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Subscribe to The BriefIssue 51 • March 2023
Wiley has a rough day in the market in wake of suspending Hindawi’s special issue program. Clarivate delists 50 journals, including 19 from Hindawi and the world’s second largest journal (from MDPI). We also discuss the role of a flagship journal, AI and content licensing, an attempted coup at eLife, open access regret, and more this month in The Brief.
Issue 50 • February 2023
Springer Nature ends deposit of articles in PubMed Central, NIH’s new public access policy, cOAlition S ends support for Transformative Journals, and the RRS tries to route around prohibitions. Plus, gender diversity on editorial boards and whether ChatGPT can “author” a paper.
Issue 49 • January 2023
Was this month’s issue of The Brief written by ChatGPT? Find out within. Springer Nature ramps up its acquisitions and the first post-Nelson Memo public access policy from a US federal agency is released.
Issue 48 • November 2022
Wiley spins off its services into a stand-alone division, but where will it find customers? MDPI’s relentless optimization for market conditions continues. Publishers are embracing sustainability topics as SDG-related scientific outputs are rapidly increasing. And a look at the numbers from this month’s RELX investor seminar.
Issue 47 • October 2022
eLife’s bold experiment attempts to change research journals into review services. Springer Nature offers its first-ever report on high level financial performance. cOAlition S launches its Journals Comparison Service. De Gruyter acquires Ubiquity Press. And an update on the OSTP’s Nelson Memo.
Issue 46 • September 2022
Silverchair announces a major investment from Thompson Street Capital Partners (TSCP). The central tension in OA publishing comes to the fore with the resignation of four editors of a prominent journal. The new OSTP open science policy continues to dominate the conversation. Firms focusing on Author Experience (AX) are gaining competitive advantage over those that are moving more slowly.
Issue 45 • August 2022
This special single-topic issue of The Brief analyzes the August 2022 public access memorandum issued by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy. We review the memorandum itself, its accompanying impact statement, and its likely implications for publishers and societies.
Issue 44 • July 2022
The Lancet’s long-term strategies come to fruition. Clarivate simultaneously expands the impact factor (to more journals) while reducing it (down to a single decimal place). Does success in scholarly communications require disruption?
Issue 43 • June 2022
A year into its Transformative Journals route to compliance, cOAlition S revises its requirements. Does the list price for a journal subscription really mean anything anymore? An open data policy without monitoring and enforcement is not really an open data policy. And have postdocs finally recognized the realities of the academic job market and fled elsewhere?
Issue 42 • May 2022
Meeting presentations are increasingly being recorded, preserved, and made publicly available in perpetuity. But do some things work better when they’re ephemeral? CCC’s purchase of Ringgold offers a contrast between the benefits of open, community-owned infrastructure and the speed and robustness of private efforts. And almost ten years after its release, just what does it mean to become a DORA signatory?