Knowledgespeak

Springer Nature has announced the appointment of Patric Somlo as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and member of the Management Board, effective November 1, 2026. Somlo joins from Lonza Group AG, a publicly listed global provider of development and manufacturing services to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, where he currently serves as Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance. His career includes roles in private equity, management consulting, and investment banking.

Clarivate Plc has released the Pulse of the Library 2026 report, its third annual global survey examining how libraries are responding to technological change, including artificial intelligence, shifting priorities, and increasing demands on staff and resources. The findings show that Mainland China recorded the highest level of AI implementation, with 28% of respondents reporting moderate to active adoption.

Kudos has announced the launch of Phase II of Taming the Crocodile, an industry initiative aimed at ensuring scholarly and scientific content remains discoverable as artificial intelligence increasingly mediates information access. EBSCOHost has joined as a headline sponsor, alongside Wiley, Emerald Publishing, Springer Nature, and Silverchair.

The European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) has announced renewed financial support from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), reinforcing a shared commitment to advancing Diamond Open Access publishing across Europe. This funding builds on FCT’s previous support and strengthens collaboration with Portugal’s National Diamond Capacity Centre, PUBIN, which is managed by FCCN, FCT’s digital services, and the University of Minho.

The MIT Press has announced the opening of its 2027 funding cycle for Direct to Open (D2O), following the completion of the 2026 program. The initiative invites libraries worldwide to support its diamond open access model, which provides scholarly books freely to readers. In 2026, participation from more than 260 library partners enabled a new collection of MIT Press scholarly books to be made openly available.

Cashmere and IOP Publishing (IOPP) have announced a partnership to make IOPP’s portfolio of book and journal research accessible through authorized AI applications. The agreement enables licensed use of content for inference purposes while preventing exposure to unauthorized large language model training. As AI becomes a common channel for information discovery, publishers are exploring ways to provide trusted content through these platforms while maintaining transparency in usage.

Gold open access (OA) reached its highest share in 2025, accounting for 44% of all global journal articles, reviews, and conference papers, according to the latest release of the STM Open Access Dashboard. Nearly two million research articles were published through gold OA that year, making it the leading route for immediate, freely available access to research. The Dashboard tracks OA uptake from 2015 to 2025 and shows that gold OA has quadrupled over the past decade.

AI disclosure rates have assumed an aura of quantifiable precision. They are tracked, benchmarked, presented to editorial boards, and integrated into broader evaluations of research integrity. Yet two titles can report nearly identical figures while posing fundamentally different questions, logging responses via disparate mechanisms, and categorizing identical uses in opposing ways.

Publishing research through gold open access (OA) continues to deliver the highest levels of usage, reach, and impact for authors, according to new evidence from Springer Nature. Eight years after the publisher first reported the advantages of gold OA, its latest findings confirm that these benefits remain consistent despite ongoing changes in the OA landscape.

Vanderbilt University’s Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries and Cambridge University Press have established a new pilot program that expands Vanderbilt’s Evidence‑Based Acquisitions (EBA) ebook agreement to include open access book publishing opportunities for Vanderbilt authors. Cambridge’s EBA provides institutional access to its ebook collection and allows libraries to select titles for permanent ownership.