Hello fellow journalologists,
Sir Theodore "Robbie" Fortescue Fox, who edited The Lancet between 1944 and 1964 noted that there are two types of journal: newspaper journals and recorder journals.
We should all be thankful for the role that newspaper journals play in these troubled times. Science and Nature, in particular, play an invaluable news-gathering role, especially during times of political or social upheaval. Scienceinsider has done an incredible job over the past week.
This newsletter arrives in your inbox later than planned in part due to illness. The lead story is hot off the press and was announced an hour or so ago. So I am both late and on time in equal measure. Share and enjoy.
News
Molecular Connections (MC), a leader in digital transformation and data science, has acquired Morressier, the innovative platform provider reshaping scholarly workflows. This acquisition combines trusted services with product innovation, creating a differentiated model designed to meet the evolving needs of scholarly publishers and support their critical mission in the research ecosystem.
At the core of this collaboration is Journal Manager, Morressier's flagship product and the foundation for building scalable, end-to-end solutions. Journal Manager transforms how publishers manage workflows, delivering enhanced user experiences, ensuring research integrity, and addressing the industry's growing complexities.
Morressier (press release)
JB: Morressier is a well known startup, which has attracted significant external investment over the years: in Nov 2017 it raised $1.7m of seed funding; a year later, it raised $4.5m from Cherry Ventures and angel investors; in May 2021 it announced an additional $18m of Series A investment; and this time last year $16.5m of Series B “to lead the fight for research integrity”. That’s just shy of $41m of investment, which helped to create four products: Abstract Manager, Proceedings Manager, Integrity Manager and Journal Manager.
The press release, unsurprisingly, does not divulge how much Molecular Connections paid to acquire Morressier or whether the angel investors are happy with the return on their investment. None of them are quoted in the press release; no doubt you will have your own view on what that means.
Some of you may remember this announcement made in March 2023: IOP Publishing and Morressier partner to develop a state-of-the-art submission and peer review system, which claimed:
We’re going to slash the time it takes authors to submit while setting the standard in integrity and quality through the application of streamlined workflows and the latest technologies. We’re also setting out to create the best possible experience for authors and reviewers.
According to the Morressier website, the “next generation submission management system” will be available for limited release in April 2025.
There’s a long history of failed attempts to build peer-review systems, which you can read about here. Molecular Connections has a good reputation in the industry, based on what I’ve heard over the years. Whether it has the capability and financial resources to develop Journal Manager further, where so many others have tried and failed, is the million dollar (maybe more?) question.
Roger Schonfeld has interviewed the two CEOs of Morressier and Molecular Connections in a post for The Scholarly Kitchen. This quote from Jignesh Bhate, the CEO and owner of Molecular Connections, gives a sense of what the future may hold:
The opportunity for Molecular Connections is to provide a platform — Morressier’s — on which a variety of its existing services can more effectively reach the market. Bhate calls this a hub and spoke model, in which Molecular Connections already has several spokes and Morressier can serve as the hub for publishers.
As usual, Roger asks all the right questions:
As Morressier finds its exit, it is reasonable to ask about the long-term independence of Molecular Connections. And there, the matter is about succession for the founder-owner. When I asked Bhate about this, he told me without hesitation that they are planning for an IPO in roughly 3-4 years. If this comes to fruition, it will be by some calculations the only publishing infrastructure product provider to be publicly traded.
SCOAP3 launched in 2014 and its members include 3,000 libraries, research funders and research organizations worldwide, all of which contribute to a common fund at CERN. This is used to pay annual or quarterly lump sums to journals, in amounts depending on how many papers they publish. The initiative has so far supported the publication of more than 70,000 open-access articles. It has an annual budget of around €10 million (US$10.4 million).
Under the next phase of the programme, known as the Open Science Mechanism, CERN will score the journals’ publishers on how well they adopt open-science practices, according to a points system developed by the consortium. Publishers will be able to earn points for, among other things, making their content accessible for people with disabilities, linking research to the relevant software and disclosing data on the diversity of authors.
Nature (Holly Else)
Wellcome’s updated open access policy states: “From 1 January, Wellcome will only fund the cost of article processing charges (APCs) for research articles published in fully open access journals or platforms indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals.”
The funder will not cover the costs of open access publishing in subscription journals, some of which would have come under transformative agreements.
Research Professional News (Frances Jones; paywall)
JB: You can read the policy here, which is very much in line with what was outlined previously. So, in other words, researchers can publish open access in hybrid journals to meet Wellcome Trust compliance criteria, but can’t use Wellcome Trust funds to pay for the APC.
The Wellcome Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024 was also announced a few weeks ago, which makes for interesting reading if you’re into that kind of thing. The report is 218 pages long and, as far as I can tell, does not mention open access, which is perhaps surprising since the new (as of January 2024) Chief Executive, John-Arne Røttingen, was co-chair of the cOAlition S implementation task force.
It’s worth pausing to consider the size of the Wellcome Trust’s investment portfolio:
Our investment portfolio returned +5.2% in pounds sterling (GBP) in the year to 30 September 2024 (2023: +0.9%), or +3.5% after inflation. After charitable cash expenditure of £1.1 billion, this led to an increase in total funds (the value of our investment portfolio less all liabilities) to £33.9 billion.
The investment team has done a good job since 1985:
Interestingly, the report does not mention Wellcome Open Research, which is “a way for Wellcome-funded researchers to rapidly publish any results they think are worth sharing”.
The journal/database is slowly gaining in popularity, but published fewer than 1000 research articles in 2024 (source: Dimensions, Digital Science).
The 750 articles published in 2023 have been cited on average (mean) 3.11 times. That compares with 3.4 for PLOS One, 4.8 for Scientific Reports, and 8.73 for eLife (with a filter applied to restrict the content to biomedical articles).
The Sage journal American Surgeon has issued a mass expression of concern for 116 articles.
The expression of concern states the journal “was made aware” of “concerning author activity” on the articles.
Sage is no stranger to mass editorial actions. In 2023, the publisher pulled large tranches of papers at least three times, and last year it retracted over 450 papers from a journal the company had acquired from IOS Press. The publisher was one of the first to begin retracting papers in bulk, primarily to combat manipulated peer review.
Retraction Watch (Avery Orrall)
JB: It’s worth noting that all of the papers had one common author.
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, and Egypt follow Ethiopia as the countries with the highest rate of retractions, according to the study, which was conducted by Achal Agrawal, a data scientist based in Chhattisgarh, India. Agrawal founded India Research Watchdog, a site that keeps tabs on scientific research conducted in India.
“Some countries might figure high on this list as they may have an active community of science sleuths working to weed out the bad papers,” Agrawal writes in the study. France, for example, is one of the world’s leaders in research integrity, he notes, and the work of sleuths resulted in a lot of retractions in 2024.
Chemical & Engineering News (Dalmeet Singh Chawla)
JB: You can read the preprint here.
The new read and publish agreement reaffirms the commitment of the research community in the Netherlands to open access. The agreement continues to provide Dutch researchers with reading rights to the peer-reviewed content from Elsevier’s portfolio of journals via ScienceDirect opens in new tab/window. The new agreement additionally provides 100% open access publishing in eligible journals for all participating institutions*. It is also a step forward in transparency in the areas of privacy, AI, text and data mining and user rights. A separate agreement provides access to Scopus opens in new tab/window, the world’s largest multidisciplinary, trusted abstract and citations database.
Elsevier (press release)
JB: This is in contrast to three recent cancellations by UK institutions. Research Professional News recently published Why are universities pulling out of big publishing deals? (paywall). There are significant budgetary pressures, but a long tail of low-use journals is also part of the story:
But not all universities need to access every title in these big bundles. The University of Sheffield’s library estimates that out of 1,850 journals included in the Elsevier ScienceDirect package, just 450 account for 75 per cent of Sheffield’s usage.
Elsevier and the ACC have partnered for more than 40 years, with a long tradition of bringing the latest Guidelines to clinicians in JACC, and now via the latest innovative channels through ClinicalKey AI. With this recent partnership expansion, clinicians can quickly review details and specific sections from the ACC’s Guidelines and Expert Consensus Decision Pathways, bulleted and summarized by ClinicalKey AI’s response generation. Users can either quickly access specific information needed from the guidelines while actively reviewing their patient’s medications, follow-up on scans, or click on citations to directly access the full-text Guidelines and Consensus Statements.
Elsevier (press release)
In 2025, we will be developing new guidance on:
- Issuing expressions of concern
- Managing guest-edited collections
- Disclosing, applying, and administering author fees and waivers
- Crediting organisations in scholarly publications
- Declaring funding sources in published articles
In addition, we will be publishing a thorough revision of the retraction guidelines.
Committee on Publication Ethics (announcement)
JB: In a separate article (Publishers need help to combat malicious networks) Kim Eggleton from IOP Publishing notes:
I’d also like better industry guidance. Organisations like the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the US-based National Information Standards Organization (NISO) have provided invaluable tips on things like how to identify peer review manipulation and how to properly handle corrections. The principles they share are incredibly helpful when addressing suspected or confirmed misconduct. However, they don’t say much specifically about malicious networks and what we can do about them. For instance, there’s no guidance about what to do if you find citation manipulation in a published manuscript.
JAMA today announces a new cohort of ten academic physicians and nurses selected for the JAMA Editorial Fellowship Program, designed to engage early career clinical or health services researchers with JAMA’s editorial team to learn about editorial decision-making and enhance skills in scientific communication.
Fellows were chosen based on their demonstrated interest in medical publishing, medical education or research, or a career in academic medicine, as well as their communication skills and knowledge of medical research and study design.
JAMA Network (announcement)
JB: More publishers should have programmes like this one. MDPI has been doing this at scale for a while (see here). The International Society for Stem Cell Research issued a call for applications recently too.
The originality of this viewpoint lies in its focus on the often-unheard voices of scholars who opposed the mass resignation and academic boycott of Gender, Work and Organization, offering a counter-narrative to the widely publicized protest. Its value comes from critically examining how actions intended to promote social justice and equality can inadvertently harm early-career and marginalized scholars. By spotlighting these complexities and challenging the virtue signalling behind the boycott, the critique contributes to ongoing discussions on the ethical responsibilities of academic activism, solidarity and inclusivity in feminist scholarship.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (Milena Tekeste and Mustafa F. Özbilgin)
The Microbiology Society is pleased to announce a new three year Publish and Read agreement from 2025 with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (also known as Peking Union Medical College), consistently ranked among the top medical schools in China. The Society’s model will support affiliated researchers by facilitating access to Society titles and fee-free Open Access (OA) publishing. This agreement was established in partnership with the Charlesworth Group, the Society’s representative agency in China.
Microbiology Society (announcement)
JB: The below graph provides an overview of the Microbiology Society’s income and expenditure in recent years. Publishing income fell from £3,564,000 in 2021 to £3,268,000 in 2022, and then to £2,775,000 in 2023 (source: annual reports). Two of the seven journals will offer subscribe-to-open from 2025. Some academic societies are under significant financial pressure; institutional agreements like this one are important for their future success.
The European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH), a pioneering initiative to advance Diamond Open Access publishing across Europe, was officially launched on 15th January 2025, in Madrid. OPERAS, the research infrastructure for open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities, will serve as the fiscal host of the European Diamond Capacity Hub.
Plan S (announcement)
The transition is supported by a collaborative funding model that exemplifies European cooperation and success. The French National Center for Scientific Research CNRS, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), the French Acoustics Society (SFA) and the EAA have provided a financial foundation for the journal’s transition to Diamond OA over an initial three-year period (2025–2027). While this funding guarantees full Diamond OA publication for the first year, additional support is urgently needed to sustain this equitable model and expand its global reach.
EDP Sciences (press release)
JB: It’s worth looking at the underlying trends when considering announcements like this one. The graph below is from Digital Science’s Dimensions, with a filter applied for Research Article. Diamond OA journals tend to be small. Discuss.
Other news stories
Leader in mission-driven open publishing wins APE Award for Innovation in Scholarly Communication
ResearchGate and IOP Publishing to further expand Journal Home partnership with extra titles and Open Access Agreement Upgrade
ResearchGate and BMJ Group expand Journal Home partnership to cover wider group of journals and activate Open Access Agreement Update
Frontiers expands its partnership with the World Economic Forum
Star ecologist accused of misconduct loses university post
‘Publish or perish’ culture blamed for reproducibility crisis
eLife appoints Timothy Behrens as Editor-in-Chief
Your feedback needed! Help us make it easier to classify content based on SDGs
Bluesky’s science takeover: 70% of Nature poll respondents use platform
AI hallucinations can’t be stopped — but these techniques can limit their damage
AAAS announces addition of Journal of EMDR Practice and Research to Science Partner Journal program
Announcing the Journal of Human Immunity
Scholastica announces integration with Scholastica announces integration with Crossmark by Crossref to expand its research integrity support
MDPI: Germany faces questions over agreement with publisher
STM announces three key leadership promotions to strengthen strategy, equity, and public affairs
Over 45 additional institutions covered by new ACS read and publish agreements
Retractions caused by honest mistakes are extremely stressful, say researchers
Pair of management papers retracted for similarities to earlier work
‘Foolish mistake’: Guest editor loses three articles published in his own special issues
Become a better leader: the Journalology coaching programme
Scholarly publishing needs leaders. Do you aspire to be one of them? Are you communicating effectively within your organisation and externally? Does your team work cohesively to provide the best possible author experience? Do you have a clear strategy that you’re able to execute?
Most coaches work across multiple industries and are unable to provide useful insight into scholarly publishing. The Journalology coaching programme is different. I’ve got a proven track record, as both an editor and as a publisher, and can help you to create more impactful journals and get better at your craft.
|
And finally...
If you haven't read An Editor’s Perspective on “My Very Last Issue” by Brandy Shillace in The Scholarly Kitchen yet, you should. Hands up if this resonates with you:
But a new emphasis on profit, and on publishing more and more papers had taken hold. I was continually asked why I wasn’t accepting more papers, faster? Meanwhile, systemic problems persisted, and already overtaxed authors and reviewers were giving up on us.
Or perhaps this:
There were now teams of people editing all genres of work with no specificity to their background or assignments, and usually without English as a first language. Citations were a nightmare. These folks weren’t to blame; if anything, they were victimized by the system, too, and rarely got any credit for their good work. But every time something went awry, I would reach out to my contact, who had to reach out to their contacts, and so on in three time zones. It took forever to fix even basic problems, but that’s not all. I was losing control of the process and unable to see the whole of it clearly. Reviewers got mad at the system too. Authors hated it. But these new online publishing systems had now become ubiquitous.
And with that, I'll leave you. I'm off to buy a copy of Brandy’s book: Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher
Until next time,
James (no, not that Dr. Butcher)