Hello fellow journalologists,
Last year we learned that two of the largest journals — Heliyon (Cell Press / Elsevier) and Cureus (Springer Nature) had been put ’on hold’ by Web of Science. I asked Clarivate for an update on when a decision would be made and received this reply:
Details of specific evaluations are confidential. Timelines for re-evaluations are dependent upon the nature and complexity of the case, questions we may have for the publisher, and the extent to which the publisher engages with us. The median time for a journal remaining on Hold before a decision is reached is around 6 weeks, but in cases in which publishers engage with us as per our
policy, we will consider allowing a journal to remain on Hold for longer to allow time for publishers to conduct their own investigations and take corrective action should they decide to do so. Typically, we would expect these actions to be completed within 12 months.
Is no news good news? Perhaps not for Heliyon, which has published around 1200 research and review articles in the first two months of this year. A back-of-the envelope run-rate calculation would put the annual output at 7200 articles; it published over 17,000 last year.
Cureus published 3070 research and review articles in January and February. A crude run rate would put the output at around 18,000 articles; it published 25,000 last year.
The drop in output could be due to (1) an artefact of the index timing (seems unlikely, but possible); (2) the publishers hit the brakes to placate the indexing gods; (3) authors are choosing not to submit to a journal that’s On Hold.
There’s no publicly available information on why Clarivate put them on hold. The publishers’ revenues will likely be affected, with the timing of a final decision uncertain. The Sword of Damocles is still hanging over them.
News
openRxiv has officially launched as an independent nonprofit to oversee bioRxiv and medRxiv, the world's leading preprint servers for life and health sciences. openRxiv ensures that researchers worldwide can continue to share discoveries rapidly and openly. With a researcher-led governance model, openRxiv strengthens the foundation of preprint sharing, empowering scientists to communicate findings at the speed of discovery.
openRxiv (announcement)
JB. Science and Nature both covered this story last week, and STAT published a Q&A with Richard Sever, who will leave his current role to become chief scientific strategy officer of openRxiv.
I had an email exchange with John Inglis, who will chair the openRxiv’s scientific and medical advisory board; a shortened version of his responses are included below. I started off by asking him how the funders, which include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, will define success.
Beyond providing seed capital, these funders will look for evidence of broader adoption and long-term impact—for example, growth in preprint submissions, participation from a wide range of life science research fields and geographically diverse research communities. In other words, success for them isn’t just about short-term metrics but about continuing to support the adoption of preprints in scientific communication worldwide.
What gets measured gets done; an organisation’s KPIs (key performance indicators) can give a good indication of the likely direction of travel:
openRxiv’s mission is to provide support for bioRxiv and medRxiv and preprint adoption. Its KPI’s will include growth in preprint submissions, especially from first-time users; the speed of manuscript sharing—how quickly new findings appear compared to traditional publishing timelines (days vs months or even years); diverse global participation—increased uptake across regions and research fields (we have submissions from 192 countries); community engagement metrics; and increases in readership, measured through usage data from page views and downloads. We’re also interested in the growth of the ecosystem around preprints, e.g. peer review and other forms of preprint evaluation, tracking links for data sharing.
Grants may not be renewed, of course, so a key challenge for openRxiv will be to create financial stability.
openRxiv is intentionally seeking diversified funding (e.g., foundations, philanthropic organizations, smaller grants, institutions). The organization’s nonprofit structure allows it to welcome new donors and community contributions, ensuring that no single source drives its decisions. Other revenue streams will be explored and established once a new CEO is hired. openRxiv will also consider the further development of services around the servers that will benefit a variety of stakeholders. It’s important to note that there will not be any change in the cost of posting or reading preprints on bioRxiv and medRxiv: they will remain entirely free.
The graph below shows the number of preprints published per year, according to Dimensions. Last year 432k preprints were posted, 56% of which were on arXiv the physics preprint server. The volume of preprints (all servers) dropped in 2023 and 2024, according to this dataset.
To put the 432k number into context, Dimensions indexed 5.8 million Articles last year, of which 4.3 million were Research Articles. So preprints are roughly a tenth the size of journal publications (with big variations in the ratio for different subject areas).
This is what the graph looks like for bioRxiv and medRxiv (source: Dimensions). Growth has been slow since 2000 and perhaps is one reason why openRxiv was created. Plan U looks to have stalled.
Chris Jones, the CEO of BMJ, said this on LinkedIn:
The launch of openRxiv is a game-changer for scientific publishing.
For that future to occur, uptake will need to increase dramatically. Preprint advocates make a lot of noise about preprints being the future of scholarly publishing. The numbers in the clinical, biomedical and life sciences are currently modest at best. If you fancy a challenge and want to try to create a new future for scientific publishing, openRxiv is looking to recruit a CEO.
Rather than pursuing a complete rewrite—which would be high-risk and potentially disruptive—or making only superficial changes, we're implementing a strategic, multi-faceted approach that addresses both immediate needs and long-term sustainability. Publishing workflows are complex and highly configurable, and many publishers can’t rely on lightweight, pared-down versions of the platform. ScholarOne customers deserve to continue leveraging the full scope of what ScholarOne offers already, and more.
Silverchair (announcement)
JB: I am not a developer, but I’ve heard enough people over the years complain about "old codebases" to wonder whether a complete rewrite will be needed at some point. The biggest challenge that the established peer review systems have is their legacy, both in terms of the language the code is written in but also the sheer number of journals that use (often bespoke) versions of the system. That’s presumably why the likes of Springer Nature decided to build their own tool.
The Strangler Fig Pattern is a new piece of terminology for me:
The approach we’ve described for the ScholarOne platform is called The Strangler Fig Pattern. Named after the plant, which wraps around and ultimately kills its host tree, this strategy reduces risk while minimizing disruption.
It is an outcomes-oriented approach, which incrementally rewrites small parts of the codebase (in our case, as we pursue other improvements and new features) and switches on this new code while the old code is still running. Gradually, we’ll be able to transition more and more components of the codebase into this new system, and the old system will eventually cease to exist.
Over the last 18 months, I've extensively experimented with building applications using AI-assisted environments. In just the past six months, the capabilities of these AI tools have dramatically accelerated, prompting me to explore just how effectively one person—without engineering support—could quickly develop a simple yet practical journal platform.
EasyJournal is the result of this experiment
Robots Cooking (Adam Hyde)
JB: This newsletter is written by a human. For now.
Scholastica and Maverick have teamed up to launch the “Technology Needs of Small and Medium Journal Publishers” survey to gather insights into the digital tools and workflow optimizations that would best serve the smaller publishing community for its members and the infrastructural and service providers who support them.
The survey takes only 10–15 minutes to complete, and the results will be compiled into an openly available report (no download form required).
Scholastica (announcement)
JB: You can take the survey here. If you’re attending SSP this year:
We’ve launched this survey to complement the
2025 SSP Conference session, “What smaller publishers need from tech vendors to level up,” which was submitted by members of the Scholastica team and will be moderated by Maverick co-founder and CEO Rebecca Rinehart.
In the new guidelines and accompanying FAQs, Wiley provides suggestions to authors on how to utilize AI tools in their manuscript preparation while preserving the author’s authentic voice and expertise, maintaining reliable, trusted, and accurate content, safeguarding intellectual property and privacy, and meeting ethics and integrity best practices.
The guidelines respond directly to broad demand for publisher guidance in utilizing AI, requested by around 70% of researchers in Wiley’s recent ExplanAItions study, and were informed by extensive interviews with authors, editorial staff and AI experts.
Wiley (announcement)
Elsevier, a global leader in advanced information and decision support, today launches ScienceDirect AI, a cutting-edge generative AI tool for researchers. It is designed to transform the way researchers work by enabling them to instantly extract, summarize and compare trusted insights from millions of full-text articles and book chapters on ScienceDirect, the world's largest platform for trusted, peer-reviewed research.
Elsevier (announcement)
JB: This paragraph explains how Scopus AI will sit alongside ScienceDirectAI:
Scopus AI, launched in January 2024, draws on Scopus' curated collection of research data and abstracts from over 7,000 publishers globally. Like a telescope, Scopus AI provides a broad view of the full research landscape and helps to make interdisciplinary connections to support strategy and planning. ScienceDirect AI is complementary, providing a microscopic deep-dive into millions of full-text articles and book chapters, for detailed analysis. By integrating its high-quality trusted content and data with responsible AI across its platforms, Elsevier aims to help advance science, to advance human progress.
Someone inadvertently edited out “advance the share price” in the last sentence.
As as aside, Advance seems to be a word beloved by PR teams. Springer Nature’s tagline is Advancing Discovery. CoARA stands for Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment. The American Lung Association and the Parkinson's Association both use “Advancing Research” on their websites. AAAS named its open access journal Science Advances (see story below). No one seems to use “Retreating Research”, despite the pleasing alliteration. I can’t think why.
Ten years ago, Science Advances published its very first issue. It was a monthly issue and had 12 papers in total. Since then, much has happened for the journal, for scientific research, and for countries around the world. Science Advances has seen Donald Trump elected President of the United States twice, Brexit wreaking havoc in the UK and Europe, and wars in Ukraine and Gaza. It has seen China continue to grow as a scientific power. In science, it has chronicled the explosion of artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
Since the journal’s launch, the growth has been dramatic. Now, we are publishing between 50 and 60 papers in each weekly issue. Submissions have been on the rise since the beginning with an all-time high for 2024 of over 28,000 submissions.
Science Advances (Laura Reims and H Holden Thorp)
JB: Happy 10th birthday Science Advances! At the risk of being an unwelcome curmudgeonly guest at the party, I’d argue that the growth was strong until 2020 and then it levelled off (see orange line below; Dimensions).
There are four large, broad-scope, high-impact journals; Science Advances is ranked fourth in terms of article volume and third for impact factor. Yes, yes, I know: size isn’t everything and none of us care about impact factors, but scale does matter, especially if you want to create financially sustainable journal portfolio.
The table below compares Nature Communications with Science Advances in the 22 major ANZSRC subject categories. The numbers speak for themselves.
(Source: Dimensions, Digital Science; search limited to research and review articles published in 2024. Watch this video to find out more about the ANZSRC classification scheme)
Nature Communications is the most successful Nature journal since the original was launched in 1869. I’m very proud of how well the journal has performed; it’s the result of a lot of hard work from a large number of people.
There are many reasons why Nature Communications has outperformed Science Advances over the past 10 years. The in-house editorial team is certainly a large part of it (172 salaried editors are listed on the masthead), but so are the transfers coming from the multitude of Nature research journals that sit above it. The portfolio operates synergistically.
Many publishers, commercial and not-for-profit alike, have adopted a portfolio strategy. Why? Because it works. The graph below shows the number of research articles published on nature.com and science.org over time, starting in 1992 when Nature Genetics, the first Nature research journal, launched.
If you need support developing a portfolio of journals, hit reply to this email. I’d love to help you if I can.
Five leading journals published by the Biochemical Society, by and for molecular bioscientists, will be published open access (OA) during 2025. The move was unanimously endorsed by all members of the Portland Press Board, which is the wholly owned trading subsidiary of the Society. Following the collective action of libraries who renewed their annual subscriptions on the basis of the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model, the commitments on both sides enable researchers worldwide to publish in and read all articles with no scholar-facing fees. This decision completes the Society’s OA transition, providing a compliant open access route for all papers which will publish under the terms of a CC-BY license.
Biochemical Society (announcement)
JB: According to recent financial reports from the Biochemical Society journals revenues were
2020 = £4509k
2021 = £3873k
2022 = £3760k
2023 = £3592k
The 2024 data should be released in July.
The number of research and review articles published by Portland Press over the past two decades is shown in the graph below.
Will the S2O model, which has no “scholar-facing fees”, help the journals attract new authors? Will the decision to move to Kriyadocs last year make a difference too? One to watch.
Reviewer Credits, the Berlin-based network for peer reviewers and publishing integrity hub, is pleased to announce a new partnership with Kriyadocs, integrating the Reviewer Credits recognition capabilities into the Kriyadocs Unified Publishing Ecosystem (UPE) workflow.
Reviewer Credits (announcement)
The inclusion of Taylor & Francis journals in ONOS provides Indian academics with the latest high-quality research across every field, including one of the world’s largest Humanities and Social Sciences portfolios. Taylor & Francis believes that this broad access to knowledge for India-based researchers will make a significant contribution to research equity and impact.
Journal access provided through ONOS is also expected to supercharge India’s already growing international research profile. Taylor & Francis has seen a consistent 20% growth, year on year, in published journal articles from authors based in India. In 2024, the number of Taylor & Francis publications with an author based in India was third only to the US and China.
Taylor & Francis (announcement)
JB: This is what the graph looks like for T&F’s output by author location. I haven't applied any document type filters to this graph. India drops down to fourth place, behind the UK, when I limited the search to research articles.
The citation characteristics for articles (of all types) published by T&F in 2023 are shown in the table below. Citations to articles with at least one author from India is higher than for the USA (at least for T&F).
Through this partnership, authors submitting to eLife will have access to SciScore's comprehensive rigor and reproducibility analysis at no additional cost. SciScore assesses manuscripts against key reporting criteria, including NIH, MDAR, ARRIVE, CONSORT, and RRID standards, ensuring that essential methodological details are thoroughly reported.
SciCrunch (announcement)
Hum is excited to announce the launch of Alchemist Review, an advanced AI-powered tool designed to enhance the efficiency, consistency, and quality of the peer review process. Developed in collaboration with GroundedAI, Alchemist Review assists editors and reviewers by extracting and analysing text, images and citations within manuscripts.
Building upon initial collaborative efforts with early society partners and university press customers, Alchemist Review combines Hum's expertise in manuscript content analysis and GroundedAI's advanced citation evaluation, offering editors and reviewers a powerful set of AI-driven capabilities.
Hum (announcement)
On February 28, the nonprofit Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, which owns the journal, released a statement saying it was halting the issue for increased risks due to “new actions by the U.S. federal administration.” The statement listed “potential risks” such as “personal threats to journal editors, authors, and reviewers, as well as to ACSA volunteers and staff” as well as “legal and financial risks facing the organization.” ACSA did not respond to our request for comment to expand on what these risks might be.
Retraction Watch (Avery Orrall)
Today, LIBER, OpenAIRE, SPARC Europe, and COAR are publishing a plan of action to strengthen and future-proof research repositories in Europe.
A robust repository network is key for safeguarding Europe’s research production and advancing scientific excellence in Europe. And while currently, Europe has one of the most well-developed networks globally with hundreds of repositories, there are low levels of awareness about their important role in the ecosystem.
The IMPACT-REPO action plan aims to address this lack of visibility by articulating four key portraits of the role of repositories: Repositories for impact, inclusiveness, trust, and innovation.
Confederation of Open Access Repositories (announcement)
JB: You can download the plan here.
The EVE project, developed by Pi School with support from Imperative Space, is creating an innovative virtual expert capable of answering queries about Earth Observation and Earth science in natural language. Pi School's mission is to empower businesses and individuals by delivering cutting-edge AI solutions tailored to real-world challenges. The system will be built by enhancing an existing AI language model with specialized Earth science knowledge and the ability to reference and cite specific scientific sources in its responses.
In support of this endeavor, Wiley will license a collection of published research, such as scientific journals, including those from the American Geophysical Union (AGU) publishing program, books from Wiley’s Earth science portfolio, and Q&A courseware materials.
Wiley (announcement)
The new centralization effort will apply to the first stage of the review process. NIH’s CSR, which was established in 1946 to manage the scientific review of NIH grant applications and to ensure independent, expert review free from inappropriate influence, currently manages the peer review process for more than 78% of NIH grants. The remaining 22% are reviewed in study sections within 23 ICs, each operating separately with its own administrative and support overhead. The proposed consolidation would eliminate the IC-based study sections so that CSR conducts all first-level review.
According to an analysis of FY24 data, CSR uses 0.3% of the NIH budget to review more than 66,000 applications annually. In comparison, review costs in the ICs average about 300% of CSR’s costs.
US National Institutes of Health (announcement)
Other news stories
IOP Publishing celebrates a year of transformation and growth
CACTUS and Aptara strengthen partnership to enhance research integrity
IOP Publishing and Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory launch AI for Science, a new diamond open access journal
ASTM International Selects Silverchair to Host ASTM Digital Library
CLOCKSS joins the Silverchair Universe
Three ways I can support you |
And finally...
I hope to see some of you at this webinar for people of advanced age (see what I did there?) on Tuesday.
Until next time,
James