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While populists are known for their simplistic narratives, academics are assumed to embrace complexity. Yet a startling number of books claim to have found the key to understanding the movement’s rise in a single idea or study. In the week that Viktor Orbán’s fall has fuelled suggestions that history’s tide has turned again, Matthew Reisz leafs through various forthcoming tomes 

Professor who set up publisher four years ago to redirect revenue to those doing quality control says it has been an ‘uphill battle’

Study looking at whether long-form academic work freely available finds ‘contested’ picture

The UK needs a national strategy involving funders, universities, libraries, publishers and scholarly communities, says Lindsay Farmer

Concerns abound that authors who publish on a weekly basis are cutting corners, corrupting authorship norms and overburdening the peer review system&�Բ�����;– with AI likely to make matters worse. But if incentives are misaligned, what can be done? And is the moral panic exaggerated? Jack Grove reports  

Pushing doctoral students to credit more senior academics on early publications has contributed to ‘ethical scandal hiding in plain sight’, says education professor

His successful insurgent campaign for New York mayor was not driven primarily by moral appeal but by sustained fieldwork, says Mayank Chugh

Complaints from authors abound about interminable delays, long silences, unfair rejections and shoddy copy-editing. But are standards really slipping? And, if so, where does the blame lie? Matthew Reisz reports

Academics urge government to strengthen legal protections for scholars undertaking studies in controversial fields

Cass Sunstein’s new book – his 87th&�Բ�����;– deliberately prizes long-term currency over short-term appeal. But at a moment when some fear that American liberalism is under threat, is the Obama-era official right not to address the elephant in the room? Matthew Reisz reports

Staff at management school say they feel forced to publish in ‘narrow’ subset of elite journals to boost REF standing, restricting types of research they can pursue

Meanjin set for homecoming as QUT assumes custody of ‘cultural icon’, five months after it was deemed ‘no longer viable’

York and Swansea latest to decline publisher’s offer, with latter also walking away from Springer Nature deal

If we still believe that science is a vocation grounded in argument, curiosity and care, we can’t delegate judgement to machines, says Akhil Bhardwaj

‘Lack of alternatives’ blamed as majority of researchers admit they rely on journal prestige metrics to make decisions on grants and hiring

Mandatory edits of research findings a ‘blind spot’ in integrity debate, says scholar who experienced government agency ‘interference’

Scholars criticise lack of progress on restoring repository of 600,000 PhD theses more than two years after it was felled by cyberattack

Sheffield, Lancaster and Surrey confirm they are walking away from proposed three-year deal with world’s largest academic publisher

International partners step up offers of help as editors battle power cuts, brain drain and ongoing uncertainties of conflict to keep research publishing alive

Early enthusiasm for compulsory datasets has given way to ‘more qualified views’ on compliance, finds long-running survey

Native English speakers accused of abusing anonymous feedback to offer ‘biting critiques’ of language rather than scholarship

The pandemic showed the benefits of a system based around reviewing preprints. Why was eLife the only journal to respond, asks Damian Pattinson

Industry experience offers a unique perspective based around practical systems thinking, operational realities and trade-offs, says Jianyang Geng

Complaints over ‘price increases’ and open access models spur UK institutions to walk away from offer from publishing giant, despite nationally negotiated agreement

Large numbers of editors publishing in their own special issue attacked as ‘academic narcissism’ and ‘scientific misconduct’ in first-of-its-kind study

Jordanian professor’s free-wheeling study is pulled and an editorial board member sacked after linguists criticised ‘extremely strange’ article

Little-noticed joint efforts by publishers to catch fake papers are delivering results but further ‘scaling’ is needed, says report

Publisher acknowledges ‘unverified statements’ in controversial text by American academic that led to long-running legal battles

Pierre Legrand’s ‘offensive’ attack on a law textbook has led to calls for retraction and a journal apology but he insists his robust criticism was fair

‘Global first’ agreements break link between pricing and the number of articles published for the first time

‘Significantly improved’ agreement with world’s biggest scholarly publisher averts new year shutdown

Thousands of mistakenly awarded citations left uncorrected highlight the perils of leaving profile curation to academics, say critics

Universities can decide on publishing deals after terms agreed with Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis

ANZ universities notch ‘major’ new agreements with big publishers, but negotiations with the biggest break down over price concerns

Disparity reflects broader under-representation of women in senior roles rather than increased likelihood men will make mistakes, researcher says

As shelves fill up and costs mount, new scheme allows librarians to discard underused books if more than seven copies exist elsewhere

National library chief Rebecca Lawrence will be replaced by interim head Jeremy Silver with immediate effect

‘Significant’ number of institutions predicted to drop deals with main scholarly imprints, leaving journal access much reduced

Survey of more than 3,000 researchers by Cambridge University Press reveals widespread concerns over the rise of ChatGPT-assisted papers

With the veteran BBC presenter leaving the landmark Radio 4 show, some say the job should next go to one of a growing breed of academic broadcasters

Digital Science said its investigation showed how weaknesses in research and publishing systems can be systematically exploited

Disappointing offers which ‘miss financial reality’ faced by UK higher education have heightened speculation that institutions will ditch proposed deals

As an editor, I am receiving submissions from spurious authors consisting of previously published papers altered by AI. But why, asks Seongjin Hong

Melbourne book explores slow conversion from institution that ‘excluded and dehumanised’ Aborigines into one that ‘accelerated their inclusion and success’

When big publishers buy smaller publishers, they also acquire their book lists&�Բ�����;– but not always the relevant copyrights, says Harvey Graff

UK science academy adopts ‘subscribe to open’ model, with libraries being asked to back transition

Simpler ‘publish-as-a-service’ agreements in the frame as sector eyes ‘pivotal year’ for removal of research paywalls

Volume-driven publishing pushes up costs and threatens research integrity. We need new agreements with healthier incentives, says Anna Vernon

Amsterdam University Press series editors quit with open letter objecting to sale to for-profit publisher

Researcher who waited nearly two years for rejection claims ‘nonsensical’ criticisms of his paper must have been chatbot-generated

Our paper was rejected on the basis of reviewer comments that were vague, formulaic, often irrelevant and occasionally inaccurate, says Seongjin Hong

UK academia faces ‘pivotal moment’ as deadline approaches for cash-strapped universities to negotiate deals with leading publishers

In an era of complex challenges, single authorship is no longer the only marker of significant contributions, say Jeanne Féaux de la Croix, Roger Norum and Joanna Rostek

Champions of the free and unpaywalled model overlook the vast amount of unpaid academic labour that underpins such titles, says departing editor

If a paper is published open access, responses that point out its flaws should not be hidden from readers behind a paywall, says Andrew Barnas

As UK universities desperately seek savings, open science advocates must press both their moral and selfish cases, say Marcus Munafò and Neil Jacobs

Defunding of diversity-related research may deter American university libraries from buying titles in contentious topic areas, publishers fear

ScienceDirect innovation allows academics to interrogate articles and compare experiments

Rise of robot-written summaries should push publishers to articulate value and impact of research more clearly, argues Oxford University Press director

The recent arrest of accreditation council members only underlines that competence of regulation is as much of an issue as its degree, says Pushkar