Hello fellow journalologists,
I tend to write these newsletters quickly and sometimes I make a mistake. Last week I said:
Pablo Gómez Barreiro’s commentary was published on March 23 and presumably hadn’t been seen by Stefan Tochev, the MDPI CEO, by the time he published his latest newsletter on April 30, which used the original graphs.
Somehow I missed this sentence from Stefan’s newsletter:
An alternative approach, using weighted average by publication volume, shows MDPI’s self-citation rate rises from 14% to 19.7%, shifting our rank from 6th to 3rd.
The MDPI team have seen Pablo’s analysis, but disagree with his conclusions.
A coaching testimonial from a society publisher
I have thoroughly enjoyed my coaching sessions with James. Speaking with a coach who understands the nuances of our weird and wonderful industry is extremely valuable.
Having previously undertaken some more generic leadership and personal development courses, following that up with James’ coaching sessions has allowed me to more effectively put those newly learned skills into practice in the context of an industry few outside of the environment understand.
Additionally, James’ flexible approach to our sessions has allowed us to work through specific challenges is a timely way, his thoughtful reflection and ability to drill down into the heart of issues facing my role has supported our organisation in navigating some tricky terrain.
I would highly recommend the Journalology coaching programme to anybody considering it.
Publisher, Society Journals Portfolio
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News
More than 100 institutions and funders worldwide have confirmed that research published in eLife continues to be considered in hiring, promotion, and funding decisions, following the journal’s bold move to forgo its Journal Impact Factor. This confirmation offers reassurance to researchers and highlights growing momentum behind fairer, more transparent models of academic publishing and assessment.
eLife (announcement)
JB: eLife will lose its impact factor next month and it will be fascinating to see what happens to the volume of submissions (if they share those data) and publications after that.
As every editor and publisher knows, especially around this time of the year, the denominator matters just as much as the numerator in ratio calculations. In that regard, it’s worth noting that
So, < 0.1% of organisations have supported eLife. However, it’s the way researchers working at the other 99.9% react will decide the fate of the journal.
(Yes, that’s a somewhat facetious statement as it’s not as though every one of the 116k organisations has (or will) publish in eLife, but you get the point I’m trying to make I hope.)
The table below shows the article output (all article types) per month for eLife sourced from Digital Science’s Dimensions.
There was strong growth in output in 2024 compared with 2023 (+52% year-on-year growth). In 2025 article volumes have grown by 5% compared with the first 4 months of 2024.
eLife won’t get an impact factor this year, but other metrics are available, for example Elsevier’s CiteScore. This is the current CiteScore graph for eLife. What will it look like 2 years from now?
The journal introduced its new editorial model in January 2023, released a progress update in Feb 2024 and published the 2023 annual report in September 2024.
Now that the eLife editors no longer make reject decisions, publication volumes do not necessarily have to correlate with submissions. As long as the same numbers of papers are sent out for review (the editors don’t select papers for review based on perceived quality, or so they say), publication volumes presumably could be held constant. Of course, if submissions plummet then eventually so will published output. We will all be watching closely how this “bold move” plays out in the coming months and years.
Since 2015, we’ve expanded from around 2,000 journals to over 3,000 today, with full OA journals increasing from 550 to approximately 700. Additionally, our article publications continue to grow from around 300,000 in 2018 to over 428,000 in 2024.
Springer Nature (announcement).
JB: The primary purpose of the merger between Springer and Macmillan Science and Education was to generate a return for the shareholders. They have likely benefited handsomely, although the share price has recently taken a battering, falling 35% YTD (year-to-date) according to the Springer Nature investor’ webpage.
By contrast, RELX (which includes Elsevier) has increased by +11% YTD and Wiley has increased by 2.3%. RELX and Wiley are more diversified businesses than Springer Nature, which perhaps explains the difference in performance.
This is presumably bad news for BC Partners, a private equity firm that will look to divest its shares (on behalf of its investors) over time, but it could be good news for the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group if it wants to increase the percentage of stock it holds (it currently has 50.6% according to the Springer Nature website)
News in brief
Wiley Announces Collaboration With Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Integrate Scientific Content Into Life Sciences AI Agents. The AI agent will demonstrate how researchers can conduct comprehensive full-text scientific literature search across Wiley’s extensive journal content, moving beyond traditional abstract-only searches to access detailed content within main sections like methods and results. JB: Kent Anderson's assessment of the announcement is worth reading.
Silverchair Launches AI-Powered Dynamic Discovery on the Silverchair Platform. Silverchair has announced the launch of Dynamic Discovery, a powerful AI discovery tool that transforms how researchers find relevant scholarly content. The innovative solution connects users to better refined search results more quickly, all while enhancing the value of publishers’ brands and their content.
Journal collected $400,000 from papers it later retracted. A Sage journal that holds the distinction of highest number of retracted articles in the Retraction Watch Database likely made in excess of $400,000 in revenue from those papers, by our calculations... West pointed out that “Most of the fees related to these articles were collected before the journal was acquired by Sage and under the previous publisher’s policies and procedures.” JB: I wonder what costs Sage has incurred for sorting out this mess. Due diligence for acquisitions (this journal was part of the IOS Press acquisition) is more important now than ever.
Emerald Publishing acquires now publishers. Founded in 2004, now publishers is a leading source of academic content, publishing research monographs, journals and Foundations and Trends® (FnT) with strengths in the areas of Business, Economics, Computer Science and Engineering. The sale comprises over 50 books, 14 peer-reviewed journals and 28 Foundations and Trends® serials. JB: This is the third recent acquisition by Emerald, which bought Information Age Publishing at the end of last year and ICE (Institution of Civil Engineers) Publishing in 2023. Emerald, you may remember, was itself acquired by Cambridge Information Group in 2022.
ResearchGate and Wiley celebrate milestone with 1000 journals now active on Journal Home. This latest expansion reflects the strong performance and engagement seen across Wiley’s journals on ResearchGate. Through Journal Home, Wiley has engaged more than 2,000,000 researchers globally in the past year alone, with more than 950,000 articles added to authors’ profiles on ResearchGate and producing more than 52,000,000 new article reads and 190,000+ citations for this research.
‘Now is not the time to fade’: Retraction Watch awarded Council of Science Editors’ highest honor. We’ve published more than 6,700 posts since our first one went live on Aug. 3, 2010. There are more than 59,000 retractions and counting in The Retraction Watch Database, which is now part of Crossref and is being used every day by bibliographic software, scholars, and others around the world to help paint an ever more granular picture of the state of scientific publishing. JB: Good journalism can be a disinfectant, as the Retraction Watch team has shown so competently over the years.
FDA Announces Completion of First AI-Assisted Scientific Review Pilot and Aggressive Agency-Wide AI Rollout Timeline. In a historic first for the agency, FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary, M.D., M.P.H., today announced an aggressive timeline to scale use of artificial intelligence (AI) internally across all FDA centers by June 30, 2025, following the completion of a new generative AI pilot for scientific reviewers. JB: Ian Mulvany (CTO of the BMJ Group) alerted me to this via his newsletter.
Meet six winners of the first ever Crossref Metadata Awards. We are pleased to recognise Noyam Publishers, GigaScience Press, eLife, American Society for Microbiology, and Universidad La Salle Arequipa Perú with the Crossref Metadata Excellence Awards, and Instituto Geologico y Minero de España wins the Crossref Metadata Enrichment Award. These inaugural awards highlight the leadership of members who show dedication to the best metadata practices.
Web of Science delists bioengineering journal in wake of paper mill cleanup. Bioengineered has lost its spot in Clarivate’s Web of Science index, as of its April update. The journal has been working to overcome a flood of paper mill activity, but sleuths have questioned why hundreds of papers with potentially manipulated images have still not been retracted. JB: Taylor & Francis publishes the journal.
HighWire Celebrates Its 30th Birthday. This year marks a significant milestone as HighWire celebrates 30 years of leadership and innovation in the publishing industry. JB: I first came across the term Journalology on the Highwire platform, which powered JAMA and BMJ in the early 2000s. Both publishers had "journalology" as a subject term in their ontology.
DOAJ and DFG join forces to boost diamond open access journals in Germany. We’re pleased to announce that DOAJ has signed a three-year service agreement with the German Research Foundation (DFG). This partnership will focus on raising the visibility of German open access journals, particularly diamond journals and those funded by the DFG.
A ‘stupid mistake’: EPA researcher added their underage child as an author on manuscript. The report cites specific concerns regarding the researcher, including that their child listed the paper among their accomplishments on college applications. These and other authorship practices revealed deeper issues with the review system at the EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), which the report found “lacks oversight.”
Elsevier adds 500K clinical trial records to Embase to enable comprehensive search for R&D. The integration will enable researchers to seamlessly view high-quality information on clinical research studies and their results alongside the peer-reviewed literature, in-press publications and conference abstracts already available in Embase.
Opinion
Ask The Chefs - The NIH Steps on the Open Access Accelerator. Rather than focusing on eye-catching news, it is critical that real attention be focused on the bigger issues, which will have broader and more significant impact. The larger goals of the administration are more concerning and are likely to have greater impact than this six-month acceleration of policy implementation.
Google Scholar is (still) doing nothing about citation manipulation. The last time citation manipulation on Google Scholar made it into the news (following the escapades of Larry the cat, no less), Google offered no comment to the press on the matter. They removed Larry’s citations within a week but still have not removed any of the citations from fake papers we showed to have been purchased a year ago.
Intercepting Misconduct: Seven Practical Tips for Editors. But one group is perhaps most important, as the custodians of the scholarly record when it comes to training and consultation to intercept research misconduct. Involving editorial board members of scientific journals is crucial as editors play a vital role in preserving research integrity. In 2024, 8.5% of manuscripts submitted to IOP Publishing (IOPP) were rejected before peer review due to ethical concerns. JB: 8.5%? Wow!
Fraudulent Research Falsely Attributed to Credible Researchers—An Emerging Challenge for Journals? This new type of research fraud poses a significant challenge for the scientific community. Fraudulent articles published under legitimate researchers' names without their consent threaten scientific integrity.
SSP's Early Career Development Podcast Episode 22: A Primer on Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics. In this episode of SSP’s Early Career Development Podcast, hosts Meredith Adinolfi (Cell Press) and Sara Grimme (Digital Science) chat with Rafal Marszalek, the Chief Editor at Nature’s largest journal, Scientific Reports. They dive into what the buzzwords of ‘publication ethics’ and ‘research integrity’ really mean in the context of scholarly publishing, and the differences between the concepts.
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And finally...
Journals do more than act as repositories for research. They also serve their communities by showcasing the work that researchers do over their lifetime. This week I was very sad to read an obituary in Nature Neuroscience: Eleanor Maguire (1970–2025).
I only met Eleanor once and she left a lasting impression on me. Her enthusiasm for her research was infectious. I had volunteered to be a participant in one of her research projects, which was subsequently published in Nature Neuroscience in 2002. The paper was titled Routes to remembering: the brains behind superior memory. Needless to say, I was one of the controls, not one of the memory experts! The paper concluded:
Using neuropsychological measures, as well as structural and functional brain imaging, we found that superior memory was not driven by exceptional intellectual ability or structural brain differences. Rather, we found that superior memorizers used a spatial learning strategy, engaging brain regions such as the hippocampus that are critical for memory and for spatial memory in particular.
Some Journalology readers may also remember Eleanor’s Ig Nobel prize winning PNAS paper, published in 2000, Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers.
Structural MRIs of the brains of humans with extensive navigation experience, licensed London taxi drivers, were analyzed and compared with those of control subjects who did not drive taxis. The posterior hippocampi of taxi drivers were significantly larger relative to those of control subjects.
Right, that’s enough for this week. I have a long car drive ahead of me; my posterior hippocampus has atrophied over the years and so I’ll need to enter my destination into Google Maps.
Until next time,
James