Cassyni extends partnership with Springer Nature to deepen researcher engagement by running research seminars at scale

May 14, 2025

Cassyni, the platform for research seminars, and Springer Nature, a global research publisher, today announced the expansion of their partnership to enable more journals to build engagement with their research communities through online seminars.

Springer Nature’s Research Communities provide a free online platform for researchers and peers to connect, generate discussions and explore research findings that matter to them. The extended partnership better integrates Cassyni’s offerings into the platform meaning any journal can easily set up seminars to promote new journal issues, key research articles and calls for papers.

Individual journals, ranging from titles such as Nature Communications to specialist publications such as Nonlinear Dynamics, will host their own research seminars. These seminars will reflect each journal’s unique branding and focus, helping to build dedicated communities around specific research areas. At the same time, the seminars will be promoted across the broader Springer Nature Research Communities platform, encouraging participation beyond the core audience. The outcome is deep engagement between the journals and their primary readership, while also encouraging cross-discipline interaction across the wider community.

Andrew Preston, Co-founder at Cassyni, says:

Cassyni-hosted seminars, which can be embedded directly into a journal’s website, are an ideal solution to meet the changing needs of researchers. These seminars not only attract but also engage a worldwide community of researchers. Thanks to the “Cassyni Effect,” a significant portion of this audience will subsequently cite and publish in the journal hosting the seminars, contributing to the journal’s growth and success. We are thrilled to be able to offer this impactful solution at scale across the Springer Nature portfolio.

Marc Gillett, Head of Editorial Engagement at Springer Nature, says:

At Springer Nature, we are committed to supporting and connecting researchers worldwide – to each other and to the latest research. Our investment in our Research Communities platforms exemplifies this commitment. Expanding our partnership with Cassyni enables us to empower even more journals and authors to extend their interdisciplinary and global connections delivering new value to authors and readers alike.

At launch, the following Communities will be included: Agricultural & Food Science, Astronomy, Cancer, Chemistry, Computational Science, Earth & Environment, Engineering, Genetics & Genomics, Materials, Mathematics & Statistics, Neuroscience, Physics, Social Sciences, and Sustainability.

For more information and to explore the seminars visit: https://cassyni.com/c/springer-nature.

Aries Systems and Leza Solutions Partner to Support Scholarly Publishers in the Greater Middle East

May 7, 2025

Aries Systems Corporation, a leading provider of workflow management technologies for the scholarly publishing community, and Leza Solutions, a digital solutions designer and supplier, are pleased to announce their partnership to support end-to-end publishing in the Greater Middle East.

Through this distribution agreement, scholarly publishers and other content creators within Africa, South and Central Asia, South Caucasus, and the Middle East can now join over 9,000 titles worldwide currently leveraging Editorial Manager® (EM) and ProduXion Manager® (PM), the industry leading peer review and article production tracking systems. Based in Kuwait with extensive experience with leading digital brands, Leza Solutions is well positioned to expand the reach of Aries’ technologies into new and growing markets. This strategic collaboration enables journals within the Greater Middle East to harness the power of EM and PM to optimize their workflows and strengthen their visibility within the scholarly ecosystem.

“We are thrilled to enter an exciting distribution partnership with Leza Solutions to make EM and PM more accessible to publishers in new markets, supporting mutual growth and digital transformation,” said Pierre Montagano, Aries Director of Business Development. “With Leza Solutions’ expertise and local presence, Aries can meet the increasing demand for robust publishing solutions in these regions and support our commitment to serving scholarly communities across the globe.” “We are excited to partner with Aries Systems, a leader in scholarly publishing workflows,” said Naser Al-Ghayeb, CEO of Leza Solutions. “This collaboration allows us to bring their renowned Editorial Manager and ProduXion Manager platforms to the Greater Middle East, empowering publishers in the region with advanced tools. Our team has undergone comprehensive training with Aries, ensuring we can

Beijing International Book Fair announces new Academic publishing conference and hub ahead of its 31th edition

May 7, 2025

The Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF), 18-22 June 2025, the second largest book fair in the world, will see a growing focus on academic publishing with a new STM conference and hub for its 31th edition.

Over 200 global libraries and research institutions will attend BIBF, organised by the China National Publications Import and Export (Group) Co., Ltd., alongside a growing list of international exhibitors from 80 countries (up from 71 in 2024).

BIBF also anticipates record international participation at its 31st edition, with over 1,700 exhibitors from countries and organisations worldwide. The fair will open amid optimism in Chinese publishing as OpenBook reported double digit growth in the Chinese trade book market (OpenBook Q1) and expansion in Chinese academic and digital publishing sectors. Chinese authors are increasingly breaking international readership (led by Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem) and international authors are seeing success in China, particularly in children’s publishing where two international authors were included in the list of top 10 bestselling Children’s authors in 2024, Christian Jolibois (France) and Erin Hunter (UK).

Bangladesh, Chile, Croatia, Belarus, Oman, Ethiopia, Kenya and Jamaica will make their debut at BIBF, joining national and regional stands from across the globe — including the UK, USA, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Greece, Romania, Iran, the UAE (Abu Dhabi), Malaysia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Ms Lei Jianhua, Director of the BIBF, Vice President of CNPIEC said:

“Last year we saw a huge growth in international attendance and exhibitors and that is set to continue. We are pleased to see new countries represented from Bangladesh, Chile, Croatia, Belarus, Oman, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Jamaica. We are expanding the PubTech Conference and launching the inaugural STM APAC conference in partnership with the STM Association, launching a new focus area on Academic and Digital publishing with 200 global libraries and research institutions represented. We hope to foster international discussion and cooperation around academic digital content.”

BIBF Timing

Two conferences (PubTech Conference and STM Conference) will take place on 16 June and 17 June before the BIBF fair opens. The fair runs from 18–22 June, with the first three days (18–20 June) reserved for industry professionals and the final two days (21–22 June) open to the public.

BIBF will take place at China National Convention Center for the third year.

Conferences

● Pubtech Conference – on 16 June

○ The 3rd PubTech Conference—titled “Publishing’s Future Empowered by Technology”—will forge an international exchange platform for experts, scholars, leading publishers, and technology specialists to explore how advanced technologies are driving transformative change in publishing, with a focus on integrity, corpus construction, and copyright protection.

● STM conference in partnership with the STM Association– on 17 June

○ The inaugural STM APAC Conference will launch under the theme “Open Driven by Innovation,” marking STM’s first international forum dedicated to bolstering academic publishing in the Asia-Pacific region by leveraging its innovative dynamism and integrating best practices in open science. Notable keynote speakers include Caroline Sutton, CEO of STM, and Yang Wei, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, underscoring these events as must-attend platforms that will empower the high-quality development of academic publishing and foster global collaboration.

New Academic and Digital Publishing Hub at BIBF

Marking a significant innovation at this year’s fair, the Academic Digital Publishing Hub debuts as a dedicated space for in-depth exchanges on digital content and technological solutions. Notably, with Chinese university libraries’ electronic resource acquisition fees reaching a record 65.8% of their literature budgets since 2023 (source: Chinese University Library Information Science Journal 2025) and leading academic publishers—such as Wiley, Pearson, and Oxford University Press—deriving over 70% of their revenue from digital channels, BIBF is providing an area for organisations to discuss growing digital demands and review substantial cooperation opportunities. The fair unites representatives from over 200 global libraries and research institutions, creating an efficient platform for advancing academic publishing, research information services, and library resource development.

BIBF Art Book Fair, Theme is “The Art of Seeing: Visions across Books.” The 2025 edition features a David Hockney–themed exhibition showcasing Thames & Hudson publications—and on‑site artistic recreations of his signature interplay of color, light, and perspective, offering an immersive fusion of art and literature.

BIBF illustration Exhibition has announced its international jury members for 2025 including Anet van de Vorst (Netherlands), Ao De (China), Cen Jun (China), Hanne Bartholin (Denmark), Roderick Mills (UK), Samuel Bennet (UK), and Yu Rong (UK). The exhibition provides a professional global platform for outstanding illustrators, with all award‑winning works unveiled during BIBF 2025.

BIBF Picture Book Fair founded in 2015 has become a vital bridge between Chinese and international picture book publishers. Over eight years, it has welcomed celebrated IPs such as Harry Potter, Barbapapa, and Detective Pippi. In 2025, the fair will span approximately 1,700 m², featuring globally renowned franchises alongside original editions in 14 languages, creating an immersive parent–child reading experience.

Malaysia, the Country of Honour at BIBF 2025, will be represented by a robust delegation of more than 50 representatives, led by the Honourable Deputy Minister of Education and senior officials from the Ministry of Education, comprising government agencies, public and private publishers, university presses, literary foundations, and creative studios, including leading publishers such as PTS Media Group Sdn Bhd, Pelangi Publishing Group, Buku FIXI Sdn Bhd, Odonata Publishing Sdn Bhd, Patriots Publishing Sdn Bhd, Sunway University Press, Penerbit UPSI, the Malaysian Book Publishers Association (MABOPA), and Perbadanan Perpustakaan Selangor.

Growth of Chinese retail book market

● Openbook reported in 2025 Q1, the value of China’s book retail market achieved a 10.77% year-on-year increase, sustaining its recovery momentum. Subjects including education, well-being and AI technology led by Deepseek drove market growth.

● Overall sales growth was still led by the social media video channels, including Douyin (the Chinese TikTok) and Rednote

● In 2024, China’s book retail market saw 1.92 million new titles, as tracked by OpenBook, reaching its highest point in nearly a decade.

● The total number of active titles, as gauged by ISBNs in the overall retail market, reached 2.41 million, an increase of 1.68 percent.

● In 2024, the market valuation—as measured in sales revenue at list price—came to 112.9 billion yuan (US$ 15.5 billion).

● Two international authors were included in the list of top 10 bestselling authors in the Chinese Children’s Book Market in 2024, respectively Christian Jolibois from France and Erin Hunter from the UK.

● In the Chinese market, the film is a clear boost to book sales. Following the popularity of the animated film Ne Zha: The Past of the Three Realms during the Chinese New Year 2025, the new Ne Zha book from CITIC Publishing House topped the mainland February charts of Fiction Bestsellers by OpenBook.

Emerald Publishing acquires now publishers

May 7, 2025

Global academic publisher Emerald Publishing Limited has today acquired now publishers.

Founded in 2004, now publishers is a leading source of academic content, publishing research monographs, journals and Foundations and Trends® (FnT) with strengths in the areas of Business, Economics, Computer Science and Engineering. The sale comprises over 50 books, 14 peer-reviewed journals and 28 Foundations and Trends® serials. The Foundations and Trends® collection includes some of the top ranked journals in their respective fields including FnT Machine Learning (#1 ranked journal in Computer Science in Scimago). The research journal collection complements Emerald’s current journals collection in Business and Economics.

Zac Rolnik, President and CEO, now publishers, said: “We started now publishers with the intention of creating a unique publishing concept focusing on quality and author service. I believe we have lived up to that goal. But with time and changing technology, we saw the need to be part of a larger organization to deal with the myriads of changes in the marketplace. We looked for a partner that appreciated our brand and the quality of our content, but also a publishing house where we share a similar ethos towards authors, editors, librarians, and the research community in general. In addition, Emerald provides the sales and distribution infrastructure to better serve our author community. We look forward to continuing this journey with Emerald.”

Vicky Williams, CEO, Emerald Publishing said: “As an applied publisher of mission driven research, Emerald is thrilled to acquire now publishers. Their dedication to publishing rigorous and accessible research complements Emerald’s commitment to providing researchers, practitioners, and educators with resources that drive real-world impact. now publishers’ strengths in Business, Economics, Computer Science and Engineering, as well as the addition of their pioneering Foundations and Trends® programme, allows us to offer our customers an expanded portfolio of high-quality academic resources. We look forward to welcoming now publishers’ authors and editors to Emerald.”

Nature Portfolio expands to include Nature Health and Nature Sensors in 2026

May 7, 2025

Two new Nature journals, Nature Health and Nature Sensors, will launch in January 2026. These titles will offer new avenues for research publication in evolving and expanding areas such as health research and applied science, increasing knowledge around some of the critical priorities facing us in the world.

In a post-pandemic era where greater emphasis is being placed on a more resilient global health care system, Nature Health will seek to champion interdisciplinary research centred around the protection and promotion of health and disease prevention. The journal will aim to breakdown silos and to facilitate discoveries and discussions, by connecting researchers, healthcare professionals, innovators, policy makers, and the public. Ultimately, the aim of Nature Health is to identify and publish the best evidence to promote better health for all. The journal will be led by Chief Editor Ben Johnson.

Nature Sensors will be the first selective multidisciplinary journal focused on sensors and sensing systems. With sensors playing an ever-growing role in our modern lives, the upcoming journal will showcase the exciting advancements in the field, whilst having a strong focus on societal applications. Essential to this, is the promotion of cross-community interaction and engagement within the applied sciences and engineering space, which the journal hopes to achieve. Nature Sensors’ Chief Editor is Olga Bubnova.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Nature journals’ new launches program, which began in 2015. Over the past decade, the program has successfully introduced a variety of new journals, covering a wide range of research areas. These journals cater to diverse communities, address global challenges, and influence policy.

Like all Nature-branded journals, the new launches are managed by a team of professional editors. They ensure meticulous selection, commissioning, fair and rigorous peer-review, precise editing, rapid publication, and broad dissemination of both commissioned and proposed content. Nature Health and Nature Sensors will be hybrid journals, both are open for submissions.

Wiley position statement on illegal scraping of copyrighted content by AI developers

May 7, 2025

At Wiley, we champion the value of intellectual property and the creators behind it. As pioneers in knowledge creation and dissemination for over two centuries, we are committed to ensuring that authors’ works are respected and properly licensed in the evolving digital landscape. Collaboration between authors, scientific and scholarly societies, and AI developers ensures responsible use of AI to advance research and discovery while preserving the academic freedom that is essential to scholarly progress.

We reaffirm this position. We believe in the transformative potential of AI to advance research and discovery. This progress must be built on a foundation of respect for intellectual property rights including agreed compensation and attribution for content creators. We stand firmly alongside our authors and publishing partners in calling for ethical and legal data sourcing practices within the AI industry and encourage industry-wide adoption of proper licensing practices as some AI developers have. 

To be clear:

AI developers and companies must obtain authorization before using Wiley content, or content we publish for our partners, for AI development, training, or implementation.
Wiley has consistently and publicly reserved all rights in our copyrighted materials; no implied permission exists absent a proper license.
Transparent attribution and data provenance are essential components of ethical AI development.

To demonstrate our commitment to responsible innovation, we have developed licensing frameworks that offer flexible, fair terms tailored to different use cases and development needs.

There have been numerous well-publicized agreements between AI developers and STM and trade publishers, including our own successful licensing agreements with AI developers who share our commitment to ethical content use. These clearly demonstrate that an AI licensing market exists and is functioning effectively.

This licensing market also creates pathways to ground AI in authoritative content. This active collaboration with the AI community includes building expectations and standards into agreements for transparency, citation, attribution, and data provenance, to foster user trust in AI systems.

Through partnerships with authors, publishing partners, researchers, and ethical AI developers, we can create a sustainable ecosystem that values both technological advancement and the uniquely human contributions of authors and researchers.

Wiley Announces Collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Integrate Scientific Content into Life Sciences AI Agents

May 7, 2025

Wiley, one of the world’s largest publishers and a trusted leader in research and learning, today announces a new collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to launch a generative AI agent for scientific literature search on AWS. The first of its kind from a publisher on AWS, the AI agent will be unveiled at the 7th annual AWS Life Sciences Symposium in New York City on May 6. The AI agent will demonstrate how researchers can conduct comprehensive full-text scientific literature search across Wiley’s extensive journal content, moving beyond traditional abstract-only searches to access detailed content within main sections like methods and results.

The new Wiley literature search agent is available as part of an open source toolkit for healthcare and life sciences agents that has been assembled by AWS. The toolkit offers a catalog of starter agents and an orchestration framework for organizations to build and customize their agentic systems, supporting use cases from biomarker discovery to clinical trial protocol generation. The new AI agent currently includes AI searchable access to articles under the creative commons license, such as Cancer Medicine, delivering reliable and cited insights in minutes rather than the current hours- to days-long manual process of discovering and perusing dozens of articles for relevant information.

“Our collaboration with AWS demonstrates how researchers can access and leverage scientific literature to power more effective discovery across the life sciences sector,” said Josh Jarrett, SVP and GM of AI Growth for Wiley. “By integrating Wiley’s authoritative full-text content into AWS’s technology built on Bedrock Agents, we’re showcasing the potential of comprehensive literature search to accelerate innovation and bring critical scientific insights directly into researchers’ existing workflows.”

“We’re excited to work with Wiley to explore how AI-powered agents can enrich evidence-based research with dynamic, detailed, and verifiable scientific content,” said Dan Sheeran, General Manager, Healthcare and Life Sciences, AWS. “The cure for cancer isn’t going to come from an abstract, but will be derived from researchers interrogating and synthesizing internal and external data. This collaboration demonstrates how customized AI agents with trusted information sources like Wiley’s research content can enable life sciences researchers to build these more powerful and informed discovery systems.”

Wiley’s development of this AI agent demonstrates the company’s commitment to building innovative AI solutions while maintaining responsible AI practices through established core principles focusing on the importance of human oversight, transparency, attribution, fairness, and appropriate governance.

Duke University Press to publish open access monographs through MIT Press’s Direct to Open (D2O)

May 7, 2025

The MIT Press is proud to announce that beginning in 2026, Duke University Presswill join our Direct to Open (D2O) program. This collaboration marks the first such partnership with another university press for the D2O program, and reaffirms our shared commitment to open access publishing that is ethical, equitable, and sustainable.

Launched in 2021, D2O is the MIT Press’s bold, innovative framework for open access monographs that shifts publishing from a solely market-based purchase model where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model.

Duke University Press brings their distinguished catalog in the humanities and social sciences to Direct to Open, providing open access to 20 frontlist titles annually alongside the MIT Press’s 80 scholarly books each year. Their participation in the D2O program—which will also include free term access to a paywalled collection of 250 key backlist titles—enhances the range of openly available academic content for D2O’s library partners.

“By expanding the Direct to Open model to include one of the most innovative university presses publishing today, we’re taking a significant step toward building a more open and accessible future for academic publishing,” said Amy Brand, Director and Publisher of the MIT Press. “We couldn’t be more thrilled to be building this partnership with Duke University Press. This collaboration will benefit the entire scholarly community, ensuring that more books are made openly available to readers worldwide.”

“We are honored to participate in MIT Press’s dynamic and successful D2O program,” said Dean Smith, Director of Duke University Press. “It greatly expands our open access footprint and serves our mission of making bold and transformational scholarship accessible to the world.”

With Duke University Press’s involvement in 2026, D2O will feature multiple package options, combining content from both the MIT Press and Duke University Press. Participating institutions will have the opportunity to support each press individually, providing flexibility for libraries while fostering collective impact.

For details on how your institution might participate in or support Direct to Open, please visit mitpress.mit.edu/D2O or contact the MIT Press library relations team at mitp-library-relations@mit.edu.

Silverchair Launches AI-Powered Dynamic Discovery on the Silverchair Platform

May 7, 2025

Silverchair has announced the launch of Dynamic Discovery, a powerful AI discovery tool that transforms how researchers find relevant scholarly content. The innovative solution connects users to better refined search results more quickly, all while enhancing the value of publishers’ brands and their content.

Building on the success of the recently launched Oxford Academic AI Discovery Assistant, Dynamic Discovery leverages advanced RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) frameworks to direct users to the most pertinent articles, books, and conference papers using natural language queries instead of relying on simple keywords. The functionality presents the most relevant sources along with contextual information about why each was selected as well as clear relevance and access indicators. Users may refine their queries through follow-up questions or be seamlessly redirected to the full-text content on the platform.

Dynamic Discovery offers significant benefits for both publishers and researchers. For publishers, it drives platform traffic, preserves access control, amplifies collection value by surfacing content that might otherwise be overlooked, enables cross-collection discovery, and provides valuable usage intelligence. Researchers benefit from intuitive discovery without specialized vocabulary, efficiency in identifying relevant sources, and contextual understanding of research questions, all on top of the modern platform functionality and user experience they expect.

The tool is fully responsive and integrates seamlessly with existing Silverchair-hosted platforms, maintaining user authentication states and preserving institutional access rights while reflecting each publisher’s unique branding.

“Dynamic Discovery represents a fundamental shift in how researchers engage with scholarly content,” said Will Schweitzer, Silverchair CEO. “By leveraging AI-powered discovery while ensuring all access occurs directly on publishers’ platforms, we’re simultaneously enhancing the researcher experience and strengthening the value proposition of our publishing partners’ content collections. This solution reflects Silverchair’s ongoing commitment to developing technology that both advances scholarship and supports the business objectives of our client community.”

Dynamic Discovery is the latest output of Silverchair’s AI Lab, which was designed to transparently test and pilot potential AI solutions with our clients. This investment in learning and collaborating is bearing fruit in 2025 with the delivery of several robust and thoroughly tested AI features and products throughout the year.

PLS and ALCS Agree to Development of Pioneering CLA Generative AI Licence

April 30, 2025

Publishers’ Licensing Services (PLS) and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) have announced a significant development in the licensing of content for generative AI. The two collective management organisations representing publishers and authors have agreed to the development by the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) of a new collective licence for generative AI.

The pioneering licence for the use of text in generative AI, such as in the training and fine-tuning of an AI language model or use in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), will be the first of its kind to be developed in the UK. The licence will provide the opportunity for rightsholders who are not in a position to negotiate direct licensing agreements with AI developers, to receive renumeration for the use of their works in generative AI models and applications whilst ensuring that their content is protected, and copyright is respected.

The new collective licence will offer a cost-effective and convenient solution to AI developers who are required to obtain permission to use content to innovate and develop models.

The agreement comes at a crucial time for the UK’s ‘gold standard’ copyright framework. The UK government is currently reviewing responses to a recent consultation on copyright and AI, in which it proposed a controversial new copyright exception for text and data mining which rightsholders opposed. The new licence shows that a copyright exception is neither necessary nor desirable and builds upon the collective licences being developed and rolled out by the CLA for commercial text and data mining and for workplace use of content in generative AI prompts, which is to be launched on 1 May.

PLS and ALCS will now work closely with the CLA to develop the terms of the licence, offering transparency and remuneration. The CLA plans to make the new licence available to AI developers in the third quarter of 2025.

Tom West, PLS CEO said:

For over four decades PLS and our partners have delivered collective licensing solutions at scale, enabling the legitimate, lawful re-use of trusted, high-value content. As the generative AI revolution accelerates, PLS and our partners are uniquely placed to offer collective solutions — supporting both the rightsholders whose interests we represent and the AI companies that rely on high-quality content to train and ground their models.

Following an initial consultation phase with publishers last year and significant groundwork over recent months I am pleased to move forward with this important and much needed initiative to support an equitable, transparent, and sustainable framework for content use in the age of AI.

Barbara Hayes, ALCS CEO said:

When we surveyed our members last year, they made it clear that they expect us to do something about their works being used to train AI. The Government proposal to introduce a copyright exception would give very limited choice, wouldn’t remunerate creators or provide any transparency about which works are being used, and so we’re pleased to be working with our partners at PLS and CLA to develop a licence that would deliver on these terms for writers and demonstrate that licensing is a viable and practical solution.

Mat Pfleger, CLA CEO, said:

Training AI models on copyrighted content requires permission and compensation. CLA’s collective licence will further demonstrate that licensing is the answer and can provide a market-based solution that is efficient and effective. Our goal is to provide a clear, legal pathway for access to quality content. One that empowers innovators to develop transformative generative AI technologies whilst respecting copyright and compensating rightsholders and creators where their works are use

STM Defends Copyright in AI Case

April 30, 2025

STM has filed an amicus brief supporting authors in the Kadrey v. Meta litigation, which challenges Meta’s use of copyrighted works to train its generative AI systems.

The brief underscores that Meta knowingly copied and distributed large volumes of copyrighted content sourced from notorious piracy websites—including Z-Library, Libgen, Sci-Hub, and others—that have been repeatedly shut down by courts and investigated by authorities.

STM argues that Meta’s actions—using unlawful sources while bypassing licensing—threaten the rights of authors and publishers and undermine the sustainability of scholarly communication.

This action reflects STM’s ongoing work to promote responsible, rights-respecting approaches to the development of AI technologies.

Further reading:

Next generation OA publishing deals

April 30, 2025

The NORF Action Plan aspires that “by 2030 Ireland will have implemented a sustainable and inclusive course for achieving 100% open access to research publications.” While IReL’s current suite of over 20 transformative OA publishing agreements have been a success in rapidly accelerating the volume of Irish works make immediately open on publication, they have limitations: they may have article publishing limits; their pricing may not be adequately transparent; the transition to a pay-to-read may be unaffordable; and its not certain that the global uptake of such models will result in an ultimate transition to OA as the default.

IReL is currently participating in working groups with two publishers who share these concerns and are independently designing new business models which will allow them publish OA on a fair and sustainably basis, and also to embrace open research, beyond simply making publications open. They may include features such as open-peer review; supporting and evaluating non-article content such as code and data and ensuring that such content is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

We won’t identify the publishers yet, as their new models are works in progress, expecting to be piloted in the next 1-2 years. While both publishers have very different histories and legacy practices, their share common visions along with IReL in seeking to:

· ensure that open access and open research can be adopted globally, across countries with differing financial means

· providing fair, transparent pricing that eliminates the volatility of deals based purely on article output (and which may incentivise quantity over quality)

Regardless of the outcome of these efforts (and their suitability for future IReL deals), we welcome these publishers’ willingness to innovate and to collaborate with stakeholders such as libraries, consortia and funders to further open research.