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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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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(Smoothly) Transitioning to New Publishing Business Models

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(Smoothly) Transitioning to New Publishing Business Models

With all the recent discussion around the US OSTP memo recommending free and immediate access to all federally funded research, we think it’s worthwhile to take a step back to assess the current state of subscription and Open Access business models and review how we got here, before considering how to best navigate this changing landscape. The following article details the history of business model innovation in scholarly journal publishing, from a Trends Talk by KGL Consulting.

For over a hundred years, the business of publishing academic journals has been sustained by the subscription model. It was always an impeccably simple premise: institutions paid, authors authored, publishers published, readers read, institutions renewed, and repeat. The 1970s marked something of a heyday for this model - an era that is often viewed by the industry as some kind of utopia—when the scholarly publishing ecosystem seemed to thrive, with an abundance of journals entering the market, bursting library shelves, institutional agreements aplenty and high renewal rates.

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Publishing Trends: OSTP and Public Access

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Publishing Trends: OSTP and Public Access

As part of the KGL PubFactory Virtual Series, on October 6 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 Howard Ratner of CHORUS on the implications of the recent US OSTP memo recommending free and immediate access to all federally funded research.

Cara starts the session by reviewing what the memo says and doesn’t say, and presents excerpts from key industry stakeholders. Howard then masterfully explains potential impacts and important nuances. The recording of the 30-minute interview can be viewed here.

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All About the Game: How Gamification Can Improve Engagement and Learning

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All About the Game: How Gamification Can Improve Engagement and Learning

There is no question that technology, particularly in the last two years, has played a large role in the field of education. With remote learning, students and educators were required to become not only familiar but fluent in EdTech. But as we spent more time on screens away from each other, students became less focused. With engagement at an all-time low, teachers did everything they could to get the attention of students, even resorting to employing games in their curricula in order to encourage participation.

Though gamification of learning objectives was around before the pandemic, this teaching method was not used as widely. As teachers tried everything to engage students, they soon found that when they began implementing games in their classwork, students were participating, paying attention, and even learning lessons. Now that students are back in the classroom, will games still be an active part of education?

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Publishing and the Climate Emergency: the Monumental Challenge Ahead

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Publishing and the Climate Emergency: the Monumental Challenge Ahead

The global publishing industry has always had a conflicted relationship with the environment. On the one hand, no single industry has done more to educate and inform the general public about environmental issues. Whether through peer reviewed research and journals, consumer magazines, news reporting, books sold in shops or loaned through libraries, pretty much everything we know about the climate crisis is down to publishing, in some shape or form.

Yet, on the flip side, the industry cannot shy away from its own impact on climate change. Hundreds of years of deforestation to serve the print publishing industry are taking its toll. In the US alone, it is estimated that 32m trees are felled every year in order to make books—25 per cent of which are sent back to publishers unsold. Throw in reliance on fossil fuels, water usage, the use of chemical dyes and solvents, and the toll of shipping and flying physical products around the world, and you’ve got yet another manufacturing industry with a resource-heavy supply chain.

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s Sonny Regelman Discusses Educational Content Development

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s Sonny Regelman Discusses Educational Content Development

KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. has long provided product development services to the preK-12 and higher Education markets, working with many of the big players in addition to smaller and niche education publishers. For the last several years, one of the key leaders of KGL’s Learning Solutions group has been Executive Director, Sonny Regelman, who has experienced working in this field both on the content provider side as well as the vendor side.

Recently, I interviewed Sonny on the ins and outs of educational content development, where publishers experience pain points that partners can solve, the digital transformation of the market accelerated by the pandemic, and what new initiatives are on the horizon for the industry.

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s José Fossi Looks Back Over a Milestone Year for the PubFactory Community

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s José Fossi Looks Back Over a Milestone Year for the PubFactory Community

For many of our publishing partners and customers, 2021 was a transient year. As the industry dusted itself off from the grueling onslaught of 2020, publishers emerged with renewed optimism and a will to experiment with new technologies, models, ideas, and ways of working.

For the team at KGL PubFactory, 2021 was also a time for optimism—a year in which exciting new partnerships were forged and important developments were made, as we watched the community continue to grow and flourish. We took some time to talk to José Fossi, PubFactory co-founder and VP of Client Services, to reflect on the last year in scholarly publishing and his own professional highlights.

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Scholarly Video: a Case Study

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Scholarly Video: a Case Study

Journal of Neurosurgery Publishing Group unleashes the power of dynamic content with the Cadmore Media video player on KGL PubFactory

At the KGL PubFactory Virtual Series user group meeting this past October, we took the opportunity to delve deep and really put scholarly video under the microscope. In a session hosted by PubFactory’s Tom Beyer, we examined in detail how one journal publisher in particular was harnessing the power of video to revolutionize its approach towards traditional journal publishing, adding fresh content types into the mix and enhancing user experience for its members in the process.

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL's Kelly Lake Offers Learning Insights for Scholarly Publishers

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL's Kelly Lake Offers Learning Insights for Scholarly Publishers

As the research community evolves beyond mere PDFs of journal articles and book chapters, and publishers increasingly use their digital platforms to meet the demand for new, more engaging types of content, one area that shows strong potential is delivery of learning services. Whether it’s professional development courses for practitioners, continuing education credits, or Learning Management System (LMS) integration, publishers can now offer this content in interactive formats to their users. And publishers themselves may want to up their game when it comes to training their own workforce on issues of compliance, technology, and performance. To better help our industry understand the current landscape for eLearning strategy and solutions, I asked the head of KnowledgeWorks Global Learning, Kelly Lake, to explain the methodology, technology applications, and benefits of the L&D solutions her group provides to organizations of all types.

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Lessons Learned and Challenges Ahead for Scholarly Publishers

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Lessons Learned and Challenges Ahead for Scholarly Publishers

Highlights and Reflections from the 2021 KGL PubFactory Virtual Series

Autumn is a busy time for KGL PubFactory. Each year, as industry events start to fill the calendar, our community of customers, partners and staff gather for our user group meeting—held the past two years as the PubFactory Virtual Series. This is a rare and refreshing opportunity to bring together all the inspiring professionals we work with on both sides of the Atlantic, encouraging them to share knowledge, insights and experiences, and to explore how publishers are adopting technology to support their current needs and future goals.

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Knowledge Sharing: 5 Minutes with Merryn Smit, Senior Project Manager at KGL PubFactory

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Knowledge Sharing: 5 Minutes with Merryn Smit, Senior Project Manager at KGL PubFactory

This week begins the latest edition of the KGL PubFactory Virtual Series user group meeting, bringing the scholarly publishing community together to share lessons learned, new platform developments, and industry insights. To mark the occasion, we welcome PubFactory’s new UK-based Senior Project Manager, Merryn Smit to the team, following her time in digital content and production roles at Oxford University Press and Taylor & Francis. I spoke to her recently about moving from the publisher to vendor side, challenges publishers face with digital content, and embracing change.

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Preview: KGL PubFactory Virtual Series 2021

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Preview: KGL PubFactory Virtual Series 2021

Platform Services Director, Tom Beyer gives us an idea of what to expect at this year’s user group meeting

The PubFactory online hosting platform, established in 2010, has been holding an annual customer meeting—either in-person or virtual—for many years. This eagerly anticipated event is one of the great benefits of belonging to the PubFactory community and continues under ownership of KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. (KGL).

Once again, from October 13-15, over 60 scholarly publishing stakeholders will convene a three-day Virtual Series to share knowledge, hear from platform partners and industry experts, and learn the latest developments in the PubFactory roadmap during a variety of information-packed and interactive remote sessions. Recently I asked platform co-founder and technical lead, Tom Beyer what we can expect this year.

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Accessibility Continues to Evolve in Education Publishing

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Accessibility Continues to Evolve in Education Publishing

In an article we published on this blog back in 2017, we highlighted some of the challenges, complexities and benefits associated with making digital educational content (K-12 and Higher Ed) more accessible for visually and cognitively impaired readers.

Fast forward several years and the sector’s commitment to digital equality has really been put to the test. As millions of students all over the world switched to remote learning, educational publishers and learning providers had to act quickly to ensure that all the right resources and content were available digitally in order to support students’ rapidly evolving needs.

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The Meteoric Rise of Video Content

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The Meteoric Rise of Video Content

Consumer behavior is constantly evolving. Some consumer trends are temporary and relate to the circumstances and conditions du jour, while others take on greater cultural significance, establishing a permanent foothold on society, our habits and customs, and the way we go about our everyday lives.

Our relationship with video content is perhaps one of the most underestimated cultural phenomena of recent years. And global consumption of video as a medium has certainly accelerated since the start of last year. A recent study by video marketing firm Wyzowl revealed that 68 percent of consumers felt the pandemic had impacted the amount of video content they watched online, with 96 percent saying this had increased.

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Accessibility Fast Becoming an Essential Pillar of Scholarly Publishing

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Accessibility Fast Becoming an Essential Pillar of Scholarly Publishing

Two years ago, we (as Cenveo at the time) hosted a panel discussion at the SSP Annual Meeting, which brought the subject of accessibility to the center stage and helped shine a spotlight on the importance of making content accessible to readers with disabilities, such as learning difficulties and visual impairments. To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD), we take a look at how this landscape is evolving and how scholarly publishers are now actively improving access to academic research.

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UX Design Strategies for Journal Websites

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UX Design Strategies for Journal Websites

UX design is an integral part of the journal publishing strategy and can lead to increased article usage, longer on-page time and fewer site exits or bounces. Adopting best practices for your journal website is key for attracting and retaining subscribers as well as growing the reach of your journal’s content.

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Reimagining Virtual School: Better Learning Strategies for a Digital Future

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Reimagining Virtual School: Better Learning Strategies for a Digital Future

Perhaps the most fundamental problem with remote learning is the way that school systems approach the use of technology in the classroom, often simply mirroring in-person activities in a digital environment rather than tailoring or reapproaching lessons using different tools that technology offers. When online learning was just a quick fix until students got back to the classroom, that was fine. But as we look ahead to a future with digital learning likely to continue as part of the curriculum to a certain degree, we want to highlight a few ways that schools and educators can reimagine the virtual experience to be more effective for students and teachers alike.

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SSP OnDemand: AI Goes From Disruptive to Imperative

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SSP OnDemand: AI Goes From Disruptive to Imperative

For the Society of Scholarly Publishers OnDemand Video Content Library, KGL participated in a panel discussion entitled, AI Goes From Disruptive to Imperative: Publishers overcoming hang-ups and getting real with intelligent automation, where we invited movers and shakers in AI to highlight why researchers and publishers must embrace the technology now in order to remain competitive.

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Is XR technology’s “Zoom moment” finally on the horizon?

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Is XR technology’s “Zoom moment” finally on the horizon?

Every year - like clockwork - technology experts and futurists speculate as to whether this will finally be THE YEAR for mass market adoption of VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality) and MR (mixed reality), now commonly referred to under the useful catch-all umbrella term XR (extended reality) technologies.

When the vast majority of the world’s population was plunged into lockdown this year, and whether we liked it or not, staying in became the new going out, these debates around XR adoption logically intensified. This was to be the perfect storm. Suddenly the conditions were ripe for immersive innovations to really come to the fore and show their full potential.

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