Oxford annual report shows mixed effects of lockdown

The latest annual report from Oxford University Press has demonstrated the complex effects of the pandemic: overall turnover declined by 8.6%, with last year’s surplus – that is, profit – down 34% to £70.5 million. Print sales were down 22% and digital-only sales up 13%, while ebook revenues doubled; academic sales increased while revenues for the ELT and Education businesses both declined. Open access output rose 32%, with the launch of 12 new titles and a new flagship OA journal series Oxford Open; 2,000 titles were added to the Oxford Scholarship Online platform, taking the press past the landmark of having 25,000 academic titles available digitally.

Clarivate updates citation reports

Clarivate has released the annual update to its annual Journal Citation Reports, based on 2020 data from the Web of Science Core Collection and covering more than 20,000 journals from 113 countries. Almost 9,000 new journals have been added, largely from the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) and the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI); ten journals have been suppressed, with an additional eleven titles receiving an editorial expression of concern. A revamped interface and a new Journal Citation Indicator, providing a single cross-discipline journal-level metric, are among the innovations.

Transformative deals

IOP Publishing has signed a three-year read and publish deal with Israeli academic consortium the Israeli Inter University Centre for Digital Information Services (MALMAD). Researchers affiliated with member institutions will be able to publish open access in IOPP’s hybrid titles without APCs while retaining copyright on their articles; researchers and students will also gain access to most of the content published on the IOP Science platform.

Karger Publishers have signed transformative deals in Brazil and Germany. The agreement with the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein in Sao Paulo is the publisher’s first in South America, while a three-year deal signed by the Bavarian State Library on behalf of higher education and research institutions across Germany, building on an existing deal from 2020, offers consortium members access to all Karger e-journals and affiliated researchers fee-free OA publication in the publisher’s titles.

IEEE has completed a read and publish agreement with the IReL consortium representing nine Irish universities. Affiliated researchers will gain read access to five million documents from the IEEE Electronic Library and the ability to publish fee-free in approximately sixty IEEE journals.

Insight providers Data Salon have added support for the reporting requirements created by transformative deals to their cloud-based systems PaperStack and MasterVision. Both services can now track accepted submissions against author institution to check how many articles each institution has published.

Journals

Emerald has partnered with the China Centre for Internet Economy (CCIE) to launch a new journal, the Journal of Internet and Digital Economics; the first issue will be published in September.

Wiley will take over publication of ASH Clinical News, the news magazine from the American Society of Hematology (ASH) from January 2022.

Frontiers will publish the Journal of Abdominal Wall Surgery (JAWS), the new journal of the European Hernia Society (EHS), from July this year.

In brief

Springer Nature has launched a new inclusive author name change policy that will enable transgender authors and those at risk to retroactively update their name on the version of record (VOR) and all connected metadata in all their journals, books, and conference proceedings.

IOP Science, which this month signed up to the DIMPACT project to map and manage its digital carbon footprint, has announced that researchers from low-income countries can now publish for free in any of its hybrid or fully OA journals, without needing to request a waiver.

Taylor & Francis has become an organisational member of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), a multi-stakeholder community seeking to overcome barriers to data sharing and reuse.

F1000 has added a new type of article to its F1000Research research platform: Genome Notes are brief descriptions of genome sequences that explain why and how they were sequenced, promoting potential reuse.

Emerald has partnered with East Delta University from Bangladesh to create a dedicated collection of research from the university on its Emerald Open Research platform; the deal will also entitle university researchers to additional support including an educational workshop.

 Alastair Horne is a PhD student at the British Library and Bath Spa University.