The Predatory Paradox: Ethics, Politics, and Practices in Contemporary Scholarly Publishing (2023) challenges readers to see predatory publishing not as an aberration but as a symptom of the scholarly communication system itself. Six Texas Tech scholars draw on paradox theory to argue that the same pressures driving innovation—institutional demands for productivity, technological change, and impact metrics—also create conditions for exploitation. Weaving together theoretical critique and qualitative research, the book's accessible interdisciplinary approach makes complex issues comprehensible to early-career researchers while offering veteran scholars, librarians, and administrators fresh perspectives on familiar problems. Each chapter includes discussion questions and activities, and the authors make their research data publicly available through the Texas Data Repository. Authors deliberately complicate rather than resolve. Future editions would benefit from voices beyond STEM and communication studies, particularly from scholars working in non-Western publishing contexts. Still, for anyone seeking to understand why predatory publishing persists despite decades of concern, this book offers essential—if unsettling—insights.
Introduction: This article describes a collaboration to deliver institutional repository (IR) services and library outreach to faculty participants of a professional development initiative at the City University of New York (CUNY). CUNY Office of Library Services (OLS) experimented with a Python script containing an artificial intelligence–assisted tool to enhance a workflow for assessing journal publishers’self-archiving policies ahead of depositing articles into CUNY Academic Works, the University-wide IR. The script generated data that revealed publishing patterns of CUNY faculty in the Faculty Fellowship Publication Program (FFPP). Interpretation of this data identified articles to deposit, informed library outreach, and surfaced points of friction between faculty, institutional, and library priorities. Description of Service: A Python script harnessed a Gemini Artificial Intelligence (AI) model to identify journals in a list of FFPP publications and achievements, then retrieved data on applicable repository selfarchiving policies via the SHERPA/RoMEO API. The AI tool performed well in recognizing journals and helped structure data, though outputs required manual intervention. Results showed that FFPP participants often published in journals that permitted green open access (OA), yet rarely deposited scholarship in CUNY Academic Works despite its potential benefits. Though the institutional repository (IR) can increase research impact, researcher profiles, institutional reputation, and public access to scholarship, the data illuminated possible tensions between these goals and associated stakeholders. Next Steps: Librarians should address FFPP participant needs through specialized research impact and IR services. These entities should ultimately advocate for the disturbance of traditional academic reward structures to achieve alignment and a shared understanding of CUNY Academic Works.
Introduction: Green Open Access requires authors to submit appropriate versions of journal articles to a repository; the challenge for researchers is to remember to perform this task after the primary work of the publication process is done. This case study at Brock University Library shows how it is possible to bootstrap these types of submissions by crafting meaningful publishing narratives through a collection of clever Open Access Week initiatives. Literature Review: The literature review assesses the existing scholarly material on Open Access outreach efforts and touches on Open Access in the Canadian context. It explores the dynamics of self-archiving with Green Open Access and the use of institutional repositories. The existing literature on wielding open data as a tool to serve libraries is discussed, and the potential of these tools to support librarian advocacy work is examined. Description of Program and Benefits: By using a collection of Open Access scholarly publishing web services and APIs, two outreach campaigns were conducted by Brock University Library during Open Access Week 2025. The first was a State of Scholarly Publishing Report that showed broad trends in output from the organization, and the second was a Green Open Access Call to Action that prompted researchers to submit recently published eligible papers to the repository. Conclusion: There was enough enthusiasm generated from these two projects that the Brock University Library will continue to run these campaigns in subsequent Open Access Weeks. The publishing report was engaging and was included in many different venues on campus, while the Green Open Access Call to Action resulted in submissions from 37% of contacted authors.
Introduction: The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has a significant impact on scientific publishing and librarianship. This study explores the citation impact and thematic patterns of AI-related research in scientific publishing through four objectives: (1) to analyze bibliometric characteristics; (2) to evaluate citation performance using normalized metrics; (3) to identify major thematic trends; and (4) to review AI-related publications that specifically address librarianship and examine their implications for library practices. Methods: A bibliometric analysis was conducted on 295 AI-related publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection. Citation performance was assessed using two field-normalized metrics from Clarivate’s InCites platform: the Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) and the Journal Normalized Citation Impact (JNCI). To determine whether the median CNCI and JNCI values differed significantly from the category and journal benchmarks, a one-sample Wilcoxon signed-rank test was performed. Sub-themes within AI-related research were identified through thematic analysis. Additionally, to highlight important themes and professional implications, publications that specifically mention libraries, librarians, or librarianship were reviewed. Results: The median CNCI was 2.7, and the median JNCI was 2.2, both significantly above the benchmark of 1.0 (P < .001). This indicates that AI-related research in scientific publishing receives significantly more citations than comparable publications within the same subject areas and journals. Seven sub-themes were identified, all showing above-average citation impact. Among these, themes focused on frameworks, policies, and ethical guidelines for AI integration achieved the highest normalized citation scores. Additionally, four publications focusing specifically on librarianship explored how AI intersects with open access and scholarly communication, ethics and governance, professional training, the development of machine-readable collections, and the integration of AI technologies into library services. Discussion: These findings suggest that AI-related research has rapidly emerged as a highly influential area within scientific publishing. The variety of themes demonstrates the broad impact of AI technologies on scientific publishing. Conclusion: Research on AI in scientific publishing is a rapidly growing and dynamic area, notable for its high citation impact, broad thematic scope, and growing influence on libraries and librarianship.
Product review of SPI-Hub: Scholarly Publishing Information Hub™. (n.d.). Center for knowledge management (CKM). Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Retrieved October 1, 2025, from https://spi-hub.app.vumc.org/
