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Weekly News Digest

December 5, 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.

The Chronicle of Higher Education Debuts an AI-Powered Research Assistant

The Chronicle of Higher Education launched Chron in beta for its print and digital subscribers, which is “an experimental AI-powered chatbot that is the first of its kind devoted to answering questions about the state of higher education and pressing issues on college campuses.” It leverages information from more than 130,000 articles dating from 1990 in The Chronicle’s digital archive.

“With each response, Chron provides links to relevant source articles written by Chronicle journalists and contributors,” the press release notes. “In developing Chron, The Chronicle’s technology team experimented with several large language models, ultimately selecting Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet for its accuracy, performance, and commitment to ethical principles, including transparency, respect for human values, and non-discrimination.”

For more information, read the press release.

Emerald Publishing Buys Information Age Publishing

Emerald Publishing acquired Information Age Publishing (IAP)—which produces academic book series, monographs, and journals concentrating on the areas of education, management, and psychology—to enhance its author footprint in North America. Emerald now owns three publishing imprints (Ablex, JAI Press, and IAP) founded by the family of George Johnson, founder and publisher of IAP.

For more information, read the press release.

Book Riot Looks at the Evolution of BookTok

Arvyn Cerezo writes the following in “Is BookTok Past Its Peak?” for Book Riot:

BookTok has undoubtedly made significant contributions to the publishing industry. It increased backlist sales, served as a marketing vehicle for frontlists, launched new authors, and generated revenue for both publishers and bookstores. But most importantly, the community inspired many young people to read—it bred new readers who will eventually seek out other books not recommended on the platform. …

I asked some industry experts to find out if BookTok’s magic has finally faded. These experts have expressed varying opinions on BookTok’s current state, but the general consensus is that the rules governing BookTok are evolving.

For more information, read the article.

OASPA Offers Recommended Practices for Better OA Publishing

The Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) published “a set of recommended practices that can mitigate exclusion and make an inequitable system less harmful by tackling workflow and financial barriers to open access publishing. Five headline goals urge publishing organisations, and those who pay for, purchase, and invest in publishing services, to evolve practices, build trust through greater transparency, and coordinate efforts to enable open access for all scholars, regardless of their location, affiliations or other circumstances.”

For more information, read the news item.

New Publisher Spines Works to Streamline the Book Business Using AI

Matilda Battersby writes the following for The Bookseller:

A new publisher has claimed it aims to ‘disrupt’ the books industry by publishing 8,000 books in 2025 alone using artificial intelligence (AI). Spines, founded in 2021 but which published its first titles this year, is a startup technology business which—for a fee—is offering the use of AI to proofread, produce, publish and distribute books. The company charges up to $5,000 a book, but it can take just three weeks to go from a manuscript to a published title. …

Spines recently secured $16m in series A funding and claims to have so far published 273 titles in September 2024, 33 of which were published on the same day.

For more information, read the article.

W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative Gets Ford Foundation Funding

The Ford Foundation’s Technology and Society program provided the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with $660,037 in funding for W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) work through July 2026. WAI is developing standards, guidelines, and implementation resources to support web access for people with disabilities.

“When designed well, the Web can remove barriers to communication and interaction that many people face in the physical world. However, when websites, apps, and tools are poorly designed, they create barriers that exclude disabled people from using the Web. Accessibility is essential to create a high-quality online experience,” W3C states. “The things we do for accessibility also benefit others who are often impacted by the digital divide: people with low bandwidth or expensive bandwidth, people with older equipment, people with low literacy in general or in certain languages; and also elderly users and mobile phone users. Accessibility’s benefits for individuals leads to broad benefits throughout societies, including governments and businesses.”

For more information, read the press release.

Altmetric Begins Tracking Bluesky as an Attention Source

Altmetric is now tracking Bluesky in real time as a new attention source for published research, detecting posts, reposts, and quotes that have a direct link to a scholarly work. “This major development sees Altmetric become the first to systematically track the impact of conversations about research on Bluesky, which has reached more than 23 million users,” Digital Science notes. “The new attention source is reflected in the distinctive Altmetric Badges—appearing as a sky blue color—as well as in Altmetric Attention Scores, and will appear in further detail in Altmetric Explorer.”

For more information, read the news item.

Search Engine Land Shares Striking Google Search Data

Danny Goodwin writes the following for Search Engine Land:

A mere 148 keywords account for 15% of all Google searches.

That’s just one of many striking insights from a new analysis of nearly 332 million queries for more than 320,000 unique query terms released today by Rand Fishkin of SparkToro, based on data provided by Datos. …

Organic search traffic appears to be increasingly going to fewer websites over time. In 2024, it is harder than ever to be visible and stand out in Google Search—especially if you often compete with Google’s AI Overviews and other search features.

For more information, read the article.

Sage Implements Dimensions Author Check for Improved Research Integrity

Sage adopted Dimensions Author Check, “an application from Digital Science that reviews researchers’ publication histories and networks to check for research integrity issues. This tool will help spot patterns in unethical scholarly behavior and is part of Sage’s ongoing effort to prevent low-quality research from being published and to preserve the integrity of the academic record,” according to the press release.

Sage shares, “Author Check works by using an extensive dataset to flag unusual activities that may require further investigation, such as indicators of paper mill involvement. It streamlines the historically labor-intensive and time-consuming author verification process, creating a more comprehensive view of an author’s research history.”

For more information, read the press release.

Clarivate and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Unveil the 2024 Research Fronts

Clarivate and the Chinese Academy of Sciences published the 2024 Research Fronts report (registration required), which showcases “the most dynamic and rapidly growing specialties in sciences and social sciences” for governments, policymakers, publishers, research administrators, and companies that monitor, support, and advance research. “This marks the eleventh annual collaboration between the two organizations,” the press release notes. The report offers 125 Research Fronts, with 110 considered “hot” (an active area of study) and 15 “emerging” (a rapidly developing field).

“This year’s Research Fronts address a diverse range of societal challenges. For example, in clinical medicine, a Research Front focuses on the use of monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of early Alzheimer’s disease. This research aims to accelerate the global effort to eliminate the disease. In the field of economics, psychology and other social sciences, another emerging front highlights the application and impact of Generative AI in education, which has already made a significant difference,” according to the press release.

For more information, read the press release.



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