Little is known about why journals discontinue despite its significant implications. We present an analysis of 140 Australian journals that ceased from 2011 to mid-2021 and present the results of a survey of editors of 53 of them. The survey showed that funding was an important reason for discontinuation, and lack of quality submission and lack of support from the owners of the journal also played a role. A fifth of journals indicated that they did not have a plan for the preservation of articles at the time of publication and the current availability of the content of ceased journals appeared to be sub-optimal in many cases with reliance on the website of ceased journals or web-archive platforms.

Springer Nature has made Nature Masterclasses on-demand online training content free to access for researchers in lower income countries through Research4Life.

Nature Masterclasses offers highly targeted courses designed to enhance the skills and boost the confidence of early career researchers, with over 60,000 researchers globally having benefited from the platform to date. The world-class training is delivered by editors from across the Nature Portfolio of journals as well as experienced researchers, funders and professionals via a subscription. The full list of countries that will be able to access all Nature Masterclasses Online content for free can be found on the Research4Life website.

On September 15, 2021, the Latin American Association of Scientific Editors (ALAEC) was created, through the efforts of three national associations: the Brazilian Association of Scientific Editors — ABEC Brasil; the Colombian Association of University Presses – ASEUC; and the Uruguayan Association of Academic Journals — AURA. ALAEC was officially launched during LATMÉTRICAS 2021: LATmetrics y el Simposio Latinoamericano sobre Estudios Métricos en Ciencia y Tecnología. ALAEC’s founding group – all the signatories of the Manifesto for the responsible use of metrics in research evaluation in Latin America and the Caribbean, — is working to consolidate the organization, through the establishment of a management group and the upcoming launch of the official website.

Springer Nature and Clarivate have agreed a process which will see the names of twenty one journals in Springer Nature’s German language medical portfolio change to become more clearly inclusive, while Clarivate will enable them to retain their indexing with no break in coverage and no disruption to their journal metrics in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The new titles, coming into effect in June, will now focus on the specialist field it is publishing research in.

One response to the problem of predatory publishing has been compiling lists of journals and publishers to avoid. This appears, at first glance, to be a simple solution, but such lists are difficult to maintain and risk an inherent bias. They can also be subjective and include publishers that apply reasonable basic processes but lack resources for the best editorial or technical standards, but which have no intention to deceive. Think.Check.Submit. provides a completely different approach, by raising awareness among librarians and researchers and by giving them the tools they need to make an educated choice on which publishing venue is the most appropriate for their work. ISSN International Centre supports this initiative.

2021’s Trends in Academic Publishing looked at how the academic publishing industry was changing after a tumultuous COVID-19-hit 2020.The results of the 2021 survey revealed how the skills that publishers need were diversifying and, although confidence across the industry was high, evidence of immediate meaningful change was low, even though the survey did suggest that change may be coming. Deanta is running this survey again in 2022 to see whether the on-going Covid crisis has changed working practices, altered individual attitudes towards technological innovation or brought the industry as a whole any nearer to a tipping point for digital transformation.

The survey will be open until 8 April 2022, after which the responses will be collated and a full report will be made available.

EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) has released FSTA® with Full Text. FSTA is the definitive abstract and indexing database for research in the sciences of food and health. FSTA with Full Text offers an extensive collection of full-text journals from a wide variety of sources, including more than 200 active full-text journals, with more than 300 active full-text journals to be available by December 2022.

Taylor & Francis and The Conversation Africa announce a renewal of their partnership to facilitate African researchers in increasing public engagement with their work and expertise. By acting as a Funding Partner, Taylor & Francis will work with The Conversation Africa to highlight essential African research and offer Taylor & Francis authors, journal editors, and publishing partners closer links with the African news website.

Now in its third year, Emerald’s Time for change report 2021 explores the challenges within academic culture and gauges interest for change. Themes include research evaluation, academic culture, openness and transparency and the evolving role of the publisher. Many publishers now offer a range of publishing options and support services, including fully open access or ‘hybrid’ journals and platforms. But do these changes go far enough? Some argue that publishers should overhaul their business models and become more transparent and affordable. Others believe the sector must change how it evaluates research, rather than focus on how or where research is published.

This webinar organized by OASPA in January 2022, takes an evidence-informed approach to how publishers and others in the scholarly communications system responded to the pandemic and explore what the findings can tell us about the future of scholarly communication.