Hello fellow journalologists,
There’s a lot of ground to cover in this week’s issue and I’ve been playing catch up after a trip to the USA, so let’s get straight to it (after a short piece of self promotion; closed mouths don’t get fed).
A workshop testimonial from Emerald Publishing
James delivered two insightful train-the-trainer workshops one month apart that focused on positioning our journals programme for increased growth. His approach was thoughtful and collaborative, working hard to understand Emerald in depth, from our products to our culture, to ensure the sessions landed well with an audience that included colleagues from publishing, editorial, product, and marketing.
James created a relaxed environment while covering a lot of ground at pace, using relevant industry examples and suggesting how they could be adapted for our programme. It was a worthwhile investment from an experienced publishing professional and thought leader that has created excitement among the Emerald Team.
Highly recommend!
Sally Wilson (Vice President, Emerald Publishing)
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News
In recent years there has been an increase in the number of retractions and we have also noted signs of a reduction in the time it takes to retract indexed articles. Given these trends, we have decided to introduce a new policy to pre-emptively guard against any such time that citations to and from retracted content could contribute to widespread distortions in the JIF.
Starting from this year’s JCR release, we will exclude citations to and from retracted content when calculating the JIF numerator, ensuring that citations from retracted articles do not contribute to the numerical value of the JIF. However, retracted articles will still be included in the article count (JIF denominator), maintaining transparency and accountability.
Clarivate (Nandita Quaderi)
JB: Retraction Watch covered this story and noted:
Quaderi told us this change would not impact a researcher’s h-index, another metric that measures citation behavior and productivity. In other words, when Clarivate calculates h-index, it won’t remove retracted papers – or citations to those papers – from the calculation.
One observer suggested that this development could incentivise editors and publishers not to retract papers:
“This decision makes intuitive sense but could incentivize against retraction,” bibliometrics expert
Reese Richardson said. By keeping retracted items in the denominator of the equation, “this deepens the impact that any given retraction will have on a journal’s [impact factor],” he told us. He said he also wonders “how many journals will actually see a substantial reduction” in impact factor as a result of the change.
A Clarivate spokesperson told me:
Journals indexed in Web of Science Core Collection are subject to periodic re-evaluation and those that no longer meet our 24 quality criteria are delisted. A journal risks being delisted if they do not retract compromised content.
To capture a sense of researchers’ thinking on this topic, Nature posed a variety of scenarios to some 5,000 academics around the world, to understand which uses of AI are considered ethically acceptable.
The survey results suggest that researchers are sharply divided on what they feel are appropriate practices. Whereas academics generally feel it’s acceptable to use AI chatbots to help to prepare manuscripts, relatively few report actually using AI for this purpose — and those who did often say they didn’t disclose it.
Nature (Diana Kwon)
JB: You can take the test here: Take Nature’s AI research test: find out how your ethics compare. I’m a curmudgeon, apparently.
In the reported period, Research was a key contributor to Springer Nature's performance seeing an underlying revenue growth of 7%. This was led by a strong performance in open access (OA) including an increase of about 25% on prior year in published articles in its full open access (FOA) journals. Fourteen new transformative agreements were also agreed, taking the total to 80, further driving the global OA transition. In addition, around 90% of contract renewals for 2025 have already been completed.
JB: You can read the trading update here and the quarterly statement here. The transcript of the earnings call (here) included this excerpt:
With almost a third of staff in Research in tech functions and more than 90% digital revenues, we are a technology company. Snapp – our in-house developed publishing platform - saw an 80% increase in submissions compared to last year, that of course includes new migrated journals. As shared earlier we have about 90+ AI initiatives to drive speed, efficiency and last but not least integrity of the publication process. For example, in Q1 we launched an AI tool to identify irrelevant citations and we also donated our in-house developed tool that identifies AI generated nonsense text, Geppetto, to the STM Integrity Hub. Finally, the launch of our Nature Research Assistant – an AI tool to support researchers in their reading and writing activities – is still on track for a soft launch in the first half of the year.
Frank Vrancken Peeters, the CEO, also had this to say about the growth in submissions:
If you look at submission growth, it was actually also pretty strong in the first quarter, well above 30% for the total journal portfolio, full open access well above 40%. And if you look at the Springer and Nature portfolio it's typically between 20 and 30%. So all in all I would say, the performance that we have in the first quarter in our journals business is essentially a reflection of the fact that we do a lot of things well.
Based on these numbers Springer Nature is highly likely to be increasing its market share. Or as Frank put it:
But if you compare our growth versus the market growth, I think it’s fair to say that we’re beating the market by a mile.
I often talk about portfolio strategies and the importance of transfer cascades for publishers, as this point makes clear:
And just as an example, if I look at the impact of T- Rex, we've seen a 30% growth in successful transfers within the ecosystem and that directly contributes to revenue growth. So I would say yes, AI in our core process is helping to make it more efficient. But if it makes it faster or it allows us to keep more articles in our ecosystem, it’s actually contributing to revenue growth as well.
The market responded positively to this quarterly update, although the share price is still lower than it was back in October, at the point of the IPO.
Other news stories
Updated version of the “How Equitable Is It?” tool for assessing equity in scholarly communication models. The “How Equitable Is It?” tool, designed to assess the equity of scholarly communication models, has been officially launched today in its updated version following a comprehensive review of community feedback. Originally introduced as a beta version in September 2024 at the OASPA conference, this refined version of the tool incorporates significant improvements based on input from across the scholarly publishing ecosystem.
Clear Skies and Silverchair Partner to Integrate Papermill Detection and Journal Integrity Metrics into Peer Review Workflows. In addition to manuscript-level alerts, ScholarOne customers will also have the opportunity to access Oversight—Clear Skies’ dashboard for tracking research integrity at all levels: article, journal, portfolio and even industry level. Oversight aggregates submission and alert data to surface integrity metrics across time, helping publishers and editors spot evolving patterns of risk, evaluate the effectiveness of editorial interventions, and benchmark their journals against industry trends. These visual reports can be used for internal QA, editor training, internal investigations, or to support transparency initiatives with editorial boards and stakeholders.
Our annual open call for expressions of interest to join our board. The Crossref Nominating Committee invites expressions of interest to join the Board of Directors of Crossref for the term starting in January 2026. The committee will gather responses from those interested and create the slate of candidates that our membership will vote on in an election in September.
Germany's Plan for an Open and Independent PubMed Safety Net. On May 2, the German National Library of Medicine (ZB MED), announced they were planning to develop an “open, reliable, and sustainable” alternative to PubMed. And today they held an open virtual meeting to discuss their plans for “resilient and independent life science research infrastructure.”
Paper with duplicated images retracted four months after concerns were raised. We write plenty of stories about lengthy investigations and long wait times for retractions. So we are always glad when we can highlight when journals act in a relatively timely fashion.
As NIH publication halts manuscript acceptance, ToxSci steps in. On May 8, Toxicological Sciences, the official journal of the Society of Toxicology, announced that they will consider manuscripts that were under review at EHP if authors submit them to the journal. Moreover, if authors provide the peer-review reports produced at EHP, the publication will consider not sending the studies out for further review.
Author Marketing in China 2025: Trends and Insights. This white paper presents a marketing model built around the specific needs of Chinese researchers, helping publishers better engage authors by aligning their strategies with real user behaviours. Drawing on original survey data and in-depth author journey mapping, we reveal how Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and other key personas navigate the publishing process in China today. We explore the motivations behind their journal choices, the role of trusted social platforms such as WeChat, Bilibili, Douyin, and Zhihu, and the critical touchpoints where targeted, culturally fluent marketing can influence submission decisions.
Tracking transformative agreements through open metadata: method and validation using Dutch Research Council NWO funded papers. In this preprint, the authors describe and test a method for calculating which articles were covered by transformative agreements. Using a test case of publications likely covered by transformative agreements in the Netherlands, the authors find that their method works well, correctly identifying 89% of the articles in the sample.
Elsevier removes journal from Scopus after Retraction Watch inquiry. Elsevier has removed a journal from its Scopus database after Retraction Watch inquired about its review process for the journal, whose editorial board lists fake names and digital fingerprint shows other red flags. Scientific sleuth Anna Abalkina uncovered several issues with Science of Law, which she details in a post published today. Besides editors and editorial board members who cannot be verified and don’t seem to exist, the journal’s history doesn’t match its publication record, early articles show signs of fabrication, and its publisher data in Scopus doesn’t match that in Crossref. Despite this, Scopus added the journal to its index last year. JB: Elsevier responded promptly to this story: Scopus indexed a journal with a fake editorial board and a sham archive.
Dozens of Elsevier papers retracted over fake companies and suspicious authorship changes. Since March of last year, Elsevier has pulled around 60 papers connected to companies in the Caucasus region that don’t seem to exist. The retraction notices attribute the decision to suspicious changes in authorship and the authors being unable to verify the existence of their employers. Online sleuths have also flagged potentially manipulated citations among the articles.
IOP Publishing enhances author recognition with the introduction of CRediT. IOP Publishing is introducing the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) across all its proprietary journals to enhance recognition for authors. The taxonomy provides a standardised framework to define and recognise the diverse roles authors play during the production and publication of research outputs such as research articles.
The ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication: Latest Updates for Effective Communication. In the dynamic world of scientific research, the ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication is an indispensable reference tool for ensuring clarity and impact in your work. To keep pace with the ever-evolving nature of scholarly communication, the ACS Guide undergoes continuous review and updates, driven by experts across diverse fields.
Over 130 health journals call for renewed WHO mandate on health effects of nuclear war. BMJ Group has joined health journals across the world to publish an editorial urging governments to restore a World Health Organization (WHO) mandate to address the health consequences of nuclear weapons and war – and support a new UN study on the effects of nuclear war. Authors include leading health experts, journal editors, and senior figures from the Nobel-prizewinning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. JB: you can read the editorial here and see the list of 130 journals here.
67 Bricks develops new agentic AI research assistant for proprietary content. For publishers wanting to integrate natural language querying without reducing control over their content, 67 Bricks are now offering a compelling solution. Their new tool, developed in-house, can be seamlessly integrated into all existing bespoke or third-party platforms, delivering a research tool that answers users’ queries with responses grounded in paywalled and proprietary content. The tool also guides users as to what else they should be reading, as well as prompting the user to make its suggestions more useful.
How do retractions impact researchers’ career paths and collaborations? One possible takeaway is that institutions, funders, and senior collaborators need to be more proactive in distinguishing between culpability and proximity. When early-career scientists are caught up in retractions they didn’t cause, they need support systems, such as mentorship, opportunities to re-establish their credibility, and clear institutional statements where appropriate. Transparency in responsibility and a culture that allows for recovery, rather than guilt by association, are crucial to protecting the next generation of researchers.
ICMJE Ceases List of Journals Claiming to Follow Its Recommendations. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) previously provided a list on www.ICMJE.org of journals that have contacted the ICMJE to request listing as a journal that follows the ICMJE's recommendations. Although these journals are not "members" of the ICMJE and their inclusion does not indicate "certification" by the ICMJE, the Committee previously thought that maintenance of such a list could help to promote standards of scholarly publishing. Unfortunately, it has come to the committee's attention that many of the listed journals do not actually adhere to the ICMJE recommendations. The inability of the ICMJE to verify the accuracy of this list combined with the increase in predatory scholarly publishing practices contributed to the committee's April 2025 decision to cease maintenance of this list.
Sage named Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year at the Independent Publishing Awards. Sage has won the ProQuest Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year award at the Independent Publishing Awards, which recognizes outstanding publishing organizations that demonstrate quality and success across key areas, including strategy, commissioning, design, sustainability, DEI, customer & market knowledge, and innovation.
eLife named among winners of inaugural Crossref Metadata Excellence Awards. eLife is proud to be named one of the inaugural winners of the Crossref Metadata Excellence and Enrichment Awards, recognising its leadership and innovation in delivering complete, high-quality metadata across the research it publishes. The announcement was made today at Crossref’s Midyear Community Update, where eLife was named among six outstanding recipients across the two categories: metadata excellence and metadata enrichment.
Beware ‘naive’ switch to ‘utopian’ diamond journals, warns editor. Diamond open-access journals are too reliant on unpaid academic labour and the goodwill of university libraries to remain financially sustainable, according to the founding editor of a well-regarded social science journal who has blamed the switch to the free-to-read, free-to-publish model for her publication’s demise. Announcing her decision to wind up Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation, which has been published twice a year since 2006, Ursula Huws said the “well-meaning but naive” decision by her publisher, Pluto Journals, to move the journal to diamond open access (DOA) in 2021 had removed crucial sales and subscription income that covered editorial costs and labour.
Opinion
The futures of researchers’ careers are, in many ways, controlled by others — mainly journal editors and reviewers. Of course, the process involves many stages: checks by managing editors, screening, finding peer reviewers, facilitating and conducting peer review, editorial decisions, manuscript revisions and more. If a paper gets stuck at any stage of this process, a researcher’s career progress might be stuck with it.
Editors play a crucial part in this process, because they have the power to accelerate it. Most editors send out peer-review invitations promptly, follow up with reminders, make timely rejection decisions and keep authors updated on article progress. I’m hugely grateful for them: they help save researchers valuable time.
Nature (Chia-Hsuan Hsu)
Editorial can use COUNTER metrics as part of their content development strategy. If a particular journal or set of articles is seeing high usage generally, it could be an idea to commission more on that topic. If the usage is coming from a specific institution, that might be a source of new authors or reviewers. Equally, a spike in denials for a particular topic can be an indication of something novel—for example, some virology journals reported a spike in denials for articles on coronaviruses in late 2019.
Origin Editorial (Tasha Mellins-Cohen)
JB: COUNTER was designed for libraries to help them to gauge value for money from an institutional subscription. I would love to see a central database of usage (OA and subscription), available to everyone.
Non-financial conflicts of interest (NFCOIs) have received comparatively little attention. NFCOIs are factors unrelated to financial interests that might compromise an individual’s ability to properly carry out their duties related to research or publication. They can take the form of academic, intellectual, personal, or political conflicts. A common example might be an unblinded reviewer being a close friend or staunch rival of a submitting author. A more controversial example might be an author holding a leadership position in an advocacy organization whose cause directly relates to the research at hand. Although personal relationships and ideological commitments are more difficult to measure than financial payments, the potential for conflicts to compromise the veracity of our literature is still purported to be at stake.
BMC Medical Ethics (David Bauer et al)
JB: I see examples of non-financial conflicts of interest most weeks, as I gather the articles for this newsletter. Advocacy works best when authors adopt a balanced approach, rather than trying to spin the data to support an argument.
When publication underpins so many facets of an academic career, academics must work toward goals that align with publication, rather than those that align with good science. When journals place requirements of novel, impactful, and positive results on publication, this becomes both the threshold of the scholarly record and of academic career success. When journals decide certain research or certain results are of less value to their publications, they in turn become of less value to authors.
Learned Publishing (Damian Pattinson and George Currie)
JB: Which came first, the journal or the academic reward system? (Rhetorical question: journals came first.) Are journals to blame for the mess we’re in? Funders and institutions chose to use journals as a surrogate marker for quality in researcher assessment, after all.
Other opinion articles
Is the list of Highly Cited Researchers losing credibility? In a recent study, I retraced the trajectory of this list. This diachronic investigation shows that, far from being a static object, it has evolved considerably over time. It has changed both in terms of producers, manufacture and use. Initially conceived as a descriptive, monitoring tool, it has gradually become the object of manipulation, which questions more than ever the relevance of its use in evaluations or rankings.
Gatekeepers of Trust: Reaffirming the Publisher's Role in Service of the Reader. To engage meaningfully with manuscripts, editors must be able to review them thoughtfully. However, the increasing scale of publishing makes this increasingly challenging, as thoughtful engagement requires time and attention. This is where AI tools can help by acting as filters, screening out manuscripts that do not meet essential language quality and technical requirements. However, the accuracy and reliability of such tools must be carefully assessed.
Open Access Trends in Scholarly Publishing 2015–2024. Open Access has claimed an increasingly large share of total article output, peaking at 59% in 2023. However, this was followed by a notable drop to 47% in 2024, which may in part reflect shifts in publishing policies by controversial Open Access publishers in response to growing criticism. JB: I made a video on a similar topic earlier this year.
Nature project to encourage early-career researchers in peer review is working. Around 17% of manuscripts reviewed for Nature have formally involved an ECR in the scheme’s first three months. We are not the only journal to do this, nor the first. Similarly encouraging results have been reported by other journals in the portfolio of Nature-branded journals.
And finally...
I was interested to see this announcement appear on my news feed: Cassyni extends partnership with Springer Nature to deepen researcher engagement by running research seminars at scale
Springer Nature’s Research Communities (powered in partnership with Zapnito) provide a free online platform for researchers and peers to connect, generate discussions and explore research findings that matter to them. The extended partnership better integrates Cassyni’s offerings into the platform meaning any journal can easily set up seminars to promote new journal issues, key research articles and calls for papers.
I had some initial discussions with Cassyni when I was at Springer Nature, which led to Nature Water using the platform for their webinars (see here). I’m pleased to see that the collaboration has extended. (N.B. Cassyni has sponsored this newsletter before and I know the founders. Perhaps that’s a COI.)
Launching a new journal is hard, even if it has Nature in the title. Hosting webinars can be a good way to develop a journal’s brand and build relationships with key academics. Yes, it’s hard work, but that’s how to create success.
Until next time,
James