Scholarly publishing is in a state of change, and the centuries old model of traditional peer review-based publishing is under more pressure than ever to become faster and more open. Artificial intelligence is now supporting authors and publications alike by speeding up the publication process while helping to preserve quality with fewer human resources, and the tools can give journals competitive advantages for attracting authors. AI-based tools can be used in editorial processes and decision making in ways that support the often-overburdened humans who are responsible for them.

This article analyses the impact and visibility of scholarly journals in the humanities that are publishing in the national languages in Finland, Norway and Spain. Three types of publishers are considered: commercial publishers, scholarly society as publisher, and research organizations as publishers. Indicators of visibility and impact were obtained from Web of Science, SCOPUS, Google Metrics, Scimago Journal Rank and Journal Citation Report. The results obtained from the analysis of the humanities journals of the three countries allow to draw interesting conclusions broken down in terms of thematic category of publication, publisher type, open access distribution, citations in international databases, …

FORCE11 has historically drawn one of the more diverse communities in scholarly communication. Participants come from the publishing community and the library community, as well as systems suppliers and most importantly, researchers, with deep engagement from each community. Todd Carpenter, Executive Director of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), is reporting  on the conference held online in early December 2021.

COPIM (Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs) was launched in November 2019. Funded by Research England and Arcadia Fund, COPIM is an international partnership of researchers, universities, librarians, open access book publishers and infrastructure providers who are building community-owned, open systems and infrastructures to enable open access book publishing to grow and flourish, according to the principles of scaling small. Put simply, library members pay a small annual fee to get DRM-free, unlimited access to a selection of a publisher’s backlist, with perpetual access after three years; the membership revenue is used by the publisher solely to produce new OA monographs. Read the first annual report and the second one.

Support Needs and Challenges for Universities

Ithaka S+R’s Research Support Services program explores current trends and support needs in academic research. This report provides a detailed account of how big data research is pursued in academic contexts, focusing on identifying typical methodologies, workflows, outputs, and challenges big data researchers face. Full details and actionable recommendations for stakeholders are offered in the body of the report, which offers guidance to universities, funders, and others interested in improving institutional capacities and fostering intellectual climates to better support big data research.

Conversations on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in scholarly publishing vary between the Global North and the Global South. The author provides his view about the three keys to real scholarly publishing inclusion. Geographical inclusion in scholarly publishing shouldn’t only mean how the Global North is bringing the Global South closer. It should also mean how the best practices from the North are contextualized in the South to improve its publishing system, how the South is changing the North, and how the Southern countries are helping each other.

‘Global South’, a term frequently used on websites and in papers related to academic and ‘predatory’ publishing, may represent a form of unscholarly discrimination. Arguments are put forward as to why the current use of this term is geographically meaningless, since it implies countries in the southern hemisphere, whereas many of the entities in publishing that are referred to as being part of the Global South are in fact either on the equator or in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, academics, in writing about academic publishing, should cease using this broad, culturally insensitive, and geographically inaccurate term.

The IFLA Journal editorial committee and editor are pleased to announce the availability of its summer webinar series on how to publish in academic journals.  Conducted in a series of four events focused on various world time zones, these webinars aimed to provide LIS scholars and practitioners with an insider view of the journal editing process with perspectives from the editor, reviewers, and authors. Overall, the webinars offer a unique view of the academic publishing process and provide practical advice to authors on how to approach the academic publishing process. More than 400 members of the IFLA community were able to join the sessions live, and these are now freely available.

View the webinars

This is the third in a series of updates to provide information on the 2021 Journal Citation Reports release. Released originally as a print edition in 1975, Journal Citation Reports™ (JCR) is showing, in its latest edition, a continuous expansion of its contents and metrics toward greater breadth, context and transparency. In addition to refinements discussed in recent posts – expanded journal coverage as well as the new Journal Citation Indicator metric – the 2021 JCR offers a revamped user interface.

With the help of academic search engine optimization (ASEO), publications can more easily be found in academic search engines and databases. Authors can improve the ranking of their publications by adjusting titles, keywords and abstracts. Carefully considered wording makes publications easier to find and, ideally, cited more often. This article is meant to support authors in making their scholarly publications more visible. It provides basic information on ranking mechanisms as well as tips and tricks on how to improve the findability of scholarly publications while also pointing out the limits of optimization.