Hundreds of ‘Free’ Academic Journals Have Started Charging Fees
A study tracking diamond open-access journals has found an increase in titles switching to other publishing models - especially over the past few years.
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Rethinking Scholarly Evaluation: Matching Rigor to Purpose
What if the systems designed to protect scientific rigor are also making it harder for new ideas to emerge? Do different scholarly contributions deserve unique forms of evaluation?
When Your AI Knows You Too Well: Personalization, Sycophancy, and the Risk of an Intellectual Echo Chamber in AI-assisted Research
When Your AI Knows You Too Well: Personalization, Sycophancy, and the Risk of an Intellectual Echo Chamber in AI-assisted Research
As AI research assistants learn our preferences, they may also become better at mirroring our assumptions. Avoiding that outcome will require more than a better prompt.
AI-detection Tools Have Made Huge Leaps Forward - How Good Are They?
AI-detection Tools Have Made Huge Leaps Forward - How Good Are They?
Scientists and publishers are testing a new breed of software that promises impressive accuracy at spotting AI-written text.
For a Decade CRediT Has Quietly Reshaped Academic Authorship - What Comes Next?
For a Decade CRediT Has Quietly Reshaped Academic Authorship - What Comes Next?
The CredIT taxonomy has become a feature of academic publishing, but has its potential for creating research insights been fully exploited?
Is the Scientific Paper Still a Fraud?
How we write scientific papers does not reflect how we do science, masking the human in the process by design. We should consider the structure of the scientific paper, and the need to celebrate the human in an age when AI threatens to overwhelm us.
Guest Post - Do We Need (r)evolution in Peer Review?
Whether peer review needs revolution or evolution may be the wrong question. The more pressing one is whether the academic community is prepared to let scientific ideas be published, contested, and refined in public, rather than behind closed doors.
Categorizing Open Access Business Models
Models for funding open access journal article publishing can be sorted into three categories, organized by who pays and what they pay for: transactional, collective action, and subvention.
Artificial intelligence in academic practices and policy discourses across ‘Big 5’ publishers
Artificial intelligence in academic practices and policy discourses across ‘Big 5’ publishers
Peer review beyond trust: why the system must evolve
Emerging challenges are exposing limits to a system that was not designed to withstand. Peer review is at an inflection point.
'Humanizer' Tool Can Erase Signs of AI-written Text - Alarming Scientists
'Humanizer' Tool Can Erase Signs of AI-written Text - Alarming Scientists
Tool directs text-generation systems to remove constructions associated with artificial intelligence in research papers and grant proposals.
Academic Freedom for the Win; Open Access Mandate in Germany Declared Unconstitutional
Academic Freedom for the Win; Open Access Mandate in Germany Declared Unconstitutional
A German court ruled against a mandatory article deposit requirement under Germany's "secondary publication right" (SPR).
Why Paying Peer Reviewers Works, According to a Journal's Editor-in-chief
Why Paying Peer Reviewers Works, According to a Journal's Editor-in-chief
A biology journal that paid peer reviewers found that the approach cut the time to a first editorial decision by 85% and maintained high-quality reviews.
Now is the Time for AI in Peer Review, and Publishing Policies Need to Recognize This
Now is the Time for AI in Peer Review, and Publishing Policies Need to Recognize This
The role of AI in peer review should be acknowledged in order to ensure practical guidance and policies that help scholars respond with consistency and confidence.
AI Promised to Democratise Academic Publishing - the Evidence Says Otherwise
AI Promised to Democratise Academic Publishing - the Evidence Says Otherwise
It was thought AI would level the playing field in academic publishing for non-native English speakers. A growing body of evidence to reveals the opposite.
Anyone Can Fake a Scientific Image with AI, Tricking Even Academic Journals - and Undermining Trust in Science
Anyone Can Fake a Scientific Image with AI, Tricking Even Academic Journals - and Undermining Trust in Science
Several scientific fields rely on visual evidence to illustrate their claims. Inaccurate AI-generated images put the credibility of science at risk.
First and Last Authors More Likely to Be Men in Leading Science Journals
Women's participation in science has risen sharply, but a Nature Index analysis finds that gender gaps in first and last authorship - markers of key scientific achievements - have barely shifted over the past decade.
Nature is Expanding Registered Reports to All the Fields in Which We Publish
Nature is Expanding Registered Reports to All the Fields in Which We Publish
Registered Reports improve the credibility of scientific claims by rewarding big questions, sound methods and solid analyses. They need to become a standard tool in research.
APC Caps and Bans - Why Funder Policies Aimed at Curbing the Publishing Industry Don't Work
APC Caps and Bans - Why Funder Policies Aimed at Curbing the Publishing Industry Don't Work
A new report suggests the NIH's promised APC caps will reduce global OA spending. But so far, funder efforts to control publisher and author behavior have largely been ineffective. Here's why.
Elsevier Vs Meta: First Science Publisher Sues over Scraped Research Papers
Elsevier Vs Meta: First Science Publisher Sues over Scraped Research Papers
Science publishing giant Elsevier has joined a class-action lawsuit against Meta that alleges the reproduction of copyrighted works in developing the Llama AI model.
How Much of the Scientific Literature is Generated by AI?
Tools for reliably estimating what artificial intelligence is being used for are still lacking.
Sci Hub has created a new AI chatbot. Is it any good?
Largest illegal database of scientific papers has gaps in recently published literature, but its chatbot can still prove useful—especially for less-timely questions
From Open Access to Preprints: Are We Repeating the Same Mistakes in Scholarly Publishing?
From Open Access to Preprints: Are We Repeating the Same Mistakes in Scholarly Publishing?
The preprint movement, once seen as a pragmatic, low-cost, researcher-driven route to openness, now faces its own moment of uncertainty.
Scientific Journals Need Dedicated Fact-Checkers
An additional layer of quality control could help academic publishers weed out problematic content before it propagates.
AI Scientists Are Changing Research - Institutions, Funders and Publishers Must Respond
AI Scientists Are Changing Research - Institutions, Funders and Publishers Must Respond
The ability to automate the discovery process in some areas of scientific inquiry raises unanswered questions about how research should be conducted.
How to Build an AI Scientist: First Peer-reviewed Paper Spills the Secrets
How to Build an AI Scientist: First Peer-reviewed Paper Spills the Secrets
AI Scientist, an autonomous research tool, first released in 2024, has now undergone peer review, highlighting its strengths and limitations.
The Role of Gossip in Scholarly Publishing
Let's say the quiet part out loud: gossip plays an important role in scholarly publishing. But is that a bad thing?
Research Integrity is Locked into an Arms Race with Agentic AI Slop
Research Integrity is Locked into an Arms Race with Agentic AI Slop
Advances in agentic AI combined with increasingly large reserves of openly accessibly and machine-readable data are creating a perfect storm for the mass-production of AI authored research papers.
Academic Freedom Under Pressure: What Academic Publishers Can Do
Academic Freedom Under Pressure: What Academic Publishers Can Do
This post is an urgent call to push back against global trends in academic censorship and threats to free speech in scholarly communications.
Pop-up Journals for Policy Research: Can Temporary Titles Deliver Answers?
Journals that focus on specific research questions could help to bridge the science-policy gap, if they can attract researchers.
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