BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!

"Those of us in this nonsensical business have the privilege of helping to amplify the voices of authors from historically marginalized communities, and learn from our authors and colleagues every day." On university press publishing in Canada networks.h-net.org/group/discus...

Cambridge University Press has submitted new consultation responses in EU and India, continuing to push for licensing-based approaches to the use of copyrighted works in training Large Language Models www.researchinformation.info/news/cambrid...

Gen Z students don’t need flashy visuals to keep them engaged. They want clear, effective design, say Svetoslav Georgiev and Joseph Tinsley: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/lets-not-patronise-gen-z-students

"Assetization of academic content (and assetization in HE more broadly) constructs students and staff as a new kind of economic actor – an ‘assetizen’...with diminished educational and social rights as assetization becomes a governance principle in higher education.”

How can trustworthiness of academic research be assessed? Here's a "systems approach that focuses on whether research is accountable, evaluable, well-formulated, has been evaluated, controls for bias, reduces error, and whether the claims are warranted by the evidence." www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

"Investors are questioning whether professional publishers and other makers of industry-specific AI software can compete with tech giants that are increasingly stepping on their toes..." @brieferyet.bsky.social www.ce-strategy.com/the-brief/

Cabells' Predatory Reports database surpasses 20k journals, >300% growth in under a decade blog.cabells.com/2026/02/03/c...

ResearchGate extend partnership with T&F (Informa's academic publishing arm) to flex a "shared commitment to supporting researchers worldwide to find the research they need, and access the journals most relevant and useful to them” newsroom.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/researchgate...

“Gender Studies ... allows people to expand beyond disciplinary bounds ... [like] ... Black, Indigenous, & Middle Eastern studies ... You can refuse to fund and cancel classes ... people will find alternative ways to share and make new knowledge.” www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

I do want to shout-out my fellow sociologists, who have collectively created a discipline so woke that not a single one of our introductory textbooks can make it past Florida's censors. Great work everyone.

Books for Understanding ICE in Minnesota: a curated list of titles to aid in understanding the profound and disturbing events that have so deeply affected our communities. www.upress.umn.edu/books-for-un...

"Relx, which is the 16th largest company in the FTSE 100 index, lost just over £6 billion from its stock market value after Anthropic launched a new AI product that can help automate work for the legal industry." archive.ph/ya78V

Sage unveil new policy impact tool which aims to match researchers with policy engagement opportunities www.sagepub.com/explore-our-...

Vibe sciencing? OpenAI’s latest product embeds ChatGPT in a text editor for writing scientific papers www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/27/1...

Closed shop? arXiv to require first time submitting authors to supply an endorsement from an established arXiv author in their own field www.science.org/content/arti...

The “reproducibility crisis” in science that gained widespread attention in recent decades has been “a little bit exaggerated”, the president of the European Research Council, has suggested www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-worl...

“How can you have a city without a university?” he asks. “It’s shocking.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

WW Norton & Company aquire Thames & Hudson’s college on art appreciation, archaeology, etc www.thebookseller.com/news/thames-...

personally I think we should all take another, much closer look at every single scientist who benefited from epstein money :)

“From banning Plato in one class to culling materials related to race and gender from syllabi, and now ending a well-established interdisciplinary program, TAMU is staking out turf as the epicenter of higher education censorship nationwide,” www.insidehighered.com/news/busines...

"That’s why I tell people in universities: Don’t work on LLMs. There is no point. You’re not going to be able to rival what’s going on in industry. Work on something else. Invent new techniques. The breakthroughs are not going to come from scaling up LLMs." www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/22/1...

🎵 there's a hole in your buckets, dear UKRI, dear UKRI...🎵 https://share.google/BzalEk3FfdbY18kgS

Unmissably good review essay. A pull quote in every paragraph. "AI is less a 'revolution' than a smoothing agent for incumbent powers."

"At this precise time it feels crucial to re-state our responsibility as leaders to create a publishing industry that supports inclusion in all its forms." @publishersassoc.bsky.social launch inclusion pledge with >40 signatories https://share.google/dPxVeCYM7AG8dNnhc

No surprise here www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

So long, and thanks for all the...

And another three opt out of Elsevier www.timeshighereducation.com/news/three-m...

Academic book publishing: the more the book costs, the less proof-reading it has received

"Although ed-tech companies tout huge learning gains, independent research has made clear that technology rarely boosts learning in schools—and often impairs it ... “Imagine if all that money had gone into teachers instead.” archive.ph/https://econ...

Academic Publishing is "not at the end of its economic arc; it is in the turbulent middle of a reallocation." scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/01/29/g...

Academic Publishing: where is the growth coming from (apart from China)? An answer hums out via an AI software developer and you'll never guess what it is! blog.hum.works/posts/where-...

Three UK Universities (two of which are undergoing significant organisational change to control costs) opt out of Elsevier deal. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/three-m...

GetFTR (Get Full Text Research) launch new tool that "allows AI-powered research tools and agents to check content entitlements [rights]" www.getfulltextresearch.com/getftr-enabl...

Editorial Bullying: "a critical but often under-discussed threat to research integrity" www.frontiersin.org/journals/res...

Bloomsbury Academic to open new office in Singapore https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/connect/latest-news/bloomsbury-announces-new-office-in-singapore/

London Book Fair to move East www.thebookseller.com/news/the-lon...

"Top UK universities increase their reliance on China for overseas recruitment: Data shows that two in five overseas [NB OVERSEAS] students at Russell Group institutions last year were from China" (though that figure hides considerable variation!) www.ft.com/content/9db6...

Demographics - increasing number of 18 year olds in the UK (those born before the austerity era?)

Frankfurt Book Fair: meet the new boss https://www.thebookseller.com/news/joachim-kaufmann-to-succeed-juergen-boos-as-president-and-ceo-of-frankfurter-buchmesse

imagine if all that money had gone to teachers instead

"It is estimated that tens of millions of students have benefited from essays written by ghost writers or ‘shadow scholars,’ many of whom live in Kenya as highly educated but underemployed workers." blog.cabells.com/2026/01/21/g...

"Research Leaders" survey: 53% think funding for leading projects in their field is decreasing www.nature.com/articles/d41...

New study will "explore the implications of zero‑click search, not only to publisher traffic and business models, but also to research integrity and trust in the scholarly record." www.researchinformation.info/news/five-pu...

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced $75.1 million for >80 humanities projects across the US www.neh.gov/news/neh-ann...

"In that [AI] world, the question for reviewers and editors is less 'is this right?' and more 'why does this matter?'" @seva.bsky.social https://open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/p/the-age-of-academic-slop-is-upon

Two huge book publishers - Hachette and Cengage - have moved to join authors & illustrators in suing Google for allegedly using their work to train AI models. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... 🧵 1/3

MDPI launch‘freemium’ pricing model www.researchinformation.info/news/mdpi-la...

On academia’s “faltering" correction machinery in commercial environments which reward novelty over accuracy." The proposed solution? "Open correction platforms" @douglasnetherlands.bsky.social theconversation.com/when-science...