For the past couple of years, the British Library has been working with a small group of publishers and other organisations involved in the metadata supply chain for the UK book industry to explore options for including ISNIs in publisher’s standard product metadata. The results so far have been encouraging, linking ISNIs into around 70% of names contained in publishers’ current databases. Next steps will also include exploring options for establishing sustainable workflows for ongoing assignment of ISNIs to new authors.

Hindawi has launched a new author services section of its website, providing authors with the ability to take advantage of a wide range of tools and services to help them make the most of their research throughout the publication process. Among the service providers that have partnered with Hindawi on this initiative are Editage and Impact Science, both solutions offered by Cactus Communications, a technology company accelerating scientific advancement.

In October, books, literature and authors are traditionally the focus of life in Frankfurt. To ensure that remains the case in the year of COVID-19, Frankfurter Buchmesse (14–18 October 2020) has developed a wide-ranging digital programme to complement the face-to-face meetings that will take place on the fairgrounds and at the many events in the city. The digital programme of Frankfurter Buchmesse 2020 will be co-created by publishers and will be accessible by trade visitors and literature fans all around the world. The digital events and services of Frankfurter Buchmesse 2020 will be available free of charge thanks to funding provided by Germany’s Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Minister of State Monika Grütters.

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is releasing The 2020 Update  to its comprehensive Landscape Analysis and accompanying Roadmap for Action, on a new interactive website designed to make taking action easier for librarians and campus administrators. The 2020 Update provides suggested actions for the community to consider, with a particular emphasis on establishing strong principles to guide the purchase of any data analytics related product or service.  it also provides additional deep detail on the financial performance of key academic publishers in 2019 and 2020, as well as their response to changes in their respective marketplaces.

In March 2019, Florida State University lost its access to Elsevier. Without renewing a $2 million annual license agreement, 6,000 researchers and 40,000 students cannot access the 1,800 journals of the world’s leading publisher. Articles must now be purchased individually, which is about $20-30 for a PDF. A year later, the balance sheet is quite different. The big deal is still the preferred negotiation framework between the 5 major publishers and universities. However, licenses have been increasingly cancelled since 2015 and may well reach record figures in 2020. This briefing note reviews the development and characteristics of the economy of the big deal from 1995 to 2020.

[Article in French]

The chief of the Italian publishers association tells Rome that its support for badly damaged cultural organizations is not enough: A family allotment for cultural spending is the next ask.

In February, the Chinese government released two documents that set forth important changes in policies governing science research evaluation. One of the most eye-catching changes is the requirement for researchers to publish one third of their representative papers in domestic Chinese journals, which is being hailed as a big boost for Chinese publishers. Will all the 5,000 STM titles published in China benefit from these new policies? How do Chinese publishers themselves interpret the documents? In this post, three Chinese publishers explained how they view the new policies.

Clarivate Analytics has announced the addition of open access data to Journal Citation Reports profile pages to increase transparency around open access models in scholarly publishing. Journal Citation Reports is an annual journal report from the Web of Science, the world’s largest publisher-independent global citation database.  

Staff from the Microbiology Society explain the decision taken to remove the paywall to all the Society’s journals during the current pandemic, and talk about the importance of working in partnership with libraries as attempts are made to find a way forward.

STM’s members have acted rapidly and decisively to support the continued global response to the rapid worldwide spread of COVID-19 with immediate access to accurate and validated articles and monographs that the public can trust. Visit STM’s Covid-2019 resource page to find links to publishers support centres and freely available articles and read their press release.