transparent, scalable, and equitable for all stakeholders.” In other news, the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) revealed the STM Digital Carbon Calculator. The free tool leverages the DIMPACT methodology and is “designed to help academic publishers understand and reduce the carbon footprint of their digital journals.”

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APA’s Updated AI Policy and RSC’s New Screening Partnership

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is leveraging Enago’s AI technology to vet its submissions. RSC explained that Enago’s AI screening system “will check manuscripts against journal-specific requirements across RSC’s portfolio, providing authors with targeted guidance on compliance before submission.” RSC aims for the AI-powered screening to save time for both authors and editors, along with decreasing “submission-to-decision times.” Next up, the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Publications and Communications Board rolled out a new AI policy. The policy addresses authors’ utilization of AI in reviews, editing, and coding and stresses that “AI cannot be listed as an author.” APA’s policy also contends with issues of privacy and accountability, as it requires human verification of AI outputs and deters authors from “enter[ing] confidential research material or participant data into generative AI tools.”

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Where do Researchers Receive More Engagement—X or Bluesky?

According to two recent studies, Bluesky has surpassed X as the leading social channel for scientists and researchers. First, a preprint published by researchers in the UK and China looked at 2.6 million Bluesky posts, finding that those mentioning scientific articles received more likes, reposts, and replies than posts on X. In particular, “one-third were reposted ten or more times” and “Quotes…and replies were nearly two orders of magnitude greater on Bluesky than on X.” The study also revealed that Bluesky posts were more likely to summarize articles. A second study conducted by marine biologist and conservationist David Shiffman and social scientist Julia Wester yielded similar results. Surveying 813 members of the scientific community, the study found that around half of participants no longer find X useful for networking and discovering new research despite remaining on the platform. Most respondents also reported that “Bluesky has a ‘vibrant and healthy online science community,’ while Twitter no longer does.”

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Awards Round-Up: ALPSP, Cundill History, and Baillie Gifford

As we enter the coveted “ber” months, what’s more appropriate than a round-up of book and industry awards? First up, the Cundill History Prize unveiled its eight-title shortlist. Several books from Princeton University Press are featured, along with one title from Harvard University Press. Three finalists will be revealed on September 30, with the winner crowned on October 30. The Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction also published its longlist. The 12 longlisted works come from eight publishers and were narrowed down from over 350 submissions. The prize will announce its shortlist on October 2 and winner on November 4. Lastly, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) named the four winners of its 2025 Rising Star Awards. The recipients, three of which are university press employees, received a free invitation to ALPSP’s 2025 Conference running from September 10th through 12th.

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