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Weekly News Digest
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January 28, 2025 — 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.
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MIT Press Reaches Its Direct to Open Funding Goal for 2025
The MIT Press shared that its Direct to Open (D2O) framework—which “shifts publishing from a solely market-based, purchase model where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model”—reached its full funding goal for 2025 and will make 80 new monographs and edited book collections OA this year. “Among the highlights from the MIT Press’s fourth D2O funding cycle is a new three-year, consortium-wide commitment from the Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC) and a renewed three-year commitment from the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA),” the company says. “These long-term partnerships will play a pivotal role in supporting the Press’s open access efforts for years to come.”For more information, read the news item.
Library Juice Academy Stands in Solidarity With Libraries
Library Juice Academy posted a message to libraries about the new presidential administration, which states in part:We know many of you are feeling anxious right now. So are we. There’s so much uncertainty about what lies ahead for libraries and librarianship. What will happen to federal funding? Will librarians face legal threats for providing materials on gender, sexual orientation, or Black history? What about access to government documents? Workers’ rights? And what challenges might emerge that none of us have even imagined yet? These are heavy questions, and like you, we’re grappling with what this moment means for the future of our field—and for all of us personally and professionally. As a company that depends on the health and vibrancy of libraries, we’re deeply invested in strengthening solidarity across the profession. If libraries are under attack, we’re all under attack. For more information, read the message.
The Urgency of Critical Media Literacy
Nolan Higdon writes the following in “The War on Fake News Has Backfired” for Salon:Brian Stelter, CNN’s chief media analyst, recently tweeted that ‘fact-check’ had become a dirty word. Stelter’s assessment followed Meta’s announcement that it would scrap its fact-checking processes—once central to the post-2016 response to the proliferation of so-called fake news. Now, with Donald Trump preparing for a second term, many former critics of fake news have curiously dropped their concerns over disinformation and aligned with him. This shift exposes Big Tech and legacy media’s anti-fake-news campaigns as, at best, PR fluff, and at worst, efforts to outright silence dissent. For more information, read the article.
CNET Provides Advice on Detecting AI Writing
Rachel Kane writes the following in “How to Detect AI Writing” for CNET:As a professor of strategic communications, I encounter students using AI tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly and EssayGenius on a regular basis. It’s usually easy to tell when a student has used one of these tools to draft their entire work. The tell-tale signs include ambiguous language and a super annoying tendency for AI to spit out text with the assignment prompt featured broadly. … I came up with [four] ways to be smarter in spotting artificial intelligence in papers. For more information, read the article.
RBmedia Launches New Audiobooks of the Outlander Series
RBmedia is releasing new audiobook editions of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon that are read by Kristin Atherton, who portrays the character Jenny Murray in the STARZ adaptation. “Gabaldon’s sweeping historical fiction of time travel, war, and romance—which inspired the bingeworthy TV series on STARZ—has become a worldwide phenomenon with a following of millions of readers and listeners,” the press release notes. The first book in the series is available for preorder now. The rest of the series will be available later in 2025 through 2026.For more information, read the press release.
Molecular Connections Buys Morressier to Streamline Scholarly Publishing Workflows
Molecular Connections “acquired Morressier, the innovative platform provider reshaping scholarly workflows. This acquisition combines trusted services with product innovation, creating a differentiated model designed to meet the evolving needs of scholarly publishers and support their critical mission in the research ecosystem,” according to the press release. “At the core of this collaboration is Journal Manager, Morressier’s flagship product and the foundation for building scalable, end-to-end solutions. Journal Manager transforms how publishers manage workflows, delivering enhanced user experiences, ensuring research integrity, and addressing the industry’s growing complexities.”On The Scholarly Kitchen blog, ITHAKA’s Roger G. Schonfeld shares thoughts on the acquisition, stating, “The marketplace for publishing infrastructure products has continued to evolve steadily and … shared infrastructure product providers are essential to preserving a robust publishing marketplace. Looking across the market, SilverChair, following its ScholarOne acquisition, is the most well established independent publishing infrastructure competitor. If Molecular Connections further establishes itself as an infrastructure product provider, it will be interesting to see how the market adapts.” For more information, read the press release and the blog post.
CCC Rolls Out a Trends Analysis of Copyrighted Content Usage
CCC “announced key findings on attitudes about copyright, the adoption of AI tools in the workplace, and content use and collaboration from the newly released ‘2025 Copyrighted Content Usage Trends’ study based on data gathered by Outsell, Inc.,” the press release shares. The results show that “executive-level respondents had the highest level of copyright awareness. They also, however, had the highest number of potential copyright violations at nearly three times the rate of middle management and seven times the rate of individual contributors. … The study also revealed that while AI adoption has reached as high as 97% in some industries, just 77% of respondents know their organization’s copyright policy and only 62% realize it applies to AI when using third-party content.”Outsell, Inc.’s Hugh Logue analyzes the data in a CCC Velocity of Content blog post, noting, “Understanding the nature of information consumption is a core need for any provider across our industry, and this study highlights five important changes in how copyrighted content is used and shared in the work environment. Each of these has important implications for serving market needs.” For more information, read the press release and the blog post.
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Brandi Scardilli
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