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scholarly communication

Translation
Rongqian Ma

Expert Colleague or Dancing Bear? The Mixed Responses to AI in Digital Humanities Research

A recent study explored how scholars in the digital humanities research domain are navigating this new and complex landscape. Digital humanities is an interdisciplinary research field where scholars employ digital tools and computational methods to investigate cultural and humanities questions. Drawing on an international survey of 76 respondents and 15 in-depth interviews, the study found that scholars are not simply embracing or rejecting these tools. Instead, they are adopting AI systems cautiously, using them to speed up routine tasks, explore ideas, and build new skills, while navigating problems of accuracy, authorship, and what these systems might mean for the future of scholarship. The big question is no longer just whether AI is impressive, but whether it is becoming a genuine research partner, a useful tool, or, for some, still more of a “dancing bear” than a trusted collaborator. By tracing these mixed reactions and everyday practices, the study offers a grounded look at how AI is beginning to reshape academic life.

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Original
Lynne Bowker

Breaking Down Language Barriers to Reduce Information Privilege in Scholarly Communication

For decades, English has been a lingua franca in the research community, where it has become the principal language for publishing and conferences. But when one main language is used to share information, knowledge of this language is also needed to access information. In this way, English has become linked to information privilege: people who have mastered English can access scholarly information more easily than people who are less comfortable in this language. This has ripple effects, influencing the extent to which scientists can participate fully in scholarly communication. While the problems are clear, the solutions are trickier.

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Original
Simon Philip Sacramento

The Vantage Point: Reflections on Information Privilege as a Physician-Librarian

As a librarian (occasionally practicing) and a practicing physician, I often encounter workplace issues that would be better resolved with a little perspective from the information field. Problems, such as the need to search for reliable information in order to treat a particularly challenging medical case, are commonplace. This can be a frustrating but fascinating experience, as I, being an information professional, have some intrinsic knowledge of the issues that make solving these problems a challenge.

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FeaturedOriginal
Lynne Bowker

Unlocking access to information through plain language

Have you ever been excited to learn something new, but when you started reading about it, you felt completely lost and ended up setting it aside? A large volume of knowledge production is carried out by researchers, who typically convey it using the specialized language of their subject field. This often includes specialized terminology and expressions, acronyms or other abbreviated forms, stylistic conventions, and even particular ways of structuring or formatting a text. The end result is comprehensible to other researchers in the same subject field, but it may be far less accessible to other groups.

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FeaturedOriginal
Anita Coleman

AI-Powered Peer Review: How Review Reveal Can Detect Bias, Improve Fairness, and Transform Scholarly Publishing

When a harsh peer review exposed systemic bias, the author drew on established and emerging research to envision AI‑powered Review Reveal: a tool that flags exclusionary reviewer language, maps critiques to manuscript sections, audits equity‑related phrasing, and suggests inclusive rewrites — protecting intellectual freedom and making global digital knowledge culture more accessible to under‑represented and all participating scholars.

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EducationFeatured
Zehra Taşkın

The Race to Publish, Publication Pressures, and Questionable Practices: Rethinking the System

In today’s academia, the lines between the identity of a researcher devoted to following the trail of knowledge and the identity of a performance-driven academic focused solely on producing publications are increasingly blurred. For many scholars, publishing is no longer just a contribution to science but a mandatory step for climbing the academic career ladder. This is not a matter of individual choice, it is deeply structural. Evaluation systems that reward where research is published rather than the quality of the process itself are a major driver of this shift.

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Translation
Haoyang Wang

The Growing Divide in Scientific Attention: A Tale of Two Scientists

Imagine a bustling city where a few towering skyscrapers dominate the skyline, while the surrounding neighborhoods—though full of life and potential—remain in the shadows, overlooked. This metaphor captures a troubling trend in modern science: a small group of prominent researchers increasingly dominate scholarly attention, while the majority of scientists—early-career scholars, specialists in niche fields, or those from underrepresented regions—struggle to be heard. A recent study, analyzing millions of academic publications and citations, reveals how this “attention inequality” is reshaping the scientific landscape, with profound implications for innovation, diversity, and the future of knowledge itself.

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Translation
Lynne Bowker

Multilingual Scholarly Communication and Translation Technologies

While a multilingual scholarly communication ecosystem would help to mitigate many of the inequities created by the single-language model that currently prevails, multilingualism nonetheless presents its own challenges. If researchers all publish in their own language, how will they be able to discover and access each other’s work? Can new AI-based translation technologies help?

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