The Library Publishing Coalition released of their 2023–2024 Annual Report.

In addition to outlining LPC’s finances, membership, and ongoing inclusion efforts, the Annual Report highlights several programmatic milestones, including:

• Launching LPC’s new Community Plan
• Celebrating 10 years of LPC by the numbers
• 10th Anniversary Service Leadership Award

All the people involved in this work offered their time, energy, and expertise to fulfill our vision of an open, inclusive, and sustainable scholarly publishing landscape.

On 30 September, the University Based Publishing Futures [UBPF] community officially launched with an open virtual meeting attended by 150 colleagues. UBPF is a new, multi-community coalition made up of the professionals who work at university presses, library publishers, and other academy-affiliated programs that support the infrastructure of scholarly publishing. The purpose of this “community of communities” is to share knowledge among university-based publishers and align our outreach and advocacy efforts for maximum impact.

To learn more about this new community, visit the UBPF website on Knowledge Commons.

This paper analyzes OpenAlex‘s coverage and metadata availability for African-based publications compared to Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), and African Journals Online (AJOL). OpenAlex is noted for its broader inclusion of the humanities, non-English languages, and research from the Global South, promoting diversity and inclusivity in science. The findings reveal that OpenAlex offers the most extensive coverage of African research publications. While OpenAlex excels in providing publication and author information, it lags behind in affiliations, references, and funder data, especially for publications not indexed in Scopus or WoS.

Los asistentes de búsqueda de literatura basados en inteligencia artificial (IA) están revolucionando la manera en que se accede a la información académica, ayudando a sistematizar y ahorrar tiempo, según expertos de la UNAM. Estas herramientas utilizan bases de datos académicas confiables como Web of Science y Scopus. Aunque facilitan el análisis de grandes cantidades de datos y personalizan las consultas según el historial del usuario, también plantean desafíos éticos y problemas de transparencia. Se recomienda combinar la eficiencia de la tecnología con la capacidad humana de reflexionar acerca de lo que nos provee la IA.

The study analyzes the global scholarly publishing landscape, focusing on the oligopoly of major publishers and smaller independent publishers. Using Web of Science, Dimensions, and OpenAlex, the study finds that the oligopoly persists, but smaller publishers’ share has grown rapidly since 2000. The expansion is most pronounced in social sciences and humanities, but also in natural and medical sciences. Geographical disparities are evident, with some countries heavily reliant on major publishers and others independent. Digital publishing, reduced costs, and inclusive databases contribute to small publishers’ growth.

Geoffrey Boulton and Moumita Koley argue for fair and transparent standards in science publishing to maintain research integrity and credibility. They highlight issues with editorial oversight, commercial business models, and the impact of bibliometric indices, emphasizing the need for proper governance to maintain credibility and integrity and to ensure science benefits society globally.

On April 18, 2024 Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), NFU and NWO organised a one-day conference to explore the successes and challenges of ‘Read & Publish’ deals; cooperation with publishers in the field of research information; and how concepts such as ‘digital sovereignty’ play out in relationships with commercial publishers. It was conceived as an open forum to discuss what the academic sector wants from the publishing sector in safeguarding academic values in a just, equitable and open scholarly communication landscape.

This report is a summary of the conference.

Clarivate Plc released the 2024  Journal Citation Reports™ (JCR™). The reports provide an essential and comprehensive resource of high-quality journals, ranked by field to enable academic institutions, researchers and publishers to gauge the significance of journals in the global research landscape. Key updates include unified subject category rankings, integration of Emerging sources citation index journals, and new metrics for over 21,800 journals. This enhances understanding of journal performance and supports research integrity.