Small rant. What on earth has happened to #ChatGPT? Conversation with 9 straightforward questions, 8 incorrect & 1 partially correct answer. 7 links to supposedly verified sources (after problems in the previous round of conversation) - all hallucinated. Every conversation I have seems problematic ☹️

Worth spending time with this article from Scott Cunningham: Summary and my thoughts here: substack.com/@pubtechrada... Original article here: substack.com/home/post/p-...

I’m working on a small, experimental tool that creates narrative, multi-signal overviews for scholarly books (citations, usage, attention). Looking for a few (university) presses (and others) to test an MVP and give candid feedback. Open data. No black boxes. DM me. #scholarlypublishing #books

Please fill out my AI usage survey if you work in publishing. Which models are you using? How often? What's delivering value? Takes under 5 minutes. Contributors get early access to results before I share them more widely towards the end of the month: ai-and-me.innovationideas.co.uk

Love this demo of Crixet (now Prism). For all the talk of robotic labs and AI accelerating science, the reality is Victor Powell, the developer, in his kitchen, minding the baby (the high-value work), while talking to an AI tool to handle the writing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce-S...

🚨 New issue of PubTech Radar is out: lnkd.in/eaCsVfja

British Library staff asked for a decent pay. Instead they got ‘a few money-saving present ideas’, such as ‘consider not giving presents this holiday season’. They are on strike this week. I wrote about it for @lrb.co.uk. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

From Pietro Schirano (@skirano) on X writing about Nano Banana Pro: "Here’s my favorite use case so far: take papers or really long articles and turn them into a detailed whiteboard photo." How to video: x.com/skirano/stat...

Google Scholar gets into "AI powered" space Assuming this can use all the full-text they have indexed this might be a game changer. The timing of this release maybe suggests Gemini 3 is being used? scholar.googleblog.com/2025/11/scho... . Apparently some hit a waitlist, I have access though (1)

A new report from Scholastica and Maverick Publishing surveyed 83 small and medium journal publishers from 21 countries about their tech challenges: lp.scholasticahq.com/technology-n... Some stats: * Current AI adoption is limited. Only 8% of publishers are using AI tools extensively.

New interview in the newsletter: Jonathan Woahn on how his startup Cashmere gives publishers control over their content in AI systems. As Jonathan puts it, they provide tools to manage entitlement, security, access, reporting, and turn-key RAG infrastructure. open.substack.com/pub/pubtechr...

Amazed by the volume of last minute submissions... Still a little birdie tells me unofficially the form will be open for a few more days...

I found Musk's discussion of how they’re building Grokipedia interesting in the latest All In podcast: youtu.be/j6_VfR-CyuM. Grok is teaching itself reasoning, then rewriting ~1M Wikipedia pages. The goal: a self-updating, “maximally truth-seeking” AI that fixes errors and filters bias.

Yay, let’s swap bad metrics for more bad metrics! 🤩 And with a twist - as shown by a browser extension. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Join my second run of "AI powered search for libraries: A crash course on understanding fundamentals for library professionals". We have a Fully virtual option: $75 USD or a Hybrid option - first two sessions are online & the third will be face to face in Bangkok for the Charleston Asia Conf (1)

Research output has increased 212% since 2004, but reviewer capacity hasn't kept pace. At the AI Publishing Collective meetup, Chris Leonard, Wiley's Sam Parker and Rebecca Windless, and Digital Science's Leslie McIntosh explored how AI might address this challenge. www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-pee...

Very interested in this and already have my ticket 🎟️. Looking forward to it 🧠🤖: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

📢 A British start-up, Books By People, is introducing an 'Organic Literature' certification to help readers identify books written by humans rather than machines. The first certified title, Telenovela by Gonzalo C Garcia, is due out next month, published by Galley Beggar Press. 🔗 booksbypeople.org

Periodic Labs: A new $300 million seed-backed startup aiming to build “AI scientists” — autonomous systems that hypothesise, run physical experiments, gather data, learn, iterate — especially in the physical sciences. They’re starting with materials/superconductors. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FoW...

📅 How is AI reshaping peer review? Join the AI Publishing Collective, hosted by BCS Women & BCS Publishing, for insights on efficiency, fairness, and research integrity. Speakers: Chris Leonard, Sam Parker, Leslie McIntosh. Mon, September 22, 6 - 8:30pm London 👉 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1642733864...

Maverick’s copywriting services help scholarly publishers use the written word to reach their audience in a variety of ways. Learn more and see examples in our new blog post “Get the Message Out with Maverick’s Copywriting Services” bit.ly/3UZ3NzC

A new post for Maverick’s Insider blog provides complete details of our Interim Placement services, including examples of how we’ve solved staffing challenges for numerous publishers. Read “Solve Staffing Challenges with Interim Support” bit.ly/3JkuBb1

New issue of PubTech Radar Scan: pubtechradar.substack.com/p/pubtech-ra... Covers: Wiley’s journal migration to Research Exchange, Trusted Reviews scraping incident, IOI 2025 report on open infrastructure, call for US adoption of DOIs and ORCIDs, Crossref systems moving to the cloud...

Has anyone launched a Diamond Open Access Journal that is open for humans, but charges fees for AI re-use rights?

Initial thoughts about ChatGPT 5. There is a certain 'shock of the new', it's a bit like getting a new colleague that you need to get to know - some of the shortcuts I used/lazy prompts no longer work. It's very fast - so fast I find myself doubting the responses. Overall experience so far is 👎.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS––Got a #metadata story, case study, or insight to share? Flash talks and posters are part of our Annual Meeting and Board Election. Submit by 20 Sept. All languages welcome! https://bit.ly/Crossref2025-CFA

Tim Vines, founder of @dataseerai.bsky.social, has been thinking about the future of research publishing for some time. His latest idea, what if publishers created AI-optimized versions of research articles and sold them as premium subscriptions?

[Blogged] The AI powered Library Search That Refused to Search - From Clarivate's Summon to Primo Research Assistant, content‑moderation layers meant mostly for chatbots are "quietly" blocking controversial topics from being searched aarontay.substack.com/p/the-ai-pow...

Enjoyed this podcast from @nikeshgo.bsky.social, interviewing Kent Anderson and Joy Moore, co-authors of How the Internet Disrupted Science. Lots I don't agree with but interesting challenges - need to read the book when it comes out. music.youtube.com/watch?v=MrF6...

Fascinating - sources that are ok/not ok to use for third-party RLHF training of Anthropic’s models. More at: www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-su...

Are you ready to grow… but could do with a little help? Let’s talk about how I can support you, whether it’s a short-term project or a longer-term relationship #Growth #Consultancy #Sales #SaaS #PaaS #ScholarlyPublishing #InformationServices

This is a really exciting metadata development. Collaborative stewardship and distributed assertion models are the right way to go and some smart people are working on it.

Gotta love economists. This is from a paper about researcher views on open peer review:

Interesting insight from Dustin Smith @humworks.bsky.social about the need for orchestration infrastructure that connects AI models, prompts, data, and interfaces to allow publishers to harness AI: blog.hum.works/posts/the-al...

Cabells, the US-based academic intelligence firm, has announced the launch of CompassAI, an AI tool to assist researchers in selecting appropriate/avoiding predatory publications: blog.cabells.com/2025/07/23/p...

New issue of Pub Tech Radar Scan: open.substack.com/pub/pubtechr... Lots in this issue, new launches include Sleuth AI, Featured Notebooks in NotebookLM, LLM Citation Verifier, and CC Signals from Creative Commons.

New blog post. How to investigate with Oversight clearskiesadam.medium.com/red-alert-ho...

Things will get really interesting with @cometadata.bsky.social in the mix!

BMJ Best Practice put their tool up against ChatGPT and Grok in real clinical scenarios, and (unsurprisingly) their carefully curated, evidence-based guidance came out well ahead. The AIs sounded convincing, but missed the nuance, depth, and safety insights. 👉 bestpractice.bmj.com/info/us/blog/

Florent Daudens’ latest post on LinkedIn highlights how Google’s NotebookLM partnerships with The Economist, The Atlantic and other premium publishers aren’t just experiments, they’re likely previews of how we’ll engage with information in the years ahead.

Adam Hyde’s gloriously sprawling, passionate love letter to a decade of building open, collaborative publishing tools is well worth a read: www.linkedin.com/pulse/ten-ye...

🧠 Curious how XML automation and AI are reshaping scholarly publishing? Join industry legends at @scholarlypub.bsky.social's free Innovation Showcase on July 24: customer.sspnet.org/Portal/iCore...

Are you a researcher? Are you using any AI tools to process your raw data other than the usual (chatGPT, Gemini, Claude)? If so, what?

My experience is really mixed with ChatGPT o3 & I think it’s getting worse, occasionally I get excellent 100% real references, usually I get a mix of mostly real with a lot of bad links to other papers, sometimes, esp if I ask a source, 100% made up.

Fame at last! Really touched to get a shoutout from @georgewalkley.com during his fantastic talk, AI: Threats and Opportunities for Publishers, at the PLS conference today. Great insights and perspectives. Link to AI in academic publishing case studies list: coda.io/d/AI-Powered...

The web is no longer an open picnic for AI. Cloudflare’s new Pay-Per-Crawl feature lets publishers charge bots per request, dusting off the HTTP 402 code and handing creators more control: blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-...

A phenomenally good round-up, and not just for linking to my recent podcast with @smellinsconsulting.bsky.social 😀

New issue of PubTech Radar: open.substack.com/pub/pubtechr... New launches include Cashmere, Wax, ScholarlyTrendSpotterGPT, Papercheck, Reviewer Three, JSTOR Seeklight, and FAIA.

This is deeply sad news, especially for all the staff who have been immediately laid off. Please get in contact, and we'll all do our best to share your stories and try to help get you placed in a new role. PubPub had many exciting ideas and still... funding. www.knowledgefutures.org/updates/2025...

'AI-generated reviews often suffer from five key weaknesses. They rely on vague...language. They misrepresent the paper’s scope....They flag issues that have already been addressed. They exhibit inconsistent or contradictory logic. And they lack the...nuance of a thoughtful human reviewer.' 1/2