Explore the impact of UN SDGs on global policy a decade after adoption, highlighting successes and challenges in research and implementation.

Explore the impact of UN SDGs on global policy a decade after adoption, highlighting successes and challenges in research and implementation.

Have the interests of commercial publishers now become antithetical to the pursuit of knowledge?

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This week is COPE's Publication Integrity Week 2025, with five days of online events and activities to highlight issues around publishing integrity. It is COPE’s (the Committee on Publication Ethics) attempt to ensure it addresses current concerns in the scholarly communications community, and each day focuses on a different theme. This year, COPE has identified issues such as DEIA, institutional responsibility, and technological change as just some of the issues to focus on.

I was fortunate to attend the annual Charleston Conference last week, and in addition to the lovely weather and beautiful surroundings of South Carolina in early November, I was able to enjoy a vibrant and serious-minded event against a backdrop of unprecedented challenges. While there was an overall mood of deep concern for librarianship, there was also a resolve to meet the many and varied challenges head-on.

For those of us who have been in scholarly communications for a number of years, one of the most noticeable shifts in the industry has been the use of language and how it has morphed from being almost historical in nature to being at the cutting edge of the ‘tech bro’ vernacular. These days in publishing houses – itself a joyously arcane term these days – one cannot move for agile scrum masters and prompt engineers swarming round their kanban boards.

If journals reject papers due to review shortages, the peer review process itself becomes compromised.

If you are anything like me, you will have been experiencing serious FOMO in the last week as colleagues and acquaintances descended on Frankfurt for the annual publishing social, interrupted intermittently by the Book Fair. From what most LinkedIn posts would have you believe, a good time was had by all, but some of that reporting may be a little OTT.

With more article submissions and fraudulent activity than ever before, journal peer review processes are creaking under the pressure. Nina Notman discovers how AI and automated tools are taking some…

In a major step forward for tracking the real-world impact of research, Altmetric has added a new attention source: Podcasts.

Whatever your political persuasion, in recent times it seems apparent that things are not quite how they should be. Things are never perfect, of course, but no matter your views, there appears to be a groundswell of opinion that things need to change. And with social media turbocharging our keyboard warrior tendencies, we also need to blame somebody for it. 

Happy 50th birthday to ISSN! Yes, this week marks the half-century of ISSN International Centre, the body that manages the identifications of serial publications globally. Originally known as the International Serials Data System (ISDS), it was set up jointly by the UNESCO and France in 1975, and has been based in Paris ever since. The ISSN – or International Standard Serial Number – covers all serials (e.g., journals, newspapers, magazines) and what are known as ‘ongoing integrating resources’ (e.g., websites or databases).

There have been a number of studies in recent years about the awareness of predatory journals among researchers, which have had some troubling findings around perceived knowledge and actual knowledge of their activities. One study, for example, showed that while 87% of respondents to one survey said they were confident in identifying a predatory journal, only 60% could do so when tested.

It’s important for journalists to be aware of predatory journals because such journals pose a threat for the integrity of science journalism.

Today's guest bloggers share analysis on the relationship between impact and policy during Global Goals Week 2025.