The Battle for Research Integrity

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The Battle for Research Integrity

The integrity of scholarly research has always been one of the most—if not the most—important pillars of academic publishing. Authenticity, accuracy and reliability have always been the bedrock of the industry and a source of great pride for those working within it. However, in recent times, as models have evolved, the way we publish and consume content has changed and the world has become more interconnected, we have witnessed the emergence of several significant threats to research integrity. Subsequently, the role of journal publishers has had to adapt as we defend ourselves against these threats and strive to maintain credibility. In this article, we examine a few of the challenges and threats that journal publishers are currently facing.

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5 tips for Growing Journal Revenue in a Changing Business Environment

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5 tips for Growing Journal Revenue in a Changing Business Environment

Remaining competitive in today’s complicated scholarly journal landscape has never been more challenging for publishers. Confronted with rapidly evolving business models, funding constraints, growing competition and stretched resources, sustaining and growing revenue can seem like a daunting task and uphill struggle at times.

During our most recent edition of the KGL PubFactory Virtual Series, Kevin Lomangino, Director of KGL Consulting, presented an insightful and panoramic talk on the current state of the journal market, looking at how evolving trends are impacting publishers, while also providing some useful tips on how journals can navigate this new reality to stay competitive and boost revenue. Read some of his key takeaways.

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The Year Ahead: AI in Scholarly Publishing 2024

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The Year Ahead: AI in Scholarly Publishing 2024

For the last year and a half, the media and publishing world have generated a lot of buzz and discussion about one particular disruptive technology—artificial intelligence (AI). Though AI is not new to the publishing ecosystem, the launch of ChatGPT and the increased daily usage of Large Language Models (LLMs) for web research, writing assistance, and idea generation has raised questions (and problems) with how developer OpenAI trained its chatbot, how we are using this tech in our daily and professional lives, and what it all means for the future.

As an industry innovator in the use of AI to automate workflows and one of many entities experimenting with new applications of this technology, KGL is taking this opportunity at the start of the year to boldly forecast where AI will take scholarly publishing and beyond during 2024.

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The Future of Peer Review: an Interview with Jeremy Chapman

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The Future of Peer Review: an Interview with Jeremy Chapman

Second in a series of video interviews with scholarly journal editors

For Peer Review Week, KGL recently interviewed five scholarly journal editors and publishing professionals on the state of peer review in 2023. In this video, KGL Editorial's Mary Todd interviews Jeremy Chapman, Editor-in-Chief of Transplantation and Transplantation Direct on the work of a large editorial board and the processes that impact the work of peer reviewers.

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How to Use Data-Driven Strategies to Increase High-Quality Submissions

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How to Use Data-Driven Strategies to Increase High-Quality Submissions

Last month, customers, friends, and guest speakers from across the globe convened once again for our annual KGL PubFactory Virtual Series. During the course of the three-day event, a packed and topical agenda enabled the scholarly publishing community to share valuable insights, learnings, developments, advice and trends with their peers.

One of the highlights of the Industry Day (day two) program was a fascinating discussion chaired by KGL Senior Consultant, Annette Hager, entitled, Data-Driven Strategies for Increasing High Quality Submissions. This session explored practical ways in which publishers can integrate bibliometric and citation data into their editorial strategies in order to attract both larger volumes of submissions and, perhaps more importantly, higher quality content submissions.

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Getting Real With AI

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Getting Real With AI

During our recent community event, PubFactory Virtual Series: Industry Day, KGL’s Waseem Andrabi, VP of Learning Solutions, presented the different areas where the company is exploring artificial intelligence (AI) in publishing workflows to improve efficiency and reduce errors. Potential applications include content creation, copyediting, plagiarism checks, translations, adaptations, animations, videos, voiceovers, and more.

The session provides insights into the challenges faced, particularly in AI-generated alt text for images where KGL has been testing APIs for over 10 months, with examples that illustrate the evolving capabilities and limitations of AI models. Despite mixed results, Waseem emphasizes the importance of ongoing evaluation and adaptation to leverage AI's potential benefits in various service areas. Watch the recording to learn more.

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The Future of Peer Review: an Interview with Zara Manwaring, Managing Editor at Portland Press

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The Future of Peer Review: an Interview with Zara Manwaring, Managing Editor at Portland Press

For Peer Review Week, KGL interviewed journal editors and publishing experts on the state of peer review in 2023. In this insightful Q&A blog, we share the full interview conducted with Zara Manwaring, Managing Editor at Portland Press, which is the publishing arm of the Biochemical Society. We sat down with Zara to discuss the challenges posed by paper mills on the peer review processes and how the journal, Bioscience Reports, responded to these issues.

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Essential AI Reading: 5 Recently Published Must-Read Books

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Essential AI Reading: 5 Recently Published Must-Read Books

There is no shortage of books being published every year on this hugely important topic – some offering practical solutions towards working with AI to enhance our lives and others painting a pessimistic picture of the future. But with such a fast moving landscape, the bestselling AI titles from just a few years ago are already losing their relevance. With this in mind, here is a list of our recommended AI books that have been published within the last year.

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The Future of Peer Review: an Interview with Dr. Leonard Jack, Jr.

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The Future of Peer Review: an Interview with Dr. Leonard Jack, Jr.

First in a series of video interviews with scholarly journal editors

For Peer Review Week, KGL recently interviewed five scholarly journal editors and publishing professionals on the state of peer review in 2023. In this video, KGL Editorial's Amy King interviews Dr. Leonard Jack, Jr., Editor-in-Chief, Preventing Chronic Disease, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Distinguished Research Consultant, on diversifying the editorial board, training, mentoring, and incentivizing reviewers, and the future of peer review. Watch the full interview below.

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OSTP and Public Access: One Year Later

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OSTP and Public Access: One Year Later

As part of the 2023 KGL PubFactory Virtual Series, on October 11 we hosted Industry Day, a half-day online seminar of insights, discussion, and practical takeaways for the scholarly publishing community. Headlining the event was an informative discussion with KGL’s Cara Rivera and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library and Chef at The Scholarly Kitchen on the evolving implications of last year’s US policy memo recommending free and immediate access to all federally funded research.

Cara asked Lisa about implications on APCs, data sharing, sustainability of journal business models, and long-term consequences of OA mandates. The recording of the 30-minute interview can be viewed below.

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Frankfurter Buchmesse 2023: The State of AI

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Frankfurter Buchmesse 2023: The State of AI

When ChatGPT launched last November, the publishing industry began to discuss and write about how we can use AI in our industry—will it be used to help with research, to produce journal articles, to create marketing copy or content, to conduct scholarly communication, in peer review, or in ways we have yet to discover?

Here at KGL, as discussed recently on our PubFactory Virtual Series: Industry Day community event, we have been experimenting with AI detectors for peer review, media creation, alt-text generation, and a “conversational manuscript” using ChatGPT, among other potential use cases.

Though new applications (and implications) of AI are being discovered every day, one panel at the Frankfurt Book Fair this month seeks to provide the most up-to-date information on AI and its impact on the industry in “The State of AI in Publishing Today:”

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Peer Review and the Future of Publishing: Insights from Scholarly Journal Editors

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Peer Review and the Future of Publishing: Insights from Scholarly Journal Editors

by Amy King

KGL Editorial recently interviewed five scholarly journal editors and publishing experts on the unique aspects they consider in their peer review process. These publishing professionals generously shared their experiences in the spirit of Peer Review Week, which both inspires innovation and new initiatives and evokes camaraderie in their common challenges. All five individuals shared at least one unique aspect of their peer review model with us.

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s Vanessa Vaughn Discusses Content Development, DEI, and the Future of K-12 and Higher Education Publishing

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s Vanessa Vaughn Discusses Content Development, DEI, and the Future of K-12 and Higher Education Publishing

Earlier this summer, KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. welcomed Vanessa Vaughn as Senior Director, Content Services in our K-12 and Higher Education group to oversee content development for science and humanities subjects. Vanessa brings to KGL 20 years of experience developing high-quality K-16 content and a deep understanding of changing state and national standards.

Vanessa started her KGL tenure by contributing to the updated edition of our industry report, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Educational Content: What You Need to Know Now. I sat down with her recently to discuss her new role, content DEI in educational publishing, and how she sees the industry changing in the next five years.

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Preview: Three Unmissable Talks at the ACCESSE23 Leadership Conference

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Preview: Three Unmissable Talks at the ACCESSE23 Leadership Conference

Every year, STEM society professionals from all over the world gather at the ACCESSE Leadership Conference, expertly organized and curated by the Council of Engineering and Scientific Scholarly Executives (CESSE).

This month (July 11-13) the ACCESSE23 event heads to Detroit, Michigan, where it will offer attendees the chance to gain new perspectives, develop new ideas and connect with CESSE members and partners.

The KGL team is delighted to be supporting the event as partners, and also to be participating in one of its keynote panel debates. The following are just three of our favorite event highlights from this year’s speaking program.

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Recruiting and Onboarding an Editor-in-Chief: 5 Tips from the Experts

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Recruiting and Onboarding an Editor-in-Chief: 5 Tips from the Experts

Hiring, transitioning and onboarding an Editor-in-Chief is one of the most important yet complex and lengthy processes scholarly journals must undertake. From assembling a recruiting committee and creating checklists to compiling shortlists and evaluation matrixes, the groundwork required alone can take months. But all the hard work is worth it if you want to secure the best possible candidate who meets the criteria of your journal and is aligned with its core values and goals. 

In our recent Successful Recruiting and Onboarding of Your Editor-in-chief  webinar, hosted by KGL Consulting and our very own Lisa Marshall, four experts from across the scholarly journal community gathered to offer their unique perspectives on the topic.

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SSP Preview – PUBLISH NOW: A True One-Stop Content Workflow for Scholarly Associations

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SSP Preview – PUBLISH NOW: A True One-Stop Content Workflow for Scholarly Associations

The marketplace for scholarly publishing has become increasingly difficult to navigate over the last several years. Independent and society publishers have had to cope with evolving business models focusing on new technology, sustainability, Open Access, and more; pressure to increase high-quality submissions; the growing need for speed to publication, particularly with potentially life-saving research; and expectations of a straightforward author and user experience. To remain competitive and to focus on their main task of publishing important content, publishers have had to rely on a variety of external service providers to help with or take on many of these processes.

At the Society for Scholarly Publishing 2023 Annual Meeting, KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. (KGL), will explore how publishers can maintain truly comprehensive journal workflows while still sustaining publishing independence. 

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What to Make of ChatGPT in Scholarly Communications?

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What to Make of ChatGPT in Scholarly Communications?

No matter what you are reading, watching, or listening to, everyone today is talking about ChatGPT and how it can help our daily lives and, perhaps, even our work. Released in November 2022 by OpenAI, ChatGPT is an Artificial Intelligence chat bot that “interacts in a conversational way” and it can “answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.”

ChatGPT was quickly embraced by the world for fun and frivolous purposes, but it has also been used to write press releases, news articles, corporate documents, and even essays and journal articles. Though many industries are jumping to see how this new AI can help their business, there are just as many who are being more cautious. In scholarly publishing, there has been much debate about how this new AI can help our industry. KGL has pulled together a round-up of some of the most recent articles to help you make your own decision about ChatGPT.

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Bias Awareness in Scholarly Publishing

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Bias Awareness in Scholarly Publishing

Earlier this year, we published a report entitled Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Educational Content: What You Need to Know Now, providing publishers with a starting point and ongoing solutions for how to make their content more representative of the audience engaging with it. 

As publishers and their stakeholders begin to work toward making their content more inclusive, one of the most difficult challenges they face is not recognizing their own implicit biases and how they might impact the quality and reach of their publications. 

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Five Unmissable Event Highlights at LBF 2023

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Five Unmissable Event Highlights at LBF 2023

Running from April 18–20, 2023, the London Book Fair is one of the most important events in the international publishing calendar. This year, organizers are confident that the event will be “back in full force” with global exhibitor and attendee numbers likely to approach pre-pandemic levels and many US attendees returning to the halls of Kensington Olympia following a four-year hiatus.

Despite a paring back of its academic publishing seminar output, LBF still has plenty to offer visitors from all corners of the industry—a bustling program of on-stage panel discussions, interviews and presentations and a neatly programmed day-long scholarly industry conference. As we gear up for the fair, we’ve prepared a short guide to our top event highlights in this year’s seminar program and beyond.

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Tackling Global Social Challenges through Technology

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Tackling Global Social Challenges through Technology

Optimizing Content Delivery to Advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have undoubtedly been among the hottest topics on the scholarly publishing agenda since we’ve come out of the pandemic. Although the 17 goals were established back in 2015, the publishing industry’s response to them has certainly accelerated since 2020, when a raft of publishers signed up to the SDG Publishers Compact, affirming their commitment to its 10-point action plan.

At the most recent Charleston Library Conference, KGL PubFactory’s Platform Services Director, Tom Beyer, hosted a lively panel debate which combined the perspectives of several prestigious social science publishers and an open resources librarian, showcasing how they are each adopting new technologies, implementing new initiatives and adapting their content delivery offerings to advance the SDGs and tackle global social challenges.

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