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Weekly News Digest

September 19, 2024 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today. CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.

Clarivate Unveils Primo Research Assistant Powered by Generative AI

Primo Research Assistant “is built based on a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture and grounded in the Ex Libris Central Discovery Index (CDI), which contains over 5 billion records from thousands of publishers, aggregators and repositories.”

For more information, read the press release.

ResearchGate Announces Three New Partnerships

On Sept. 5, ResearchGate partnered with Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., “a global media company dedicated to creating, curating, and delivering impactful peer-reviewed research and authoritative content services,” to add five OA journals in the health and medical sciences to Journal Home.

On Sept. 10, ResearchGate expanded its partnership with Canadian Science Publishing (CSP), an independent, not-for-profit publisher of international, peer-reviewed science journals, to bring all of its journal portfolio (22 titles) to Journal Home. CSP originally added titles to ResearchGate in February 2024.

CCC Rolls Out RightFind Curriculum Content-and-Licensing Solution for Educational Materials

The solution’s publishing partners include Crabtree Publishing, Highlights for Children, Inc., National Geographic, Rosen Publishing Group,  Inc., Science News, and TIME. RightFind Curriculum features CCC’s Annual Copyright License for Curriculum & Instruction, “which provides reuse rights to legally use over one million copyrighted English and Spanish language works from more than 90 leading publishers, including books, magazines, newspapers, publisher websites, and more.”

In addition, the solution allows for the reuse of “millions of images and videos in curriculum and lessons from sources like The Associated Press and SuperStock. CCC has also partnered with educational video company Boclips for its Boclips Classroom platform, offering nearly two million premium-branded educational videos aligned to state standards from more than 650 brands and creators.”

For more information, read the press release.

The Urban Libraries Council Unveils a Toolkit for Promoting Youth Literacy

For more information, read the press release.

OpenAthens Issues a Call for Proposals and for Award Applications

• Security and user privacy
• Artificial intelligence
• Impact of library budgets
• User experience and accessibility
• Federated authentication and seamless access

On Sept. 9, OpenAthens invited publishers, library systems vendors, and makers of research and analytics tools or other library products and services to submit applications for its sixth annual UX Award by Nov. 22, 2024. The winner will be announced at Access Lab 2025. The award “showcases publishers and library service vendors that put users at the heart of their service design” and aims “to inspire publishers and other library service vendors to invest in user experience and deliver simple journeys to their content and services.”

NISO Represents the U.S. in an ISO Committee on Cultural Heritage Conservation

“The committee is expected to meet annually in person, with most working groups developing standards operating virtually,” NISO shares. NISO executive director Todd Carpenter is the TAG’s chairperson.

For more information, read the press release.

PLOS Begins Using 'Essays' as a New Article Type

“Essays, which are predominantly solicited by our Editors, are compelling, opinion-based pieces, focused on the most urgent and impactful topics facing our journals’ fields. They fulfill a community need for an article type that can, in particular, address concerns related to policy implications of regional or intersectional interest,” PLOS explains. “Essays will be written in an accessible, non-specialist style and will typically be 3000–4000 words in length. Unlike more traditional Review articles, which relay a thorough account of a particular topic, Essays are centered around a provocative question with an in-depth and engaging analysis of the problem. However, as is the case with Reviews, Essays undergo full peer review and our Editors will work closely with authors throughout the process.”

For more information, read the blog post.

SSP Joins Effort to Support the Publishing Community in Ukraine

• Access to all of SSP’s OnDemand Library content
• Virtual access to SSP’s Webinars and Seminars (including the upcoming New Directions seminar)
• Virtual access to SSP’s Training Programs (including the new Journals Academy)

SSP notes, “In addition, The Scholarly Kitchen will feature guest posts from Ukrainian publishers about the state of scholarly publishing in Ukraine, current challenges, and the future they envision. The first post will be from Ganna Kharlamova, head of the Publishing Coordination Center at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv.”

For more information, read the news item.

Federal Antitrust Lawsuit Filed Against Six Academic Journal Publishers and STM

On September 12, 2024, Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel at Justice Catalyst Law filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against six commercial publishers of academic journals, including Elsevier B.V., John Wiley & Sons, Wolters Kluwer NV, and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), on behalf of a putative class or scientists and scholars who allege that these six world’s-largest for-profit publishers of peer-reviewed scholarly journals conspired to unlawfully appropriate billions of dollars that would otherwise have funded scientific research.

[T]he defendants’ alleged scheme has three main components. First, an agreement to fix the price of peer review services at zero that includes an agreement to coerce scholars into providing their labor for nothing by expressly linking their unpaid labor with their ability to get their manuscripts published in the defendants’ preeminent journals.

Second, the publisher defendants agreed not to compete with each other for manuscripts by requiring scholars to submit their manuscripts to only one journal at a time, which substantially reduces competition by removing incentives to review manuscripts promptly and publish meritorious research quickly.

Third, the publisher defendants agreed to prohibit scholars from freely sharing the scientific advancements described in submitted manuscripts while those manuscripts are under peer review, a process that often takes over a year.

For more information, read the news item.

Springer Nature Plans IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange

ION Analytics published an article analyzing the IPO, stating, “The German publisher is one of the few big-ticket IPOs left to hit European exchanges this year. An unsuccessful deal, or a decision not to go ahead with a listing should an acceptable price not be secured, would see Europe’s new listing market ending on a whimper after a roaring start to the year.” The article cites a source who says, “AI is the driver of the whole sector and is a huge growth engine for the business. … Springer Nature is in a great position because it is content that fuels AI.”

For more information, read the Reuters news item.