Welcome to 2025!
Learned Publishing is publishing as a fully open access journal now! The current issue, Volume 38, Issue 1, is being released as articles finish with peer review. The special issue will be released in Issue 2 this year.
Here are some highlights from the two recent issue releases:
Volume 37, Issue 4, released in October 2024
To highlight open access offerings provided by Learned Publishing, 12 of the 17 accepted papers have been released as open-access publications!
This issue covers a range of topics, including open access (OA) publishing, research integrity, defining and assisting early career researchers, managing peer review, using artificial intelligence (AI) tools in publishing, and the lingering effects of COVID-19 on academic publishing.
While all of the articles are worth a read, the early career pieces particularly grabbed my attention because of the rich intersectionality of these articles. Most of these are part of the Harbinger of Change project and report on the results.
- Early career researchers in Library and Information Science and Economics: Defining the early career researcher: A study of publication-based definitions
- Early career researchers and the Pandemic: Are early career researchers feeling the consequences of the COVID pandemic?
- Early career researchers and the cost of open access publishing: Purchase and publish: Early career researchers and open access publishing costs
- Early career researchers and the use of AI to enhance productivity: The impact of AI on the post-pandemic generation of early career researchers: What we know or can predict from the published literature
- Early career researchers and the effects of AI on generating more and lower-quality work: The impact of generative AI on the scholarly communications of early career researchers: An international, multi-disciplinary study
Volume 37, Issue S1, the University Press Redux Conference issue, was released in December 2024.
All articles in this issue are available under an open-access license. The theme of the 5th University Press Redux Conference, which took place in May 2024, was “Connecting People and Ideas.”
The most intriguing article is the industry update on sustainability in publishing (Three sustainability case studies in the scholarly publishing ecosystem). The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals have been less discussed than they should be, but as we all feel the effects of climate change, it is worthwhile to consider how we can live closer to a net zero existence. Three publishers–Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis, and the University of Edinburgh Press–have set goals for being net zero publishers.
If you are interested in submitting an article, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I am happy to walk you through the development and submission process and can also help you navigate the new open-access publication charges policies.
Happy New Year!
Michelle Urberg
North American Editor
Learned Publishing
