News: Academic Publishing Weekly

Commemorating Peer Review Week, an analysis of authors' AI use, and another UP closure

Posted on September 19, 2025 in News

Peer Review Week: The Impact of AI

Happy Peer Review Week! Aligning with this year’s theme, “Rethinking Peer Review in the AI Era,” a survey from IOP Publishing (IOPP) examined physical sciences reviewers’ opinions on the technology. The number of reviewers who feel neutral about AI’s influence on peer review has decreased since 2024, with 41 percent responding positively and 37 percent expressing skepticism. Nearly a third of researchers reported using AI for reviews and both men and early career researchers had more encouraging views. Next, Nature published a peer-reviewed paper on DeepSeek’s large language model R1. The study was reviewed by eight independent researchers whose comments led DeepSeek to include clearer details on the model’s safety and training. Commenting on the study, Nature underscored that peer review “provides a counterbalance to the practice of AI developers marking their own homework by choosing benchmarks that show their models in the best light.”

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Peer Review Week Cont.: Geographic Diversity and Quality Ratings

Sticking on the topic of peer review, an analysis exposed “geographical representation bias” among reviews of over 200,000 submissions to journals from the Institute of Physics (IOP). The analysis showed that peer reviewers are concentrated in a small number of regions. Of note, researchers provide higher ratings to manuscripts with authors from their own country. The analysis also looked at journals that adhered to IOP’s “voluntary anonymisation policy,” but found that anonymizing authors had no effect on geographic bias. Next, Gareth Dyke, Academic Director at ReviewerCredits, Sales Director at 4Evolution, and co-founder of Sci-Train, and Ashotosh Ghildiyal, Vice President of Growth & Strategy at Integra, introduced a new method for reviewing articles, Peer Review Quality Ratings. As part of the rating, authors, peer reviewers, and readers would report on their experience undergoing a review, their work with the editorial team, and the quality of research published. Afterward, “Independent third-party organizations [would] audit and certify journals’ adherence to high peer review standards.” Dyke and Ghildiyal also suggested creating global, standardized rating guidelines to inform the reviews.  

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How Prevalent is Authors’ Use of AI?

A recent study from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) reveals that authors are increasingly utilizing AI—but are not disclosing its use. The study employed Pangram Labs’ AI Detection Dashboard to look at the abstracts of AACR journal articles submitted in January through June. AACR uncovered that 36 percent of over 7,000 abstracts included AI. However, “when asked in an automatic step in the submission process to disclose any use of AI to prepare the manuscript, authors only did so for 9% of the papers studied.” The study found AI-generated text in manuscripts’ methods sections and reviewer reports. Going forward, AACR is contemplating emailing affected authors and using the AI Detection Dashboard for additional screening. [Science]

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Reevaluating Research Metrics and Another University Press Closure

Another university press is ceasing its operations. Citing an email from Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Megan Mustain, San Antonio Express-News reported that Trinity University Press will shut down next December. Mustain underlined that the Press’s costs are “unsustainable.” Staff will begin “assisting authors ‘in the pipeline’ on moving their books to other publishers.” San Antonio Express-News noted that Mustain did not mention the Press’s backlist and previous grant funding. Next up, Scholarly Kitchen chef Maryam Sayab underscored the pitfalls journal metrics pose to authors and research writ large. In particular, Sayab posited that metrics such as Impact Factors can lead to a culture where researchers “publish for prestige.” Sayab explained that the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) still factors into tenure decisions and broad, global topics tend to be published in journals with a higher JIF. Thus, Sayab stressed the need for accountability and “diverse and inclusive metrics.”

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ALPSP Award Recipients and the American Book Awards Winners

The winners of the ALPSP Awards were honored at ALPSP’s Annual Conference. Richard Gallagher, President and Editor-in-Chief of Annual Reviews, took home the ALPSP Award for Contribution to Scholarly Publishing. ALPSP also announced the winners of the Impact Award and Award for Innovation in Publishing. Notably, three of the four Rising Star Awards recipients are university press employees. The recipients of the 46th annual American Book Awards were also named by the Before Columbus Foundation. Described as a “writers’ award given by other writers,” the American Book Awards do not feature categories or nominees. Four university press books were recognized among the 15 winning titles.

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