ACM Open is the institutional program that enabled ACM, the world's largest computing society, to become the first major computer science publisher to transition to 100% open access in January 2026. Co-created with research libraries, the model replaced individual article processing charges with fair, tiered institutional pricing based on publishing output. More than 3000 institutions across over 100 countries now participate, covering approximately 70% of ACM's published research (not including ICPS partner conferences). Combined with APC waivers and discounts for researchers in low-income countries and a fully open ACM Digital Library of over 800,000 articles, ACM Open has fundamentally expanded who can access and contribute to computing research worldwide.

Publisherspeak is a community-led initiative by Kriyadocs that unites the scholarly publishing community through unconference-style events. It offers events that are free-to-attend for publishers in the US and UK, as well as a global podcast. These give publishers, editors, researchers, and technologists a platform to work together on real challenges. Members of the community help set the agenda, lead breakout sessions, present case studies in the form of “Show and Tell” talks, and take away practical ideas they can use. Publisherspeak shares event outcomes and facilitation methods on industry platforms, helping turn conversations into more lasting improvements for the community.

Researchers in low- and middle-income countries represent 85% of the world’s population yet contribute a disproportionately small share of global scientific output, largely due to limited access to research. Research4Life addresses this gap through a global partnership that enables researchers to access, use, and contribute to knowledge. It provides free or lowcost access to over 250,000 resources across 12,000+ institutions in 120 countries, combined with training and locally embedded support. Independent analysis links participation with up to a 75% increase in research output. By broadening participation in knowledge production, Research4Life supports a more equitable global publishing ecosystem.

Editorial triage is under strain from rising submissions and AI-generated manuscripts. Most solutions filter bad actors. Few assess bad science. Alchemist Review Journal Fit changes that. It applies deep, AI-driven content analysis at submission, evaluating novelty, rigor, significance, and journal scope to determine whether a manuscript truly belongs. The result is faster, more consistent, and more defensible triage grounded in the research itself. Already in use with leading publishers and integrated into ScholarOne Manuscripts and eJP, Journal Fit helps protect quality, reduce wasted effort, and focus editorial attention where it matters most.

Biology Open’s ‘Fast & Fair’ sets out to tackle two major pressures in the peer review process: slow decision times and finding appropriate reviewers. The idea of paying reviewers isn’t new on its own, but Fast & Fair uses a highly structured workflow involving pre-contracted peer reviewers to ensure active commitment from a dedicated team – pairing fast turnaround with quality review. We can now achieve a seven working day turnaround time for reviewed submissions without compromising on quality or rigour. Our transparent reporting provides an evidence-based blueprint for improving author experience, reviewer recognition and the efficiency of the publication process.

Direct Publishing is a set of integrated tools built into the Atypon Experience Platform that enables scholarly publishers to create, review, manage and publish diverse non-peer-reviewed content — such as blogs, news and events — directly alongside their journals and books. It replaces fragmented manual workflows with a single, roles-based system that automatically converts content into the same standard format as peer-reviewed research, unlocking full platform capabilities including discoverability, DOI assignment and monetisation. Already live with clients including Wiley and the American Academy of Neurology, it empowers publishers to diversify revenue, deepen audience engagement and future-proof their publishing infrastructure.

IOP Publishing has developed a proprietary AI-powered tool to detect duplicate peer review reports, directly addressing a growing threat to research integrity. Fully integrated into IOPP’s editorial infrastructure, the tool uses machine learning to identify reviewer report similarities at scale, flagging unethical practices such as report reuse under different identities. Since launch, it has processed around half a million reports and identified more than 2,400 highly similar reviews. By combining automation, confidentiality and editorial oversight, the tool strengthens trust in peer review while offering a model that other publishers can use to develop similar tools.

Figures are a core element of scholarly communication that has remained largely static, limiting transparency, accessibility and reproducibility. FigureTwo transforms figures into interactive, data-connected, understandable research outputs. Embedding the underlying data makes it easy for authors to build and share beautiful figures that communicate their findings to peers, policy makers and the public. A single browser-based platform unifies creation, collaboration, publishing and preservation, replacing burdensome, fragmented workflows. Built-in FAIR compliance, DOIs, versioning and machine-readable formats ensure figures are citable, reusable and interoperable. FigureTwo establishes figures as first-class, persistent objects within the scholarly record.

Despite progress in open science, research data remains fragmented, inconsistently formatted, and difficult to reuse.

Frontiers FAIR² Data Management is a first-of-its-kind platform that transforms data into structured, citable, and AI-ready outputs. By combining AI-assisted curation with FAIR principles, it enhances reproducibility, accelerates discovery, and unlocks real-world impact.

This unique platform automates data preparation, reducing researcher burden while creating clear incentives and recognition for sharing high-quality data, turning data from a byproduct of research into a valuable, reusable asset.

AI models are becoming the default starting point for tasks and projects across most sectors, including in scholarly publishing and the wider research ecosystem. The use of generic commercial AI models risks inaccurate or hallucinated data. The Global Campus LLM Bridge gives publishers and institutions accurate, trusted data and analytical tools delivered directly to their preferred AI model, helping to source genuine peer review candidates, support commissioning work, and find new editors or research collaborators. This innovation provides breadth of coverage from curated open sources, helping publishers to avoid exhausting a diminishing pool of existing reviewer candidates and manage risk.

HigherEd+ is an AI-enabled scholarly publishing professional development platform that combines a proprietary multilingual course and digital badge microcredential library, supplemented by two live workflow products: GenHE, an AI learning pathway personalization engine that auto-maps publishing training modules to syllabi, Individual Development Plans (IDPs), and Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs), as well as UniversityTHRIVE, an innovative software platform that fully automates publishing-focused Communities of Practice (incl. registration, group matching, facilitator assignment, Zoom scheduling, and reporting processes). Together this end-to-end suite lets universities deploy publishing and science-communication professional development at scale, embedding personalized learning pathways, white-labeled digital badges, and peer-support structures directly into existing institutional workflows. The result is a more measurable, efficient, and inclusive model for strengthening scholarly communication.

Imagetwin is an AI-powered image integrity screening tool for publishers, universities, and research organisations to identify problematic images in scientific manuscripts. The software detects duplicated, manipulated, plagiarised and AI-generated images across publications. Imagetwin extracts figures from scanned manuscripts and compares them against a database of over 120 million academic images within seconds. By integrating directly into editorial and manuscript submission workflows (e.g., ScholarOne), we enable scalable, automated image screening prior to publication. Imagetwin not only detects misconduct but also helps maintain public trust in science and avoid costly reputational damage from retractions.

Launch to Open (L2O) is a distinctive new open access model built on the proven foundations of Subscribe to Open (S2O). Developed to help established journals move out of commercial big deal packages, it combines the financial transparency of Diamond-style models with the federated, conditional structure of S2O to create both early momentum and long-term stability. By combining transparent costs with proven journal usage, L2O gives libraries a stronger basis for confident budget decision-making. For the industry, it off ers a practical, scalable blueprint for returning journals to community control and accelerating change in scholarly publishing.

ManuCheck is an AI-powered risk screening system providing designed for scholarly publishing. It provides more than 40 dynamically updated indicators to access manuscript quality, compliance, and integrity risks. Combining LLM-coordinated analysis with high-precision parsing engine, ManuCheck transforms fragmented quality checks into a unified and explainable risk intelligence framework. The same framework supports both author-side pre-submission screening and editorial triage, enabling earlier, more consistent, and more standardized assessment. By moving beyond isolated detection tools, ManuCheck helps shift research integrity practice from reactive problem-finding to proactive risk governance across publishing workflows.

PRISM-AI is an expert-aligned screening adjunct designed to address the systemic crisis of reviewer fatigue in biomedical journals. While current automation focuses on technical compliance and integrity checks, PRISM is the first specialized tool to provide substantive methodological appraisal at the point of submission. Utilizing a fine-tuned GPT-4.1 model trained on specialty-specific peer-review data, PRISM achieves 91% accuracy in identifying manuscripts destined for rejection. By automating the triage of out-of-scope or low-quality submissions, PRISM preserves expert human resources for high-potential research, reduces editorial delays, and serves as a quality control intervention to streamline triage.

Publishing is at a turning point. Workflows are emerging as the key competitive advantage. To unlock opportunities Publishers are transforming their workflows with AI - from verification steps and peer review to production processes and more. But inflexible pre-AI infrastructure makes workflow redesign challenging. Pure.science’s agentic platform allows publishers to start transforming specific workflows today without costly system migrations and upskilling their teams on the way. Users build bespoke agentic solutions with natural language prompts, complete with the guardrails, integrations and auditable tools publishers need. This approach allows publishers to build towards future-proof, AI-first infrastructure which they own & control.

Reviewer3 is a San Francisco-based startup building an AI quality control layer for scientific manuscripts. It uses multi-agent manuscript review to catch critical issues before publication, including hallucinated references, AI-generated text, fatal design flaws, and technical issues with the major scientific claims in a paper. It is used both by researchers as a pre-submission check and by journals to support editorial triage.

Thoth Open Metadata is a non-profi t, open infrastructure platform for publishing, bringing together metadata management, dissemination, hosting, and usage insights in one place. Built for open access books and chapters, Thoth helps publishers, libraries, and platforms manage their metadata once, distribute it widely, host catalogues and websites, and understand how their content is used. 

● Manage metadata for books and chapters in a single, structured, open system.
● Host books and websites with fast, scalable infrastructure powered by your Thoth metadata.
● Register and preserve with DOI support, archiving, and long-term preservation workfl ows.
● Distribute everywhere with automated exports and integrations across platforms, aggregators, and indexes.
● Understand usage through aggregated, privacy-respecting metrics and reporting.
● Stay open with open APIs, no lock-in, and CC0-licensed metadata.

In May 2025, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), in collaboration with Project MUSE, launched the USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945 as a fully searchable, open access digital publication. The authoritative resource on Nazi persecutory sites, the new digital version of the Encyclopedia offers users the ability to dynamically engage with empirically grounded research that documents tens of thousands of camps, ghettos, and other sites of persecution operated by the Nazi regime and its allies, while also visualizing the camp system through a new interactive map.

Zendy AI Discovery transforms scholarly search from keyword matching to intent-aware discovery. Embedded as a non-disruptive expert layer, it enhances existing services through guided dialogue that surfaces relevant insights faster. Drawing exclusively from peer-reviewed, licensed content, it ensures integrity and trust without compromising proprietary data. With only a few lines of script, this seamless implementation requires no infrastructure changes or workfl ow disruption. Zendy moves beyond fi ltering toward actionable insights, helping researchers fi nd, understand, and apply knowledge more effi ciently.

"Zendy AI Discovery operates on a confi gurable multi-agent architecture where institutions can tailor agent behaviour, reasoning strategies, and response styles."