Thursday, August 14, 2025
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De Gruyter now connected to OA Switchboard

As part of the ongoing commitment to an open future, De Gruyter is pleased to announce a new partnership with the OA Switchboard, a collaborative initiative designed to simplify and streamline the sharing of information about open access publications between institutions, libraries, funders, and publishers. The organization offers standardized exchange of metadata about OA publications throughout the publication journey and operates the supporting shared open infrastructure.

As of May 1st, 2024, automatic and real-time notifications of open access articles published in all De Gruyter journals will be send to affiliated stakeholders active within the OA Switchboard. The standardized and structured delivery of metadata enables libraries and institutions to process and analyze publication data across publishers and feed these into their own systems and workflows.

This service is vital for the transparent reporting around De Gruyter’s growing portfolio of open access journals of all publishing models, and additionally to inform libraries about their affiliated authors benefiting from open access publication within De Gruyter’s Subscribe to Open (S2O) journals, the main model aiding in the publishers large scale transformation to open access.

“We are delighted that we can now offer our library customers and consortia a clear and smooth solution for managing and integrating article output metadata. Our cooperation with the OA Switchboard enables scalable and automated reporting, which is invaluable for the success of our open access transformation plan,” said Ben Ashcroft, Chief Commercial Officer, De Gruyter Brill.

Yvonne Campfens, Executive Director at the OA Switchboard, comments: “As an intermediary, the OA Switchboard simplifies the sharing of standardized metadata between publishers, institutions, and funders, regardless of business model. The more stakeholders connect, the better the service for everyone. We aim to make the ecosystem work better for all and are delighted to have De Gruyter participate in the initiative.”

The OA Switchboard is a mission-driven, community led initiative designed to simplify the sharing of information between stakeholders about open access publications throughout the whole publication journey. It provides a standardised messaging protocol and shared infrastructure that is designed to operate and integrate with all stakeholder systems. It is built by and for the people who use it and is leveraged with existing PID’s.

Cell Press renews partnership with the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission

Cell Press, a global leader in scientific publishing, announces the extension of a partnership begun in 2018 with the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission (BMSTC), which oversees science and technology initiatives in Beijing.

As part of a memorandum of understanding signed April 29, 2024, during the closing ceremony of the Zhongguancun Forum, held in what’s known as China’s Silicon Valley, Cell Press will host prestigious international conferences and related events in Beijing for the next five years.

“Cell Press is honored to continue its position as a key partner for the BMSTC and Chinese researchers,” says Cell Press Senior Vice President Richard Remington. “This agreement allows us to not only expand our footprint in China and engage leading scientists from around the globe but also benefit local institutions by bringing in more communication and connections.”

During the Zhongguancun Forum, one of the most prominent scientific events in the country, Remington highlighted the achievements and journey of Cell Press, currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, as well as the company’s history of strategic collaborations in China.

The organizers expressed their enthusiasm for working closely with Cell Press, an all-science publisher, to create an open, inclusive, and innovative communication platform across the fields of life, physical, and earth sciences.

ResearchGate and Akadémiai Kiadó announce new Journal Home partnership

ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and Akadémiai Kiadó (AK),Hungary’s oldest continuously operating publishing house and a leading scientific publisher in Central and Eastern Europe, today announced a new partnership that will enhance the reach and visibility for a group of AK journals through ResearchGate’s innovative Journal Homeoffering.

AK was founded to promote international and Hungarian science, supporting information exchange on a global level. The new partnership will enable AK to connect with highly relevant new and existing audiences of authors and readers. All version-of-record article content from the initial participating journals, including archive content and new articles on publication, will be available on ResearchGate – boosting readership and engagement through ResearchGate’s 25m+ researcher members. 

Dedicated journal profiles will be activated on the platform, providing key information and content from the journals, as well as uniquely enabling ResearchGate members to explore how their own network connects to a journal. The journals will also be prominently featured on all associated articles and touchpoints throughout the ResearchGate network, enhancing visibility for readers and potential authors. AK authors will additionally benefit from their articles being automatically added to their user profiles on ResearchGate – providing them with stats and insights on their articles usage and presenting a unique way for these authors to understand and connect with their readers.

“AK is committed to making scientific results as widely read and shared as possible. We’re excited to partner with ResearchGate and use Journal Home‘s unique presentation and insights to enhance our global visibility,” said Erna Sári, Head of Marketing.

“We’re thrilled to see another regional publisher increase their global visibility through Journal Home,” said Sören Hofmayer, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at ResearchGate. “Our highly relevant researcher community offers publishers a new way to reach new readers for their journals, and provides unique insights into how a community connects with a journal.” 

For more information about Journal Home, please visit researchgate.net/journal-home

For more information about AK, please visit https://akjournals.com/ 

GetFTR collaborates with Crossref to support Research Integrity

GetFTR, the cross-industry initiative aimed at streamlining the researcher journey from discovery to access, is proud to announce a significant enhancement to their core service which will expose retraction and errata information to researchers at the point of discovery.

This collaboration with Crossref marks a significant step forward in ensuring researchers have access to the most accurate and up-to-date scholarly content.

Earlier this year, GetFTR revealed plans to leverage its existing infrastructure to incorporate retraction and errata data provided by Crossref and Retraction Watch. Today, this service has officially gone live for researchers using the GetFTR Browser Extension, with plans for wider implementation later this year across tools and platforms integrated with GetFTR.

Ginny Hendricks, Director of Community at Crossref, emphasized the importance of timely communication within the research community, stating, “When research is corrected or retracted, the community needs to become better and faster at communicating the change.” She encouraged all Crossref members to deposit updates, retractions, and corrections metadata as part of their open publication records, ensuring this information is readily available downstream for relevant tools and services that integrate with Crossref. 

Hendricks continued, “We are delighted that GetFTR is leading by example and incorporating this metadata to ensure that researchers are notified about retractions, in context, at the point of discovery.” She expressed hope that this initiative would encourage others to follow suit, collectively reinforcing the integrity of the scholarly record.

With the new service, researchers will now see “Update” or “Retraction” buttons alongside the GetFTR button in their search results or article pages. Clicking on the button will provide more detailed information about the document’s status, giving researchers confidence that they are accessing the most accurate and up-to-date version of the article.

Ralph Youngen of ACS, Chair of the GetFTR Steering Committee and a founding member of GetFTR, underscored GetFTR’s commitment to providing researchers with timely access to the most reliable content. “The whole purpose of GetFTR is to ensure the researcher can access the most accurate and up-to-date content they are entitled to read,” said Youngen. “This new service demonstrates GetFTR’s continued commitment to its mission”

Youngen urges publishers to keep their data up-to-date to maximize the effectiveness of this service. “We are delighted to be working alongside Crossref to provide this service and would like to ask all publishers to ensure their data is kept up-to-date to make sure the service is as accurate as it can possibly be.  That is not only instrumental to this extension of GetFTR, but also to other initiatives that will help increase the visibility of retractions and errata.”

Dianne Benham, Product Director at GetFTR said ”GetFTR remains dedicated to advancing research integrity, facilitating access to scholarly content, and driving innovation within the academic publishing landscape”

For more information, contact Dianne at dianne@getfulltextresearch.com

European Parliament report author says “academic freedom is under pressure in EU”  

Professor Peter Maassen, lead author of the European Parliament Academic Freedom Monitor 2023 report, has said “it is worrying that recent studies undertaken for the European Parliament Academic Freedom Monitor show that academic freedom is under pressure in many EU Member States” in comment published today (13 May) ahead of a key public discussion on academic freedom.   

In the article for Frontiers Policy Labs, Professor Maassen, Department of Education, University of Oslo, warns:  

“Threats to academic freedom are increasingly identified and are argued to come from various sides at the same time. Overall, there are growing worries in the EU about undue interference from the government and politics in academic freedom, about actions and decisions by university leadership and management potentially violating academic freedom, about internal conflicts and tensions among academic staff and students pressuring academic freedom. Furthermore, attacks by civil society actors on individual academics or academic groups, especially through social media, have grown in most EU Member States, forming a serious threat to academic freedom. In addition, the impact of private sector actors on academic freedom remains an issue in many EU Member States, while an emerging worry is how governmental security policies might affect academic freedom. This coincides with worries about the threat to academic freedom of foreign interferences in academia in Europe.”  

Professor Maassen puts forward several options for tackling threats to academic freedom, including establishing a European Platform for Academic Freedom, ahead of the Frontiers Policy Labs webinar “Powering Academic Freedom – Essential Insights for Policy Makers”. Chaired by Professor Robert-Jan Smits, former Director-General of DG Research and Innovation (RTD) at the European Commission, now President of the Executive Board of Eindhoven University of Technology, influential speakers from across Europe will discuss Academic Freedom from various perspectives. Confirmed speakers include:  

  • Professor Dr. Robert-Jan Smits, President, Executive Board of Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands (Chair)   
  • Professor Dr. Peter Maassen, Professor in Higher Education Studies, Department of Education, University of Oslo (UiO), Norway  
  • Professor Dr. Antoine Petit, Chairman and CEO, the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France   
  • Professor Dr. Andrea Petö, Central European University (CEU), Austria; CEU Democracy Institute, Hungary  
  • Marcus Scheuren, Head of Unit of the STOA Secretariat, European Parliamentary Research Service, EU.  

Register for the interactive discussion on 28 May, 10-11am CEST here https://policylabs.frontiersin.org/content/commentary-how-to-avoid-further-erosion-of-academic-freedom-in-europe

Manuela Gerlof and Maurits van den Boogert become Chief Publishing Officers

Manuela Gerlof and Maurits van den Boogert have been appointed De Gruyter Brill’s Chief Publishing Officers in a dual leadership role, joining the Management Board. They will replace Jasmin Lange, who has decided to leave De Gruyter Brill.

Manuela Gerlof studied Modern German Literature and Theater Studies in Berlin and Columbus, Ohio, and taught at Hamburg University, before earning her Ph.D. at Humboldt University in Berlin. She has more than 17 years of editorial experience at De Gruyter. In 2013, she became Editorial Director for Literary and Cultural Studies, before being appointed Vice President Publishing for Humanities and Social Sciences as part of the Executive Management Group in 2018. Manuela Gerlof has been instrumental in the strategic expansion of De Gruyter’s  humanities and social sciences portfolio, driving the growth of De Gruyter’s open access book program, establishing key partnerships and expanding the publisher’s global presence, particularly in North America.

Maurits van den Boogert studied Middle East Studies at Leiden University, where he received his Ph.D. in 2001 and continued to work as a researcher. Maurits came to Brill in 2006 as Academic Project Manager for the Encyclopaedia of Islam, before becoming Publishing Director for Middle East, Islam, and African Studies in 2019 and Senior Publishing Director in 2021. Maurits has played a key role in developing and growing Brill’s publishing program, accelerating the transition towards open access and further increasing Brill’s footprint as a global leader in Humanities publishing.

Manuela and Maurits will continue the process of integrating the two editorial divisions of De Gruyter Brill. De Gruyter and Brill will continue to exist as independent publishing brands with their respective imprints and programs. The breadth and depth of the publishing programs will be maintained, to continue to offer authors the opportunity to publish with all imprints, within established series and journals, and in as many subject areas as before. The editorial departments at De Gruyter Brill will develop their portfolios in close cooperation with the academic community, to make sure excellent research continues to have a significant impact on the world.

“I am glad to appoint two experienced internal candidates for this key position, reflecting the two strong editorial divisions that De Gruyter Brill is made up of. I expect that Manuela’s and Maurits’ complementary skills and perspectives will further facilitate the successful integration of the editorial team and the development of a joint program strategy.  I would also like to thank Jasmin Lange for her excellent work as part of the new Management Board and for the enthusiasm with which she contributed to bringing De Gruyter Brill to life,” said Carsten Buhr, CEO, De Gruyter Brill. 

IOP Publishing report reveals peer review capacity not used to its full potential  

A new global study from IOP Publishing (IOPP) has found that certain peer review communities continue to feel overburdened by reviewer requests, while others remain underrepresented.     
 
The survey, which generated over 3,000 responses from peer reviewers from across the globe, revealed regional and career-stage disparities:  

30% of reviewers from high-income countries indicated that they receive too many peer review requests, compared with just 10% from low and middle-income countries*  

Just 6% of respondents from China and 7% from India indicated that they receive too many requests, compared with 23% of respondents globally 

28% of senior researchers say they receive too many requests, compared to just 7% of PhD students and 9% of postdocs.  

Laura Feetham-Walker, Reviewer Engagement Manager at IOPP, said: “As research outputs increase globally, the demands on peer reviewers also increase. The pressures can be eased by tapping into the groups that are currently underused, which in turn brings different viewpoints and expertise. It’s alsoimportant to acknowledge that peer review can be a daunting task for those with little or no experience in the process, which is why we offer free peer review training and certification tailored for the physical sciences. Casting the net wider when looking for potential reviewers and helping to boost peer review confidence are just some of the ways we’re working to address the global imbalance.   

“Quality peer review is essential to the integrity and validity of science and relies on reviewers who are engaged, motivated and competent at providing constructive feedback. The insights we gain from this survey helps us to ensure we can continue to evolve the support we provide to the global reviewer community to help with their important work.” 

Other findings from the survey show that just over half of reviewers (52%) prefer to review double-anonymous manuscripts where the identity of both authors and reviewers are concealed. IOPP introduced this approach in 2021 to tackle the significant gender, racial and geographical under-representation in the scholarly publishing process. The predominant peer review approach in the physical sciences hitherto has been single-anonymous.  

IOPP’s ‘State of peer review 2024’ report provides rich and practical insights that will help improve the efficiency and quality of the peer review process. 

To read the full report, click here.  

Answer the Call! Propose a Session for the 2024 NISO Plus Global/Online Conference

What are the top priorities and concerns facing your organization? What are the biggest opportunities or risks, and how should the information community address them?

If you have ideas to share, then we encourage you to submit a proposal for the 2024 NISO Plus Global/Online conference, to be held virtually September 17–18, 2024. It’s a great opportunity to meet and collaborate with professionals from across the information community and around the world to address the most pressing issues in scholarly communications. And as with any NISO Plus conference, ideas emerging from the meeting will help to shape discussions about future NISO standards and projects. 

We welcome proposals from everyone across the information community—those working for libraries, publishers, scholarly infrastructure and tech providers, government agencies, and more—no matter your title or career level. Ideas from professionals outside North America are most welcome, as are proposals and presentations in languages other than English (we will provide translation and transcription services). 

Broad topics of interest include (but aren’t limited to) the following: 

  • Archiving and preservation
  • Global issues
  • Information quality and ethics
  • Research integrity
  • Metadata
  • Metrics
  • Open scholarship and open access
  • Identity, access, and privacy
  • Research infrastructure
  • Sustainability
  • Peer review
  • Emerging technologies (eg,  AI and machine learning)

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve and support diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in the information community, we strongly encourage proposals that reflect a variety of perspectives—geographical, organizational, functional, etc.—and that acknowledge and address DEIA challenges and opportunities. We therefore recommend that your proposal includes either confirmed speakers or examples of who you plan to invite to speak. 

Please note that all sessions will comprise a live screening of prerecorded presentations (approximately 45 minutes), followed by a live online audience discussion period (30-45 minutes). Presentations will be recorded in August 2024. 

Please submit your proposal by Wednesday, May 29. All submissions will be reviewed by the NISO Plus 2024 Planning Committee, and we will inform everyone of their decisions by June 21

We look forward to hearing from you! Your ideas help to ensure that our meeting represents the broadest range possible of concerns and interests in the information community. 

Silverchair Releases New AI Playground for Safe & Transparent Experimentation

Silverchair announced the release of a new AI Playground, the latest from the Silverchair AI Lab, which launched earlier this year with three active prototypes. The AI Lab was designed as a space to transparently pilot potential AI solutions, and the AI Playground is a natural extension of that mission. The AI Playground is a space for Silverchair clients to easily experiment with a variety of AI models, applications, and use cases, to help deepen their understanding of various models and refine their AI priorities. This free, user-friendly tool allows publishers to discover, stress-test, analyze, and refine their AI strategy and offerings.

“The AI landscape is incredibly fast-paced and complex,” said Silverchair CTO Stuart Leitch. “Our priority is bringing our clients on the education journey with us. By experimenting together, we can identify the best application of these technologies for their unique audiences. With our clients involved as early as possible, we’re building an informed community that can lead the way with innovative and publishing-specific AI tools.”

In exploration with clients, Silverchair has found the RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) pattern to be the most transformative in the space, as it pulls specifically from high-value publisher content to answer questions and link to cited content. Possible applications include conversational search, research assistants, content discovery, and building meta-analyses, as well as many others. The challenge is that RAG solutions offer myriad parameters to choose from, each of which can drastically affect the quality of the results.

Silverchair developed the AI Playground specifically to help publishers explore the tradeoffs of these choices and evaluate the effectiveness of different models. Within the tool, publishers may adjust the model, retrieval strategies, response facets, and much more. The tool features built-in up-voting and down-voting on responses to gather live feedback, which is used to tune the tool and inform the ongoing development of AI offerings on the Silverchair Platform.

“When we launched our AI Lab, we committed to working with our clients to co-create an AI future for scholarly publishing,” said Silverchair CEO Will Schweitzer. “The AI Playground is an excellent tool for our clients and other publishers to safely experiment and learn, with help from Silverchair’s AI team if needed. Engaging with these technologies is an important first step in creating useful and valuable AI features, products, and services.”

In the coming weeks, the Silverchair team will be actively engaged with clients, testing parameters against various high-potential use cases and applications to inform ongoing AI product development.

More than 99 percent of German universities and higher learning institutions have joined the renewed DEAL agreement with Springer Nature

Successful first iteration of transformative agreement DEAL delivered high visibility for German science internationally as well as improved access to global research

Only a few months after it was signed, almost all German universities and higher education institutions have joined the renewed open access (OA)  agreement between the DEAL consortium and Springer Nature.

The more than 99 percent participation rate reflects the significant benefits which the previous agreement has delivered for institutions and researchers. Between 2018 and 2022:

  • The amount of freely immediately accessible publications by researchers in Germany has more than quadrupled to 15,000 per year.
  • The global download figures for such articles increased by more than five-fold to an average of almost 1,300 per article.
  • The number of downloads of subscription content by DEAL participants rose by 53 percent to 18.8 million.

DEAL has thus not only significantly increased the global visibility of research coming out of Germany; it has also improved access to high-quality scientific works from around the world within the country.

The new agreement signed last November enables researchers from participating institutions to publish content in the OA and hybrid Springer, Palgrave and Adis journals as well as in the OA  titles of Nature Portfolio and the BMC journals at attractive conditions. They also receive reading access to subscription articles from the entire Springer, Palgrave and Adis portfolio.

Dagmar Laging, VP Institutional Sales Europe at Springer Nature, said: “We are very pleased about the great interest shown by German institutions in working with us under the new DEAL agreement. Thanks to open access, research from Germany will become more visible worldwide and, in addition, institutions in Germany get access to high-quality scientific subscription content.”

Springer Nature has been a pioneer in Open Science for decades. The publishing group promotes the publication of research data, incremental findings, and negative results to make research more replicable and reproducible. Furthermore, Springer Nature aims to continuously increase the proportion of articles that are immediately and freely accessible.

Researchers from over 3700 global institutions now supported by Springer Nature Transformative Agreements

Springer Nature now supports researchers from over 3700 institutions, across six continents, with open access (OA) publication via its Transformative Agreements (TA). The continued growth of the publisher’s TAs underscores the Springer Nature’s in accelerating the global transition to OA, ensuring all who want to publish OA can do so regardless of location or funding.

Carolyn Honour, Chief Commercial Officer of Springer Nature, said:

“TAs are proven to be the most effective, sustainable way to achieve rapid OA growth and support the transition at scale, making publishing OA a more viable option for global researchers. Research has a pivotal role to play in addressing and understanding the challenges that face our global society. By ensuring that more researchers can publish and take advantage of OA, we can support a more diverse research environment where research can be built upon, is more accessible, and reusable and can get into the hands of those who are addressing our most critical world issues.” 

Notable agreements launched in the first quarter of 2024 include: 

All affiliated researchers now benefit from the higher visibility and usage OA achieves, whilst their institutions are supported with a streamlined OA workflow and benefit from greater reach and impact of the research. 

Springer Nature remains committed to exploring viable and sustainable routes to OA for all researchers regardless of discipline, location or funding situation. More about the publisher’s commitment to OA and open research can be found here.

ResearchGate and The Royal Society expand Journal Home partnership to cover full journal portfolio

ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and the Royal Society, the UK’s national science academy and the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence in the world, are delighted to announce a further expansion of their Journal Home partnership to cover all the Royal Society’s journals and more than 45,000 articles increasing their visibility and global readership.

All 10 journals, including open access and subscription journals, now benefit from the enhanced visibility and reach that Journal Home delivers on the ResearchGate platform. The Royal Society expanded the inclusion of their journals and content to ResearchGate in 2023, making all version-of-record content from participating titles, including newly published articles and backfile content, accessible on the ResearchGate platform. 

The expanded partnership reflects the continued success of the collaboration. The Royal Society’s content has seen increased visibility and readership through ResearchGate. In a case study released in 2023, the Royal Society saw a 64% increase in the usage on the ResearchGate platform for the two open access journals included in an initial pilot. This increased usage has continued with articles in these journals having been viewed over 1.75m times on ResearchGate in the last 12 months.,The Royal Society has also seen increased engagement with their journals through ResearchGate from early career researchers, a critical demographic they were looking to reach. 

Now, through Journal Home, all of The Royal Society’s journal titles benefit from dedicated journal profiles on ResearchGate, providing key information and content from each journal, as well as prominent journal branding on all associated article pages and other relevant touchpoints. Journal Home’s unique network insights provide a new way for the Royal Society to engage with their journal community. Editors and authors are discoverable through the journals’ profiles, helping members understand how their network is connected to a journal. 

Authors in participating Royal Society journals have additionally benefitted from their research being automatically added to their profiles on ResearchGate, boosting article visibility as well as providing insights into who is reading and citing their work and presenting a unique way to understand and connect with their readers. More than 75,000 authors have already benefited from having their articles added to their profiles and made more discoverable and accessible through Journal Home.

“We continue to see excellent results from our collaboration with ResearchGate, helping us to reach new audiences, and learn more about our journal communities,” said Graham Anderson, Head of Publishing Operations at The Royal Society. “ We’re pleased to now offer Journal Home to our complete portfolio, supporting our authors and editors with greater insights and opportunities to connect and engage with researchers worldwide.”

“Our partnership with the Royal Society goes from strength to strength, extending the reach and visibility of their essential science content to new engaged audiences,” said Sören Hofmayer, Chief Strategy Officer at ResearchGate. “Journal Home offers the Royal Society a unique way to build a deeper understanding of – and engagement with – their communities. We’re thrilled to see them take this next step in our partnership.”

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