London Book Fair 2024: OA and AI

In a survey on the trends of academic publishing conducted in 2023, reflecting on the need to reformulate the current business model was front of mind. The need to optimize operational efficiencies may stem from the increased adoption of open access (OA) policies. For those not in the know, OA is a practice that enables research outputs to be distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers, including the ability for copy or reuse, by applying an open license for copyright. The mandates advocated by the Holdren Memo in the US, the Nelson Memo in the UK, and Plan S for the EU consolidated the view that unrestricted access to research publications is part of an integral right for transparency—we want to view the outcomes of taxpayer-funded research. However, many publishers follow a gold OA model and charge an article processing charge (APC), which is typically paid through institutional or grant funding. This means that readers don't pay, because the author pays to have their publication accessible. This  shines a light on the value of marketing informed by metadata, and demands increased discoverability of content and products.

We don’t exist to make a profit, but without a profit we don’t exist

Nick Lindsay (MIT Press) encouraged us to think about how we might determine success metrics in a diverse environment, and assess the impact of OA policies. Victoria Eva (Elsevier) added that Elsevier is addressing the potential equity issues arising from paid OA through the use of new geographical pricing models. While the US focus on subscriptions, gold OA via transformative agreements remains popular in Europe. Japan has recently announced a new immediate OA policy, and diamond remains the dominant model in Latin America. Moreover, Pooja Aggarwal (Bloomsbury) stressed the importance of addressing the challenges for interdisciplinary areas, by having institutions and libraries collectively make content OA. This involves running workshops, getting feedback, and working with libraries and authors to develop an equitable and sustainable way forward. 

Publishers were concerned about balancing revenue streams in this context, but OA revenues have increased throughout the publishing industry. Patrick Shafe (Deanta) presented a survey explaining that 45% of book publishers are still pressing for the development of an OA books business model, whilst 50% of journal publishers see OA as a sustainable revenue stream. This difference is mirrored by the fact that the recovery in print sales to pre-pandemic levels seen in books was not matched by journals. Nicola Ramsey shared that Edinburgh University Press currently publishes 300 books a year, accounting for 80% of its revenues. The challenge for publishers focused on the arts, humanities, and social sciences is to figure out how to operate at scale while retaining bibliodiversity, since most of this research isn’t externally-funded. Nevertheless, current business models are working, and validating the wave of experimentation the industry is undergoing. Accordingly, most of the investment has been steered towards technology-based production workflows. 

Diversity, equity, inclusivity, accessibility

Lack of transparency is a concern, and there was an ever-present call for credit, consent, and compensation due to the use of copyrighted content used to train large language models (LLMs). The use of artificial intelligence (AI) was analysed from a technical and operational perspective, but conversations surrounding its financial and ethical implications also filled the corridors of Olympia London exhibition centre — the Copyright Clearance Centre had a highly attended session, and the lawsuit between Getty Images and Stability AI was examined. Jim Ramage (Elsevier) emphasised that AI poses challenges in relation to security, privacy, and quality, but has the potential to play a positive role in the recruitment process by taking out bias, helping with onboarding, and using the right language in job adverts to attract a wider variety of people. Christie Henry (Princeton University Press) argued that, ‘We are still looking for an ethical compass to navigate AI', even if excitement for the possibilities of AI use in the industry was apparent. Notwithstanding, AI can be a positive and powerful tool for enhancing efficiency, accuracy, and accessibility in the publishing workflow. Tim Williams (Edward Elgar Publishing) was particularly keen to share his experience of the usefulness of LLMs for keyword extraction, abstract composition, and production of plain language summaries. 

While acknowledging the risks that AI can bring about in terms of integrity, Priya Madina (Taylor and Francis) explored the benefits that AI can provide, which include enabling researchers to focus on substance rather than formatting, particularly those for whom English isn’t a first language. The effectiveness of other AI-based tools used to compile metadata for/from aggregators, indexing purposes, and to predict demand for stock gathered more consensus. The adoption of AI precipitated a growing need to create a more diverse and inclusive research ecosystem, which could lead to sharing best practices, standards, and tools. Accordingly, the industry is poised to hire talent with ever differing expertise, and data analytics/data science experts are on high demand, as exemplified by Thomas Sütterlin (Springer Nature), who divulged that in-house development of applications spans from the provision of personalised recommendations to detecting text and image manipulation, as well as easing the discovery process. 

AI-enabled tools can definitely help publishing, but would they be feasible within the peer review process? More on this during this year's Peer Review Week!