News & Views: Connecting the Metadata Dots

Dan Pollock and Ann Michael • September 21, 2021

Connecting the Metadata Dots: An Hypothesis, A Method, and a Peer Review Walk into a Pub…

By Heather Staines


Background


A new platform called Octopus has been in the news lately, as it was referenced in a recent UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) policy statement. Octopus defines eight types of content objects that might be added throughout the stages of the research and publication process, including an hypothesis, a method, data, an analysis or a peer review. The conversation has turned around whether such a new platform with (so far) limited funding can change the way scholarly communications happens.


Indeed, many elements of the Octopus platform have already been with us for some time, perhaps not all collected centrally on one service. The conversation got me thinking again about the variety of content types and versions that make up our scholarly communications ecosystem and what will be necessary to help researchers utilize them effectively.


Getting smaller: Micropublications


One aspect of Octopus is the notion that a researcher would post several micropublications throughout their research process. Micropublications are hardly new. On Micropublication.org you can see peer reviewed micropublications that include brief results, novel findings, negative or reproduced results, and those that may lack a broader narrative. Each has a DOI, is indexed, and is often deposited in referential databases such as: Wormbase, Flybase, Xenbase, Arabidopsis Information Resource, and more. Researchers can build upon their existing publications, and others can benefit from this data also.

Registered Reports are another form of micropublication, which puts the emphasis on the research question and quality of methodology. Peer review is done even before data is collected. Authors who follow the methodology that they have registered can be routed through a publication workflow when their research is complete. Registered Reports might not be so “micro” but they are indicative of a preliminary research stage. Versions of publications, such as those that result from updates posted to preprint servers, for example, represent a later stage.


Search and you will find (hopefully!) Metadata Connections


As an author, my work sits on online publisher platforms, the open web, in institutional repositories, to name a few places. Related content like reviews, annotations, media mentions, articles citing my work, and resources I have cited exist in still other places. A journal article might live on SpringerLink, in PubMed, Ovid, JSTOR, or EBSCOhost. An ebook might be published on some combination of Project Muse, Knowledge Unlatched, Open Library of the Humanities, or PubPub. Standards and best practices around metadata and identifiers help us parse these versions, but they may not help us understand how each connects to the related-objects that we might also benefit from exploring.


To make this distributed ecosystem function in a way that is useful to researchers, connections between items need to be categorized and machine-readable. A few years ago, Crossref introduced DOIs specifically for application to units of publication smaller than articles or book chapters, such as peer reviews and annotations. The metadata schema provides for asserting the connection between the peer review and the item being reviewed. While the schema isn’t perfect, data show nearly 200,000 deposits for “peer reviews.” Crossref also released a tool called Event Data, where activities connected to content with DOIs can be deposited. This tool tracks annotations, for example, on content that has a DOI. It also notes annotations which contain reference to other content items with DOIs, effectively linking the items together.


An interesting place to look at how these connections are evolving is the open source platform PubPub maintained by my former employer the Knowledge Futures Group, which introduced the concept of Linked Pubs (chapter, article, or other unit of content) about a year ago. Creators can use the Crossref relationship schema to assert different relationships between Pubs on the platform and content elsewhere on the web. As of this writing, there are 1,884 Linked Pubs in 56 different communities (or groupings of collaborative activity). Review and supplement are the most used types, at 28% and 25%, respectively. Version is next at about 19%, with a more or less even distribution between other types (mostly commentary/reply/etc.) after that. Interestingly, there's a good balance between people linking to other Pubs vs. content that lives elsewhere on the web, with about 40% linking to other Pubs, and 60% external content. You can check out these examples: RTI Press uses Version to create multimedia iterations of previously published content, and Fermentology utilizes Supplemental to add materials for courses.


Resource Description


Crossref Relationship Schema 

Documents relationships between different research objects


DocMaps 

Provides machine-readable data and context about how community groups and peer review platforms are evaluating preprints to facilitate the exchange, aggregation and publishing of peer reviews within a distributed, interoperable infrastructure


NISO Access and License Indicators (ALI) 

A project to add metadata and indicators that would allow metadata users, such as content platforms, to filter or target subsets of license information


NISO Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) 

A technical recommendation for data exchange including data formats, method of delivery, usage reporting, frequency of updates and rights of use


NISO ResourceSync 

Researches, develops, prototypes, tests, and deploys mechanisms for the large-scale synchronization of web resources


Publishing Status Ontology 

An ontology designed to characterize the publication status of documents at each stage of the publishing process (draft, submitted, under review, etc.)


Publishing Workflow Ontology 

A simple ontology for describing the steps in the workflow associated with the publication of a document or other publication entity


Peer review in the wild: Annotations, blog posts, curated feeds, and overlay journals


With new flavors of open peer review, small publications of this type are growing. Peer review now takes place in a variety of settings and the resulting reviews may not be hosted alongside the content itself. Overlay journals such as Rapid Reviews: Covid 19 and Current Cities publish reviews about content hosted elsewhere, on a preprint server, for example.

Less formal versions of an overlay model include blogs such as PreLights from the Company of Biologists. In this project early career researchers write reviews to highlight preprints that interest them. This gives them experience in both reviewing and in blogging, and, more than half of the time, the preprint author ends up corresponding with them around their feedback. PreLights data shows that 93% of these preprints are published in a journal within two years.


But how can we pull all of this activity together in a useful way? Sciety is a new project from eLife which connects communities evaluating preprints, curating the resulting reviews, and facilitating discovery through social media. This effort seeks to move the review and curation process to the post-publication space. Sciety works with existing reviewer communities and inspires the creation of new ones. Such reviewer feedback can be connected back to the publication space to close the loop. bioRxiv has introduced a dashboard feature that pulls in such reviews from the community and also from publisher initiatives to make them discoverable.


Where do we go from here?


A few years back a publisher friend on his way to a Crossref DOI committee meeting opined: “What is a publisher to do to manage DOIs now that content is hosted in so many different places?” To me the answer was clear. The beauty of it, my friend, is that the publisher no longer has to manage it. But don’t get me wrong, there is still a role for publishers (and librarians and researchers) to play as trusted third parties in asserting relationships between digital objects: this article is the same as this document; this dataset is related to this experiment; this review is connected to this book chapter; this is a later version of that.


Much work still needs to be done, around the creation of metadata useful for discovery and classification, search interfaces optimized to make it clear to the user which types of things their search results contain, as well as how they connect to one another.


In addition to Crossref initiatives, NISO has a number of projects that may be useful, including the Open Discovery Initiative (ODI), Access and License Indicators (ALI), and ResourceSync to help with versioning. A project called DocMaps, a collaboration between Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), eLife/Sciety, EMBO, and the Knowledge Futures Group, uses as a framework a “set of agreed-upon conventions for aligning editorial processes with the Publishing Status Ontology (PSO) and the Publishing Workflow Ontology (PWO) and for expressing these events in a domain-specific language that can be easily interpreted by machines and humans alike.”


We’re still at the beginning of this new journey, but I look forward to seeing where we go.


This article is © 2021 Delta Think, Inc. It is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Please do get in touch if you want to use it in other contexts – we’re usually pretty accommodating.


TOP HEADLINES


EUt+ alliance and OpenAIRE join forces for open science – September 8, 2021

"The OpenAIRE-Nexus consortium and the European University of Technology (EUt+), have announced a new cooperation agreement to improve the integration and discoverability of research results, to showcase the synergies and connections and aggregate the work from all partners across this pan-European network of Universities."


New report confirms positive momentum for EU open science – September 6, 2021

"The Commission released the results and datasets of a study monitoring the open access mandate in Horizon 2020. With a steadily increase over the years and an average success rate of 83% open access to scientific publications, the European Commission is at the forefront of research and innovation funders concluded the consortium formed by the analysis company PPMI (Lithuania), research and innovation centre Athena (Greece) and Maastricht University (the Netherlands)."


cOAlition S statement on Open Access for academic books – September 2, 2021

"cOAlition S recognizes that academic book publishing is very different from journal publishing. Our commitment is to make progress towards full open access for academic books as soon as possible, in the understanding that standards and funding models may need more time to develop. Rather than to decree a uniform policy on OA books, we have therefore decided to formulate a set of recommendations regarding academic books – in line with Plan S principles – that all cOAlition S organisations will seek to adopt within their own remits and jurisdictions."


Karger Publishers Advances Open Access with Plan S Aligned Transformative Journals – August 25, 2021

"Karger Publishers is adopting the Plan S-aligned ‘Transformative Journal’ model for a growing number of journals, acting on its commitment to accelerate the transition to Open Access (OA). Seven Karger Publishers journals have committed to the Transformative Journals model so far."


SCOSS Campaign: DOAB/OAPEN reaches important funding milestone – August 17, 2021

"The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and OAPEN, jointly part of SCOSS’s second funding cycle, has met a significant milestone by reaching its three-year funding goal of 505,000 Euros in about 18 months, despite the COVID-19 challenge."


OA JOURNAL LAUNCHES


September 1, 2021

AAS Journals Will Switch to Open Access 

"The American Astronomical Society (AAS), a leading nonprofit professional association for astronomers, announced the switch of its prestigious journals to fully open access (OA) as of 1 January 2022. Under this change, all articles in the AAS journal portfolio will be immediately open for anyone to freely read."


August 23, 2021

RSC New Journal Launch: Energy Advances

RSC's "new Gold Open Access journal Energy Advances focuses on energy science, and in particular the interdisciplinarity required for exciting breakthroughs in the field. Energy Advances welcomes research from any related discipline including materials science, engineering, technology, biosciences and chemistry."

 

Analysis Is Underway: A First Look at our Second Author–Researcher Survey

By Lori Carlin & Bonnie Gruber • January 29, 2026
Building on last Spring’s survey of authors and researchers, we are once again analyzing responses from a large, global community to understand how shifts in the funding and policy environment are affecting research activity, priorities, and outlook. Conducted in partnership with 32 organizations, the Second edition of our Author–Researcher Survey was designed explicitly as a continuation of the work conducted in Spring 2025, allowing us to again take the pulse of authors-researchers, track emerging trends, and identify early signals related to real and perceived changes in U.S. science policy and research funding. With 12,122 completed responses from researchers in 125 countries , the Second survey again provides a robust and diverse dataset. Analysis is ongoing and the high-level structure of the respondent pool is already clear, closely mirroring, while subtly extending, what we observed in the Spring of 2025. A Global Community, with the U.S. at the Center of the Conversation The most recent respondent pool again reflects a truly global research community. Just over half of respondents are based in the United States, with others reporting from a broad range of countries worldwide. This near-even U.S./international split remains one of the defining features of the dataset and is particularly important given the survey’s focus on U.S. policy and funding dynamics. The results continue to underscore that changes originating in the U.S. research system are global in scope, closely watched and widely felt well beyond national borders. Science-Heavy Participation Anchored in Physical, Life, and Health Research Physical sciences represent the largest single area of engagement, alongside strong representation from the life sciences, health sciences, and engineering and technology. Social sciences and the arts and humanities account for a smaller share of responses, and as in prior responses, many participants report working across multiple fields. This pattern reflects both the interdisciplinary reality of modern research and the continuity needed to support meaningful year-over-year analysis. Insights Shaped Largely by Mid- and Senior-Career Researchers Mid- and senior-career respondents make up the majority of the sample, complemented by a substantial cohort of early-career researchers and representation from graduate and doctoral trainees. This reinforces that much of the insight emerging from the survey reflects the perspectives of researchers with long-term experience navigating funding cycles, institutional change, and strategic research planning. That experience is also evident in respondents’ professional roles. Faculty members and principal investigators account for the largest share of participants, alongside researchers, analysts, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students. Clinically active professionals—including physicians and other healthcare providers—are also represented. The overall role mix remains highly consistent as compared to the Spring group, strengthening confidence that shifts observed in attitudes or behavior are not driven by changes in who is responding. Why This Continuity Matters One of the most important features of this current dataset is how closely its underlying demographic structure aligns with the Spring survey results. This consistency strengthens our ability to interpret changes in sentiment, expectations, and reported actions as genuine signals rather than artifacts of sampling. The scale and international reach of the most recent responses allow us to surface new nuances, particularly around how researchers are adapting to evolving policy signals, funding uncertainty, and institutional responses. What Comes Next We are digging into the full results to explore how researchers’ outlooks have evolved, including: Whether perceptions of funding stability and risk are shifting How researchers are adjusting research scope, timelines, or collaboration strategies Persistent signals related to mobility, field-level vulnerability, and longer-term confidence in the research enterprise Decisions about research funding, policy, and scholarly communication increasingly require evidence, not assumptions. Delta Think’s research process is designed to provide the scholarly communication community with the rigor, scale, and transparency needed to build sustainable strategies in an uncertain environment. From survey design through analysis and reporting, our approach emphasizes methodological consistency, careful segmentation, and openness about what the data can support. By maintaining continuity year over year, we aim to surface credible trendlines that stakeholders across the research ecosystem can trust. The Delta Think team designed this initiative to gather data and to support our partners across the scholarly ecosystem. By combining rigorous research design with deep industry context, we help publishers, societies, and institutions make informed, strategic decisions during periods of significant change. If you’re interested in learning more about the findings or discussing how they apply to your organization, we’d welcome the conversation. Please email Lori Carlin to get started.

News & Views: How Open Is “Open”? What OASPA’s License Data Reveals About the OA Market

By Dan Pollock & Heather Staines • January 13, 2026
Overview This month we look at the changing mix of licenses in use among OASPA members and what these trends reveal for open access publishing more broadly. Introduction Each year OASPA surveys its member organizations to gather information about the volumes of output they publish in their fully OA and hybrid journals. These data provide a useful lens on how the most OA-committed publishers are approaching licensing and how that compares with the market as a whole. We’re delighted to be working with OASPA on its survey again this year. We process the raw data into consistent categories, normalize publisher names, and create visualizations of the data over time. We also produce a yearly blog post in cooperation with OASPA, outlining some of their results. Because space constraints limit what can be covered in OASPA’s own post, we explore additional angles here, placing OASPA member behavior in the context of Delta Think’s wider, market-level analysis. Subscribers to our Data and Analytics Tool can investigate the data further still. Our work with OASPA provides a complementary view into our market-wide analysis. Use of Licenses We can examine which common open access licenses are in use, as follows. 

Impelsys and Delta Think Join Forces to Expand Strategy and Technology Capabilities

By Lori Carlin • December 4, 2025
Impelsys and Delta Think Join Forces to Expand Strategy and Technology Capabilities for Publishing, Scholarly Communications, Education, and Healthcare Communities

News & Views: Market Sizing Supplement 2025 – Your Mileage May Vary

By Dan Pollock and Heather Staines • December 2, 2025
Overview Each year, our scholarly market sizing update and analysis goes way beyond open access headlines. One consistent finding is that market share of open and subscription access is highly dependent on subject area. This month we look at how to best use our Delta Think Data and Analytics Tool (DAT) to understand and analyze these variations. With coverage of approximately 220 detailed subject areas, the data shows that headlines can sometimes mask important detail. Background Since we began our scholarly journal market analyses in 2017, one of our core objectives has been to enable deep analysis of our headline findings. Our annual market share updates represent a summing of data – more than 200 detailed subject areas, 200 or so countries, also split by society vs. non-society journal ownership. This level of detail is clearly too much for our monthly short-form analyses, so we present the market-wide headlines in our annual updates. However, by picking one subject area as an example, we can see how much nuance lies beneath the surface, and why these variations matter. Subscribers to DAT can use our interactive tools to quickly and easily see each level of detail and filter for just those relevant to their organization. Market Share Variation by Subject Area Our latest market headlines suggested that open access (OA) accounted for just under 50% of article output in 2024. However, this headline proportion varies considerably by subject area.

Charleston Conference 2025 Reflections

By Lori Carlin & Meg White • November 19, 2025
Navigating Uncertainty, Innovation, and the Winds of Change As the Charleston Conference 2025 wrapped up, one thing was clear: scholarly communication continues to evolve against a backdrop of uncertainty: economic, technological, and policy-driven. Yet amid the turbulence, conversations throughout the week pointed toward resilience, adaptability, and even optimism. As Tony Hobbs observed during the Shifting Tides policy session, “the good news for scholarly communication is that due to technology advances, it is now possible to sail into the wind.” The Elephant in the Room: Doing More with Less Heather Staines Every conversation I had in Charleston seemed to circle back to one thing: budgetary uncertainty. Whether the concern was policy changes like potential caps on overhead or shifting grant funding or the ripple effects of declining enrollment, both domestic and international, everyone was asking how to do more with fewer resources. This theme ran through the plenary Leading in a Time of Crisis, Reclaiming the Library Narrative, and even the lightning sessions, a shared recognition that we’re all trying to redefine what “enough” looks like. What stood out was how data-driven decision-making has become essential. Libraries, publishers, and service providers are not just analyzing what to add, but what to let go of, all in an effort to find a new balance. And then there’s AI. We have moved beyond “sessions about AI” to “AI everywhere.” I will admit that I once thought AI was a solution in search of a problem, but now it’s woven through nearly every conversation. Librarians are leading the way on AI literacy, while publishers and service providers are using AI to innovate to meet changing research needs. The uncertainty is real but so is the shared determination to adapt, learn, and move forward together. The Long Arm of the Law and Its Reach into Scholarly Communication Meg White One of the things I love about Charleston is that there is always a moment that challenges me to reframe how I think about the work we do. This year’s Long Arm of the Law session did exactly that. It was a vivid reminder that the legal and policy currents swirling around us are not abstractions; they shape our ecosystem in ways we can’t afford to ignore. Paul Rosenzweig set the stage with a fascinating and lively walk through the history of executive orders. Hearing that Washington issued just eight while later presidents relied on them more frequently primarily to advance political agendas made the evolution very real. What stood out was the fine line between legitimate executive authority and overreach, and how easily those boundaries can blur. Nancy Weiss then brought the conversation directly into our lane with her analysis of an Executive Order directing the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to reduce its activities to the bare legal minimum. Her experience as former General Counsel gave us an inside view of what such a directive could mean for libraries, museums, and cultural programs, all places where so much of our community’s work takes root. Sessions like this are why Charleston continues to be invaluable to me. They stretch my understanding, give me new context, and remind me that staying informed is part of how we navigate change together. Data-Driven Insights: The 2025 Author and Researcher Survey Lori Carlin My week was cut unusually short (for me) by other meetings I had to fly off to, but I still managed to squeeze in 2.5 days of interesting sessions, discussions, and ‘business casual’ gatherings. The first two events I attended this year were definite highlights, both of which were the brainchild of and brilliantly orchestrated by my colleague, Heather Staines – the Vendor Meetup on Monday evening and the Leadership Breakfast on Tuesday morning. Both were jam packed and filled with lively conversation. If you’re not familiar, the Vendor Meetup is an open, casual gathering (sponsored this year by Get FTR) designed to give vendor representatives, especially early career attendees, who attend only for Vendor Day a chance to socialize and network, something they often miss when they’re in and out in a single day, but all are welcome to attend! The Leadership Breakfast, a smaller invitation-only event designed to give a more intimate networking experience within the larger Charleston Conference, is always a thoughtful session centered on a pressing issue of the day, and this year was no exception. The discussion focused on sustainability across the entire scholarly communication ecosystem—from funders to libraries to publishers. Frankly, no one can unhear the words of one of the panelists (a library director) when he commented that his budget has dropped from ~$7M to ~$5.4M in the last 24 months … with more to come. Finally, I’m a little biased, but I dare say I and my panelists were very pleased with the session I moderated focused on the impact of US research funding changes, which highlighted info from Delta Think’s Spring 2025 Author and Researcher Survey, along with how publishers who participated used the data to inform their strategies. We also had a librarian on the panel who informed the audience about the impact of these changes on universities overall and libraries in particular. As you may know, the survey data showed rising concern about institutional support, with many researchers rethinking how they publish and participate in conferences. Respondents also described how tightening budgets are straining peer review and research dissemination, while responses varied sharply between U.S.-based and international authors, reflecting distinct policy and institutional pressures, it also showed that the impact is being felt globally. In the tradition of Charleston, what made the session so powerful was the discussion. Colleagues from societies, publishers, and libraries focused on how they are using these insights to understand the challenges and to act on them. From adjusting publishing strategies to helping researchers to growing relationships in other markets, to shaping advocacy and outreach activities, organizations are using these insights to inform resource and budget direction in innovative ways. For me, that was the real takeaway: turning evidence into collaboration, and progress. Even in uncertain times. We’re running the survey again now with plans to compare results to the Spring version. If you’re interested, there is still time to sign up! End of An Era (Two, in Fact!) This year’s conference marked a pivotal moment: the first without the in-person presence of founder, Katina Strauch (though we were grateful for her virtual participation), and the well-earned retirement of longtime Conference Director Anthony Watkinson, who rang his iconic bell one last time. We would not be here without them and their visionary colleagues who built this community from the ground up. Thank you, Katina and Anthony. Charting What Comes Next If there was one metaphor that captured Charleston 2025, it was motion; not adrift, but deliberate progress in the face of resistance. From policy updates to AI integration to the enduring strength of the scholarly community, the week’s sessions affirmed that innovation often takes root during uncertainty. As Tony Hobbs reminded us, even headwinds can propel us forward — if we learn how to adjust our sails.

News & Views Webinar: Market Sizing Update 2025

By Heather Staines • November 6, 2025
We are proud to share a video recording of our October News & Views companion online discussion forum! Join us for our annual update on the volume and revenue associated with Open Access publishing. If you missed the session, or if you attended and would like to watch/listen again, or share forward with friends, please feel free!

News & Views: Market Sizing Update 2025 – Has OA recovered its mojo?

By Dan Pollock and Heather Staines • October 21, 2025
Overview After a rocky couple of years, the open access (OA) market may be finding its footing again. Each year, Delta Think's Market Sizing analyzes the value of the OA scholarly journals market—that is, the revenue generated by providers or the costs incurred by buyers of content. Our analysis estimates that the OA segment expanded to just under $2.4bn in 2024. Although growth has improved compared with last year’s deceleration, it continues to lag behind the broader historical trend for OA. The proportion of articles published as OA has declined slightly, likely driven by continued reduction in the output from the large OA publishers. This trend has benefited established publishers, who saw growth in OA activity and revenue as they continued to consolidate their positions. Looking ahead, OA could soon begin outpacing the broader journals market once again—but likely through different growth drivers than in the past. Read on to see what those shifts might look like. Headline findings Our models suggest the following headlines for the 2024 open access market:

Join the Fall 2025 Author/Researcher Survey

By Lori Carlin & Meg White • October 13, 2025
Collaborate with Delta Think to uncover how funding and policy uncertainty continue to reshape the research ecosystem — and gain tailored insights for your community.

Smart AI, Smarter Scholarship

By Lori Carlin & Meg White • September 25, 2025
Introduction: One question, two paths  A recent essay in The Conversation posed the question, “Is ChatGPT making us stupid?” The author examined emerging research suggesting that over-reliance on AI tools for writing can dull critical thinking, originality, and even memory retention. But as the author points out, AI has the potential to augment human intelligence when used well , acting as a catalyst for deeper thinking rather than a shortcut around it. We agree and seek to guide our clients in determining how to use AI to strengthen research and scholarship. From concern to opportunity When AI is approached as a collaborator, it sparks creativity, deepens inquiry, accelerates problem-solving, and amplifies creativity. It can strengthen teams, enhance services, and improve efficiencies across the publishing enterprise. Turning Ideas into Action Here’s how Delta Think can help you transform smart AI potential into purposeful, strategic action: Strategy and Market Research Focus: Identify where AI can deliver the most value for your organization, grounded in community needs and behaviors. Delta Think Approach: Gather and analyze evidence through quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover how your community – your researchers, authors, reviewers, and readers – are using AI now or, better yet, where and how they could be using it in the future. Marrying their unmet needs with your strategic goals creates your roadmap to future success. 2. Build vs. Buy Decisions for AI-Powered Products Focus: Develop proprietary AI solutions, partner with trusted vendors, or combine the best of both approaches to suit your needs. Delta Think Approach: Assess your current state and future needs, design decision frameworks that weigh cost, capability, risk, speed-to-market, and long-term scalability, and build the approach that will work best to support your business goals and community needs. 3. AI Policy and Governance Focus: Ensure responsible, transparent, and ethical AI use that safeguards scholarly integrity. Delta Think Approach: Facilitate the development of your AI governance with the creation of important guardrails and policies, working to mitigate bias and hallucination risks, safeguarding research integrity while enabling innovation. 4. UX/UI Testing for AI Products and Features Focus: Design AI experiences that enhance human engagement. Delta Think Approach: Test results, interfaces, prompts, and transparency signals to keep users informed, empowered, and confident in your products and tools. 5. Licensing and Partnership Strategy Focus: Leverage commercial arrangements to unlock AI potential while aligning with your mission and values. Delta Think Approach: Guide you through licensing agreements, proprietary data partnerships, and collaborations that create sustainable competitive advantage and strategic revenue streams. Turning Ideas into Impact By reframing the conversation from Can AI substitute scholarship? to How does AI amplify scholarship? , publishers can lead the next wave of innovation. Delta Think’s collaborative approach ensures that your organization’s adoption of AI enhances creativity, critical thinking, and trust. We can help you map out your bespoke AI-strategy roadmap, develop new products and services, test prototypes, and design governance guidelines. Reach out today or schedule some time at the Frankfurt Book Fair (10/14-16) to discuss how Delta Think’s expertise and proven methodologies can help your organization unlock key insights and drive innovation.

News & Views: How much will cuts to NSF funding affect the future of scholarly publishing?

By Dan Pollock and Heather Staines • September 9, 2025
How might planned cuts to funding of the US National Science Foundation affect scholarly output? In our last News & Views we analyzed how the headline cuts might apply to relevant activities. This month we examine how journals may be impacted and model some scenarios quantifying the impact on global scholarly output. Background The US National Science Foundation is an independent US federal agency that supports science and engineering across the US and its territories. In its 2024 financial year (FY) 1 , it spent around $9.4 billion, funding approximately 25% of all federally supported research conducted by US colleges and universities. In July we looked at how reported funding cuts and NSF budget cuts proposed by the US Government might affect the NSF’s output of research papers. We found that in the near term the effects would be limited, as the cuts focus on NSF activites that produce low volumes of papers. However, cuts proposed over the coming year may have a more profound effect as they are deep and affect research activities. We have also previously analyzed proposed cuts to funding of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). We noted how cuts to the world’s largest producer of biomedical research could have a profound effect on publication outputs. So how do cuts to the NSF stack up? The effects on journals As ever, the headlines and averages are unevenly distributed, so we looked at how individual journals might be affected.