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Weekly News Digest
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December 16, 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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EBSCO Information Services Launches a Geosciences Research Resource
EBSCO Information Services teamed up with the American Geosciences Institute to create GeoRef with Full Text, “a powerful resource for researchers and students in the geosciences [that] combines AGI’s expert geological indexing with full-text access to leading journals and magazines, offering expansive geoscience coverage across time and geography.”There are more than 400 full-text publications available dating back to the 1930s that are in multiple languages. Topics include economic geology, environmental and engineering geology, geophysics, hydrogeology, paleontology, petrology, marine geology, and mineralogy. For more information, read the press release.
EFF Takes a Stand Against Censorship Disguised as Age Verification Laws
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) created a resource hub that will help people understand and counter “ill-advised and dangerous age verification laws proliferating across the United States and around the world,” EFF notes. It hosted a Reddit AMA Dec. 15–17 and will host a live-streamed panel discussion on Jan. 15, 2026. “These restrictive mandates strike at the foundation of the free and open internet,” says EFF activist Molly Buckley. “While they are wrapped in the legitimate concern about children's safety, they operate as tools of censorship, used to block people young and old from viewing or sharing information that the government deems ‘harmful’ or ‘offensive.’ They also create surveillance systems that critically undermine online privacy, and chill access to vital online communities and resources. Our new resource hub is a one-stop shop for information that people can use to fight back and redirect lawmakers to things that will actually help young people, like a comprehensive privacy law.” For more information, read the press release.
OLH Launches Philosophical Logic as a Diamond OA Journal
The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) shares the following:We’re excited to announce the launch of a major new journal, following news of another mass editorial resignation (read open letter) at Springer Nature. [T]he Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors of the Journal of Philosophical Logic published an open letter announcing that they will leave the journal and no longer work with Springer Nature. The editors are launching a new journal called Philosophical Logic at the Open Library of Humanities. “Science and culture should be public goods, open and accessible to everyone, without financial or institutional barriers. In recent years, academics across many disciplines have taken steps to realize this vision. We are pleased to make our contribution by founding Philosophical Logic as a Diamond Open Access journal,” say journal editors Thomas Icard, Wesley H. Holliday, and Francesca Poggiolesi. For more information, read the announcement.
OverDrive Partners With Follett Content to Enhance the Student Reading Experience
OverDrive’s Sora entered into a sales collaboration with Follett Content, a leading children’s and young adult book provider, to offer “an improved experience for readers by delivering digital content to students via the Sora app.” OverDrive continues, “By bringing together print, ebooks, audiobooks, and readalongs, the partnership gives educators the flexibility to build collections that meet diverse learner needs and inspire a lifelong love of reading. Long term, this collaboration will enable discovery of select digital titles from Sora to be available in Titlewave—Follett’s online collection development, ordering, and analysis tool—helping educators and librarians more easily identify high-quality content for their schools.”For more information, read the press release.
Overleaf Labs Launches AI Assistant in Beta
Digital Science rolled out “the first of its next-generation AI capabilities in Overleaf, the leading collaborative cloud-based writing and editing platform for LaTeX.” The press release shares, “The new AI assistant—initially available in a closed beta to Overleaf Labs users—fully integrates the capabilities of multiple Digital Science products directly within the Overleaf editor, to provide specialized agents and AI capabilities made for researchers.” Overleaf Labs is requesting user feedback to help shape development.For more information, read the press release.
The Scholarly Kitchen Explores the Future of Academic Publishing
Mandy Hill, managing director of Cambridge University Press, writes the following in “Academic Publishing Is Not Fit for the Future—If We Don’t Act Now, the Vital Role Research Plays in Society Is at Risk” for The Scholarly Kitchen:The need for high-quality research has never been greater. Global investment in research continues to grow as nations seek to accelerate solutions to challenges from climate change to global health crises. In an age of misinformation, academic publishing plays an increasingly vital role in ensuring this knowledge reaches and benefits communities worldwide. Yet that system is now reaching a breaking point. Unless we redesign it, we risk stalling the very progress we seek—with consequences impacting research, education and public trust in academia. For more information, read the blog post.
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Brandi Scardilli
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