This week, we listen to the latest AI for Pharma Growth podcast about the opportunities AI offers to academic publishing. We signpost two upcoming webinars, one about publisher copyright agreements and another about the 2024 State of Open Data report, and we highlight the 2025 Metascience Conference call for proposals. We learn about a new AI-automated editorial checker for Springer Nature journals, and we consider the financial and logistical implications of introducing open science policies. Finally, we read an article from Tim Errington about the future of open science and explore WithdrarXiv, a database cataloguing preprints withdrawn from arXiv.
To listen to:
AI and academic publishing via AI for Pharma Growth | 28-minute listen
What opportunities does artificial intelligence (AI) offer for the academic publishing landscape? In this episode of the AI for Pharma Growth podcast, host Andrée Bates (Founder of Eularis) discusses the revolutionary force of AI in the context of research publications with Gráinne McNamara (Research Integrity and Publication Ethics Manager at Karger Publishers).
To engage with:
Publisher copyright agreements: who owns what via STM
Are you a US author bewildered by the legalities of publishing agreements and copyright? Join Molly Stech (General Counsel at the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers [STM]) and Seán O’Connor (Professor of Law at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School) on Tuesday 14 January as they consider publisher copyright agreements from the perspective of researchers and academics. This free webinar is the second part of a series exploring the rights of authors over the works they produce. You can watch the first part of the webinar now on YouTube.
Bridging policy and practice: the State of Open Data 2024 webinar via Figshare
The 2024 special edition of The State of Open Data report went beyond understanding researcher attitudes towards open data to explore how researchers are putting policy into practice. In this webinar on Thursday 23 January, authors Mark Hahnel (Vice President of Open Research at Digital Science) and Graham Smith (Open Data Programme Manager at Springer Nature Group) will explore nuances in the open data landscape and provide practical insights that could be used to bridge the gap between policy and practice. Learn more about this free webinar and register here.
Metascience Conference 2025 call for proposals via Metascience
It’s time to submit proposals for virtual symposia, face-to-face panel sessions, talks and posters to the 2025 Metascience Conference! Taking place from 30 June to 2 July in London, UK, the conference promises to assemble the metascience community to explore points of opportunity and change in the context of institutions, innovations and alliances. Submissions are open until Friday 7 February.
To read:
Springer Nature launches AI-automated editorial check via Springer Nature | 2-minute read
Springer Nature has announced the launch of a new AI tool to automate editorial quality checks. The tool aims to streamline preliminary content reviews, allowing editors and peer reviewers to quickly identify and address quality issues in submitted manuscripts. As explained by Harsh Jegadeesan (Chief Publishing Officer at Springer Nature), “by carefully introducing new ways of checking papers to enhance research integrity and support editorial decision-making we can help speed up everyday tasks for researchers, freeing them up to concentrate on what matters to them – conducting research”.
Open science funding considerations via bioRxiv | 35-minute read
Research funders are increasingly adopting open science policies to make research more transparent and accessible. However, these policies can come with unanticipated costs and logistical challenges. The Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) initiative has a comprehensive open science mandate, requiring preprint upload upon manuscript submission, immediate, free online access to published articles, and public sharing of datasets, protocols, code and key lab materials. This article draws on the experience of ASAP to outline the potential costs and barriers associated with implementing open science policies, emphasizing the need for funders to consider these factors when investing in open research.
Fostering a global open research ecosystem via Times Higher Education | 5-minute read
“There remains much work to do to make open science more inclusive,” says Tim Errington (Senior Director of Research at the Center for Open Science [COS]). In this article, Tim considers the progress made by the open science community since COS was founded in 2013. He recognizes that, while open science can make processes more transparent and inclusive, ethics and legality need to be prioritized over openness for openness’ sake.
WithdrarXiv: an analysis of withdrawn preprints via Nature | 2-minute read
WithdrarXiv is a database tracking the 14 000+ preprints – and associated retraction comments – withdrawn from arXiv since the server’s inception in 1991. Through analysis of the dataset, Delip Rao (Research Staff at the University of Pennsylvania) and co-authors have characterized the reasons given for preprint withdrawal. They found that the presence of a ‘factual, methodological or other crucial error’ was the most common reason for withdrawal, followed by ‘incomplete work’ or the preprint being ‘subsumed by another publication’. Read the full article, including recommendations for implementing responsible data release while fostering open science, on arXiv.
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