Learned Publishing: Volume 36, No. 2, April 2023 

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The April 2023 issue of Learned Publishing is now published and includes a broad range of content, and hopefully something to pique the interest of all our readers!

For those who have been following the outputs of the Harbingers project, this issue contains two original articles reporting further data, both with a focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first by Nicholas et al. presents an analysis of the impact on early career researchers (ECRs) work-life and scholarly communications, while the second by Herman et al. examines ECRs use of alternative providers of scholarly literature during the pandemic. In addition, an opinion piece by Nicholas et al. takes insights from the Harbingers study to identify cracks in the scholarly communications system.

In further content relating to authorship, the issue includes two original articles examining authors submission choices – a systematic review from Xu et al. delving into the factors that affect authors’ submission behaviour, and a case study from Asai examining author choices between parent and mirror journals. A further original article from Hosseini et al. examines contributor role ontologies and taxonomies.

Recently there has been a lot of discussion on the potential role of artificial intelligence in scholarly communications, and the practical and ethical considerations relating to this. This issue of the journal includes an opinion piece from Habibzadeh hypothesising on its use in scientific journal publication. In other technology-related content, a new case study from Franzen et al. examines the first 3 years of the nonprofit platform partnership between BioOne and SPIE, and an industry update from Cramer et al. discusses digital preservation and its need for constant reinvention.

Citations and metrics are of interest to a broad range of stakeholders in scholarly communications, and this month the journal includes an original article from Novotný et al. examining the editorial H-score, as well as from Zong et al. on the impact of graphical abstracts on usage and citations.

If editorial issues are your area of interest, there are several original articles in this month’s issue that should be of interest. Use of language is examined in two articles; Jiang and Hyland look at changes in the titles of research articles across time and disciplines, while Xie and Mi look at the use of positive, negative and hedge words in research article abstracts. Of course, editors can be, and often are, authors themselves, and an original article from Flanary et al. looks at rates of editor-authored manuscripts in urology journals. Of course, timeliness of publication is important to authors and editors alike, and Zabala et al. look at causes of publication delay in Ibero-American scientific journals. Finally, open science is a topic of continued development and interest, and in an original article, Melero et al. examine perceptions of open science by editors in Spain.

Publication ethics underpin the integrity of the scholarly record, and predatory publications continue to undermine this. An original article by Tomlinson analyses predatory emails received by the author during their early career period, and looks at possible methods of prevention. Efforts to improve academic integrity are always welcome, and a further original article from He et al. describes China's initiatives and actions to develop an academic integrity system.

Finally, for those interested in university press and society publishing, an original article from Hérubel examines the special relationship university presses exercise within the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary publishing ecology, with an eye to disciplinary fluidity. In addition, an opinion piece from Treadway and Greaves describes efforts to understand future directions for learned societies, via interviews with the leadership teams of a small set of STEM focussed UK-based societies.

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