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Trends in Academic Publishing 2025
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Trends in Academic Publishing 2025
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Segment:0 .
OK well, firstly, thanks everybody for coming along this afternoon to see us I understand there's a bit of a mix up with the room location, so I really appreciate you making it here. Just a very quick agenda. For the next 30 minutes, we will be looking at some of the data we've received this year in our survey to see how six individual trends are developing.
And then the last 15 minutes, I'll be bringing my panelists to discuss some of these questions, and hopefully we'll have time for one or two questions from the audience. There will also be a full trends and academic publishing report available by the end of this week, and I'll try and message you all to share that with you. But please do follow me on LinkedIn to see how you can download that for yourselves.
But I wanted to start by welcoming our panelists. And I'm delighted to welcome Simone Taylor, Chief of publishing at the American Psychiatric Association. Simone started her publishing career at Elsevier and via the National Physical laboratory, Wiley and AIP publishing, and has developed considerable international experience in leading adaptive and transformative change.
Simone has served on cross-country, cross-industry groups for implementing data citation principles and for standardizing data policy and works to deliver more equitable outcomes in compensation and career advancement for marginalized groups in the workforce. Jennifer Regala, associate director of Wolters Kluwer health, has worked in scholarly publishing for 20 odd years and most recently as a director of publications at the American Urological Association.
Prior to that, was managing editor of the journals the plant cell and plant physiology at the American Society of plant biologists. In her current role at Wolters Kluwer health. Jennifer works with award winning news magazine publications including oncology times and emergency medicine news. I'm a huge thanks to both for being here. I'm really delighted you could come along.
So just a little bit about Denita and myself. I'm actually an outsider. I came cold to this industry inspired by the technological vision from Dean to CEO Darren Ryan. And what I found in the last three or four years is a very welcoming community. Very happy to share and talk, but often at the heart of that community.
Our production departments, who are locked in 20th century processes, reluctant, resistant or sometimes simply struggling to change and deign to really exist, to try and help publishers make that change easier. And our vision is to try and apply new thinking to get different results, not just to do the same thing only cheaper and quicker. And our own evolution really mirrors how we see technology changing this industry.
We've developed our own AI technologies not just to make us more efficient, but to enhance our proposition. We built a platform to connect our front and back ends, to transform how we manage ourselves internally. And our experience of that internal and external change is now helping us to consult with customers as they navigate their own transition. And the platform we built is called landstad.
It's a cloud based, AI powered platform which automates and simplifies production workflows and has distinct modules for books and journals. But I'm not here to talk to you about landstad today, but I'd be very happy to do that in the exhibition Hall later this week. So in 2024, I gave several presentations in which I suggested that it may be a watershed year for publishing, and that watershed was based on two things.
The first was true operational modernization, meaning automation and cloud based hyperconnectivity, and the second was that new forms of content delivery would start to emerge. And many of these technologies have been available for some time. But until last year, the pace of change in this industry has been slow. The slowest of all industries, according to some and there have been multiple reasons offered over the years through our survey for that slow pace of change.
I'm just going to take you through a couple of them now. So in 2024, 34% talked about having a traditional organization. We've seen people talking about hierarchical organizations with long established ways of working and senior staff in 2022. We had fragmented industries and change happened slowly here. Obviously people saying they don't have time to stop and look to change themselves.
2023 started looking at things like the complexity of the industry and inefficient working practices coming through as reasons why people weren't adapting. We looked at whether the organizations had the right tools for the job. And then again last year, the increasingly complex business model was a key reason why publishers weren't really changing. And then the final one was looking at inefficient workflow practices and outdated technologies as kind of real inhibitors.
So with all of that, what was our prediction. Prediction for a watershed year based on. Well, in 2024 before, we saw an alignment of four factors which are impacting attitudes and the pace of change. And they were the law, technological advancement, the normalization of digital first content and first mover commercial advantages. So I just want to spend the next few minutes looking at a progress report for six trends that we forecast would emerge.
And they're here. The ones in blue will actually talk about with their panelists at the end of the 15 minutes. So the first question was really has production been modernized. And well, we've been asking whether production should be modernized and should be a key priority for the past five years in our survey. And each year, the response, as you can see here, is pretty overwhelming and overwhelming.
Yes so my contention is that if it's still seen as a business priority, it hasn't happened. But more than ever, we might argue that it's on the agenda in 2025, as modernizing systems and workflows is this year's Clear number one strategic priority. And last year's job was to cut costs through efficiencies. So it's a big shift.
But it's certainly not going to be easy. And the most significant hurdle is overcoming inefficient workflows and processes, which is actually up at 63% from 46% last year. And certainly for many, it's very hard to innovate when you're so busy. And certainly journal publishing has often been described as drinking from a fire hose. And it's very hard to change in that kind of environment.
But perhaps there has been some level of modernisation already, and certainly, we've seen that production as a department has dropped down the pecking order as the Department most likely to benefit from an efficiency, drive. But this year, editorial being the squeaky wheel. However, most publishers we find in our survey are still using word and Excel for tracking and reporting. Workflows are primarily being managed through PDFs and emails, and many publishers are still simply outsourcing the entire production process.
And accessibility, which we thought would be a key driver in initiating change, was ranked only fifth out of 9 for trends impacting boardrooms. And certainly a minority have moved XML first systems to bake accessible content into their platforms. But a surprisingly large 35% still seem to be undecided as how to respond to the EAA directive.
So the progress report for modernization of production is that. Well, it's definitely a clear objective for the majority of publishers still. But traditional workflows are still entrenched. So on to the second question, a very popular one, which is our attitudes towards AI relaxing. And this slide from last year's survey shows that at that time, there were clear lines being drawn with a clear thumbs up for anything I could deliver on a technical level, but a clear thumbs down for anything that approach content co-creation.
Certainly in 2025, our survey suggests that those attitudes are relaxing somewhat. And you can see here that we've got 41% of publishers saying they are cautiously optimistic but taking a measured approach towards AI. And when you look at the percentage of publishers adopting AI tools, it's certainly steadily growing. And many are seeing some of these technologies as part of their future plans.
You can see here that we're listing out some of the co-creation tools, like Alt generation and content summaries, which are in publishers plans, which compared to last year was certainly not in their plans. So it's definitely a shift. So again, our progress report is that the lawyers for AI seem to be stood down for now. Publishers are still cautious, but increasingly they're seeing the opportunities that are arising from AI rather than just threats.
So on to the third question. Are publishers innovating with new forms of delivery. Well again, AI has helped launched a host of possibilities for meeting customers at their point of need. Things RAG systems. You're probably all aware of elsevier's ScienceDirect. As an example, Google notebook is another example, and with demand for printed books in decline and demand for digital first content continuing to rise, certainly see the landscape for change is evolving, but for most developing new product types is not a key strategic priority.
And you can see here it's number 7 in the list of strategic drives from publishers. So the progress report for this trend is that it's certainly one to watch. It's certainly not easy developing new products. And publishers really need to have digital workflows in place before they start that program. So on to our fourth question is technology supporting a shift towards independent publishing and automated technologies can support independent publishing by allowing much smaller teams to manage production.
And the argument for maintaining independent publishing was supported last year by an article by Johnson and malkinson, and that showed that self-published societies tended to achieve more sustained growth compared to a significant decline in revenue for those who outsource to publishing partners. So you can certainly see why there's an imperative to change. Our survey this year showed a steady 34% striving to retain independence.
But familiar barriers are making adoption of technologies tricky, and they're mainly focused around time and budget constraints, as you can see here. So again, our progress report for this question says that there is a real desire for independence. But the process of transitioning is challenging and technology alone is not the answer.
On to our fifth question. Is publishing working within a hyperconnected digital infrastructure. And by that, we mean is it using interoperable cloud based systems which can talk to each other. So things like Title management systems, production systems, exchange of metadata and so on. And certainly these systems, the advantage of them is that they make the management of the process more transparent and should provide publishers with real time data and insights.
However, our survey this year is showing that the majority of publishers are still using word and Excel for tracking and integration is still difficult, as not all technology is equal or indeed compatible, and many publishers besides still describe themselves as siloed, which is a persistent cultural barrier towards greater connectivity. So again, our progress report for this trend is that whilst individual technologies are being adopted, there is evidence of an appetite for integration, but the vision still remains aspirational.
So on to our final two part trend. Firstly, have market pressures changed. And secondly, are publishers responding in New ways. And our trend survey shows that the headline that economic complexity of the business is still the primary concern. And by economic complexity, I think we can all take that to mean economic sustainability.
However, the impact of AI is rapidly climbing up the charts. It's now at 56% which is up 20% year on year from 2024. And when we look at how publishers are responding, again, modernizing systems is the clear strategic priority. And that's clearly up from last year. But the real headline is that user experience using of authors and researchers is now the second priority beating cost cutting to second place.
And we've always argued that cost cutting is a bit of a 20th century metric. It's not a strategy in itself. So it's great to see that publishers are seeing modernization of systems rather than cost cutting as a strategic drive. So again, our final report card. Some new strategic drives are emerging in publishers, most notably cost cutting.
However, the change is gradual, not transformative. So that was a whistle stop tour of our key trends that we've seen from the last survey or two, I just want to hand over to the panel now. We've got a two or three questions for them. I'm going to start with the first question, which I'm going to ask Jennifer to jump in on. Looking at whether attitudes towards AI are relaxing.
Absolutely, yes. So I would say in publishing that if that AI will not replace you, it will not replace me unless you're not embracing AI. And I think those who aren't embracing AI ethically and responsibly are going to be left behind. There's a lot of ways in my day to day work with my organization, and also individually, I'm thinking about how AI can be used.
Of course, there's all of the things that we think about with ethics, with peer review, et cetera but another thing that I think about especially in my current role working on medical news platforms that have a wide global reach with freely accessible content, is how can we distribute that content even more widely and more effectively, and how can we use AI to do that. I only have, I do have a really great team, a strong team, but there's only so much that human power can do.
So where could we use AI for social media distribution. Where can we use AI for. For plain language summaries. And if we're not thinking about how to do that and how to extend our relevance, I always find that the relevance goes hand in hand with the revenue. So I'm paying very close attention to that. And I know Simone has some similar thoughts. Do we want to let Simone jump in on that.
But it's interesting because she's going to take you on the society side for a moment. Thanks, Jennifer. Yes, I just want to add to what Jennifer's been saying, I think AI, particularly generative AI is really is going to be transformative in the same way that the printing press was in its day or the computer. But those things didn't really replace us. They just changed the way we worked and the way and the tasks that we had to do in the medical space.
And I know that Jennifer works in that space, too. We really have to be careful and thoughtful about how we apply AI because there are many implications for ethics, for privacy and confidentiality, for accuracy in the information. Because as much as generative AI is taking us all by storm and developing new things every day, one of the challenges is that sometimes generative AI systems make things up.
Now, if you're publishing in the medical space, you cannot afford to have those mistakes go out and get published because clinicians use this information. So I think going back to Patrick's survey that said, people were cautiously optimistic. I would think I am in that camp of being cautiously optimistic about how this new technology might drive change. Can I just ask both of you whether your organizations do you have a policy about AI, or do you have a committee that looks at innovation.
Are there particular areas that you're looking at. Are you relying on vendors to talk to you about what's coming through in the market. So if you can comment on that a little bit. Yeah a mixture of both. So we do have policies on AI in terms of what we publish. So authors are allowed to use AI. But if they have used AI then they have to declare that on submission so that everyone so that it's clear and they have to highlight where they have used AI.
We do not allow AI to be used in images, so images generated by AI are not in terms of how we use AI internally. We're still working through that to find out how these technologies might help us improve. Now we should make the distinction between generative AI and what now gets called AI, which is pattern recognition and machine learning and things that in publishing we have been using for decades.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, to build on that from the publisher perspective, of course, we've been using those tools as long as I can remember. And I've worked, a very long time in publishing, longer than I wish to state publicly. But I'll also say that we work with a number of societies, obviously. So we're also talking, having a lot of conversations with those societies and seeing what they think about it and how they're implementing and how their level of comfort within.
And we learn a lot from our societies. Obviously, we have a bunch of trusted vendors that we work with. But then also to Patrick's point about production and editorial and peer review, we have all of those teams internally at Wolters Kluwer as well. And we do have experts, those of us across those different groups who work together to put together tools that make sense for us to use internally.
And we do have a number of proprietary titles, and some of those titles are in my purview, where we're experimenting with AI tools and testing their efficacy and so forth. So I do think it's really, really important, though, to be paying attention and being in a big room like this one and listening to what other people are doing and how they're using it. And just one last follow up question on AI, if I can.
I mentioned RAG systems and ScienceDirect, which is what Elsevier is based on and I'm sure everyone knows that's a system whereby within a contained LLM, users can come on and interrogate the system and get bespoke answers back from the data which had the original citations, and it doesn't allow for hallucination from an AI tool. To me, that seems like a very innovative way to use AI, and I wonder if your organizations you mentioned trying to reach a wider audience, are considering tools like that, or other forms of AI to help with dissemination.
Oh, absolutely. And we're looking at to how can we get content. So I'm not exactly answering your question directly, but I'll tell you one thing that I'm actually working on with our Wolters Kluwer team is to figure out within each specialty of news platforms that I work on, we're trying to see who's advertising with us, who's reading with us, where globally we're trying to reach, and how can we curate the best content based on those things.
It takes a lot of human time to find those articles to find that content and to get that together. I'm not necessarily saying writing the content, but even just curating it and putting it together, and we're working on that. And I feel really good about that because again, the finding of the content is often the challenge and the struggle.
Once we figure out what we want to cover and what we know our audiences want to read, then we can take it from there and put together some good content. That didn't really answer your question, but I wanted to give you a real life example. That's great. Thank you. So just on to our second question.
I was going to target this to is Simon. And the question is really around is technology supporting a shift towards independent publishing. And Simone being from a society, I wonder if you can give us your view on that. Yes, in one word, I think it is. I think there aren't that many societies still around who still self publish. But I do think being able to do that is an added advantage if you can make it work now.
The advantage of technology is that it can allow us to look more closely at workflows and see how we might improve efficiencies. So rather than saying, oh, this is really expensive and it costs too much, let's save costs by maybe outsourcing the work or offshoring the work or doing something like that. Turn that on its head and say, OK, maybe we can use technology to allow us to do more and raise revenue that way.
So I think technologies do offer us a way of trying to be more efficient. The challenge is changing established workflows and getting everyone on board into that space. But I do think that technology does offer an advantage. Thanks, Jennifer. Do you have some thoughts. And so I'll answer this question as Jennifer Regala, the individual acknowledging that I work for a commercial publisher.
But I've worked for societies too. And I do believe technology does support this. I think the challenge in our industry is that we've all been trying to well, I mean, the industry would like to make things as easy as possible, standardize workflows, make things identical. But once you acknowledge every journal, every publication as a community and a unique fingerprint, that's when I think you see the advantage of using technology than to support those workflows throughout the process.
The challenges to this I see though, for a full true self publishing model is the open access and subscription. Negotiating those items. That's tough if you're a smaller society and then also alternative revenue models. I think those are really important for everyone to be thinking about at the society level, and that is where you need good support or a good team internally to handle that as well.
Thank you. I'm mindful for time, so I'm just going to try and summarize this last question, which is around whether market pressures have changed and whether publishers are responding in a different way. And I wanted to ask you both. The survey talks about a shift away from cost cutting and more towards modernization and towards opportunities, rather than just shaving off costs.
I'm wondering whether you both recognize that in your own organizations, and whether you believe there has been a shift in publishing towards technology and opportunities rather than a kind of retrenching. I do I think it's a difficult question to answer because it's kind of highly nuanced. But I do think the advent of things like ChatGPT and new technology and new products and just the way we live our daily lives outside of publishing, means the expectation for people who read is changing.
So people might want to access their content in different ways. Rather than going to a print book or going to a computer, they might want to use an app. They might want to use different things. So these are the things. Yes, I think that these drivers will encourage us to try to do more in terms of innovation. Thank you. And what I always challenge myself to do and everyone that I work with and I think it's important for any organization who wishes to be successful within this industry is to think about the circular aspect of publishing.
It used to be, just get that article published, get the journal issue out, literally throw it over my shoulder, collect dust in the corner. It's not like that anymore. It's of course, the deadlines are still important, but how do you get the research in the door. How do you make those authors feel good. Once something publishes, how do you continue to tell that story effectively.
And then how do you bring it all the way back to the beginning. Because that research doesn't just die right there. That research is either confirmed, or it's refuted. And you have to continue to tell that story, and you have to be the one that is, compelling people to do it with you. Fantastic Thank you both. I wonder if you've got time for just one or two questions from the audience, if anyone would like to raise their hands.
Any questions. I've got a question here, so I'm not sure if there's a mic or. Oh, please. Yeah oh. Not working. I can hear you. Yeah So I just wanted to pick your Brains On the idea of using AI to diversify revenue for publishers.
It's a lot of talk using AI for peer review and production editing. But do you foresee AI being used to create derivative products from primary articles or anything like that. So that's actually why I took the job at Wolters Kluwer, because I do work on an interesting portfolio of news platforms. I got a little I still work with my wonderful peer review colleagues, on traditional journals, but I focus on news platforms where we are trying to use AI tools to do things like podcasts, plain language summaries.
Also curating the content that I'm talking about with you. And we're looking at how to monetize that with our industry partners. I fell in love with doing that when I worked at the American Urological Association. I was director of publications at the peer reviewed journals, but then we had a digital publication where we were able to have great success, with doing just that. So that's why I moved over so I could just work on that full time.
So I do believe that is a future. And it's also doing good work. You're getting a lot more content out there a lot more effectively. Thank you. Any other questions from anybody. Well thank you I think that's a half hour. I just want to say again, thanks to Jennifer and Simone and thank you all for coming along today.
Segment:0 .
OK well, firstly, thanks everybody for coming along this afternoon to see us I understand there's a bit of a mix up with the room location, so I really appreciate you making it here. Just a very quick agenda. For the next 30 minutes, we will be looking at some of the data we've received this year in our survey to see how six individual trends are developing.
And then the last 15 minutes, I'll be bringing my panelists to discuss some of these questions, and hopefully we'll have time for one or two questions from the audience. There will also be a full trends and academic publishing report available by the end of this week, and I'll try and message you all to share that with you. But please do follow me on LinkedIn to see how you can download that for yourselves.
But I wanted to start by welcoming our panelists. And I'm delighted to welcome Simone Taylor, Chief of publishing at the American Psychiatric Association. Simone started her publishing career at Elsevier and via the National Physical laboratory, Wiley and AIP publishing, and has developed considerable international experience in leading adaptive and transformative change.
Simone has served on cross-country, cross-industry groups for implementing data citation principles and for standardizing data policy and works to deliver more equitable outcomes in compensation and career advancement for marginalized groups in the workforce. Jennifer Regala, associate director of Wolters Kluwer health, has worked in scholarly publishing for 20 odd years and most recently as a director of publications at the American Urological Association.
Prior to that, was managing editor of the journals the plant cell and plant physiology at the American Society of plant biologists. In her current role at Wolters Kluwer health. Jennifer works with award winning news magazine publications including oncology times and emergency medicine news. I'm a huge thanks to both for being here. I'm really delighted you could come along.
So just a little bit about Denita and myself. I'm actually an outsider. I came cold to this industry inspired by the technological vision from Dean to CEO Darren Ryan. And what I found in the last three or four years is a very welcoming community. Very happy to share and talk, but often at the heart of that community.
Our production departments, who are locked in 20th century processes, reluctant, resistant or sometimes simply struggling to change and deign to really exist, to try and help publishers make that change easier. And our vision is to try and apply new thinking to get different results, not just to do the same thing only cheaper and quicker. And our own evolution really mirrors how we see technology changing this industry.
We've developed our own AI technologies not just to make us more efficient, but to enhance our proposition. We built a platform to connect our front and back ends, to transform how we manage ourselves internally. And our experience of that internal and external change is now helping us to consult with customers as they navigate their own transition. And the platform we built is called landstad.
It's a cloud based, AI powered platform which automates and simplifies production workflows and has distinct modules for books and journals. But I'm not here to talk to you about landstad today, but I'd be very happy to do that in the exhibition Hall later this week. So in 2024, I gave several presentations in which I suggested that it may be a watershed year for publishing, and that watershed was based on two things.
The first was true operational modernization, meaning automation and cloud based hyperconnectivity, and the second was that new forms of content delivery would start to emerge. And many of these technologies have been available for some time. But until last year, the pace of change in this industry has been slow. The slowest of all industries, according to some and there have been multiple reasons offered over the years through our survey for that slow pace of change.
I'm just going to take you through a couple of them now. So in 2024, 34% talked about having a traditional organization. We've seen people talking about hierarchical organizations with long established ways of working and senior staff in 2022. We had fragmented industries and change happened slowly here. Obviously people saying they don't have time to stop and look to change themselves.
2023 started looking at things like the complexity of the industry and inefficient working practices coming through as reasons why people weren't adapting. We looked at whether the organizations had the right tools for the job. And then again last year, the increasingly complex business model was a key reason why publishers weren't really changing. And then the final one was looking at inefficient workflow practices and outdated technologies as kind of real inhibitors.
So with all of that, what was our prediction. Prediction for a watershed year based on. Well, in 2024 before, we saw an alignment of four factors which are impacting attitudes and the pace of change. And they were the law, technological advancement, the normalization of digital first content and first mover commercial advantages. So I just want to spend the next few minutes looking at a progress report for six trends that we forecast would emerge.
And they're here. The ones in blue will actually talk about with their panelists at the end of the 15 minutes. So the first question was really has production been modernized. And well, we've been asking whether production should be modernized and should be a key priority for the past five years in our survey. And each year, the response, as you can see here, is pretty overwhelming and overwhelming.
Yes so my contention is that if it's still seen as a business priority, it hasn't happened. But more than ever, we might argue that it's on the agenda in 2025, as modernizing systems and workflows is this year's Clear number one strategic priority. And last year's job was to cut costs through efficiencies. So it's a big shift.
But it's certainly not going to be easy. And the most significant hurdle is overcoming inefficient workflows and processes, which is actually up at 63% from 46% last year. And certainly for many, it's very hard to innovate when you're so busy. And certainly journal publishing has often been described as drinking from a fire hose. And it's very hard to change in that kind of environment.
But perhaps there has been some level of modernisation already, and certainly, we've seen that production as a department has dropped down the pecking order as the Department most likely to benefit from an efficiency, drive. But this year, editorial being the squeaky wheel. However, most publishers we find in our survey are still using word and Excel for tracking and reporting. Workflows are primarily being managed through PDFs and emails, and many publishers are still simply outsourcing the entire production process.
And accessibility, which we thought would be a key driver in initiating change, was ranked only fifth out of 9 for trends impacting boardrooms. And certainly a minority have moved XML first systems to bake accessible content into their platforms. But a surprisingly large 35% still seem to be undecided as how to respond to the EAA directive.
So the progress report for modernization of production is that. Well, it's definitely a clear objective for the majority of publishers still. But traditional workflows are still entrenched. So on to the second question, a very popular one, which is our attitudes towards AI relaxing. And this slide from last year's survey shows that at that time, there were clear lines being drawn with a clear thumbs up for anything I could deliver on a technical level, but a clear thumbs down for anything that approach content co-creation.
Certainly in 2025, our survey suggests that those attitudes are relaxing somewhat. And you can see here that we've got 41% of publishers saying they are cautiously optimistic but taking a measured approach towards AI. And when you look at the percentage of publishers adopting AI tools, it's certainly steadily growing. And many are seeing some of these technologies as part of their future plans.
You can see here that we're listing out some of the co-creation tools, like Alt generation and content summaries, which are in publishers plans, which compared to last year was certainly not in their plans. So it's definitely a shift. So again, our progress report is that the lawyers for AI seem to be stood down for now. Publishers are still cautious, but increasingly they're seeing the opportunities that are arising from AI rather than just threats.
So on to the third question. Are publishers innovating with new forms of delivery. Well again, AI has helped launched a host of possibilities for meeting customers at their point of need. Things RAG systems. You're probably all aware of elsevier's ScienceDirect. As an example, Google notebook is another example, and with demand for printed books in decline and demand for digital first content continuing to rise, certainly see the landscape for change is evolving, but for most developing new product types is not a key strategic priority.
And you can see here it's number 7 in the list of strategic drives from publishers. So the progress report for this trend is that it's certainly one to watch. It's certainly not easy developing new products. And publishers really need to have digital workflows in place before they start that program. So on to our fourth question is technology supporting a shift towards independent publishing and automated technologies can support independent publishing by allowing much smaller teams to manage production.
And the argument for maintaining independent publishing was supported last year by an article by Johnson and malkinson, and that showed that self-published societies tended to achieve more sustained growth compared to a significant decline in revenue for those who outsource to publishing partners. So you can certainly see why there's an imperative to change. Our survey this year showed a steady 34% striving to retain independence.
But familiar barriers are making adoption of technologies tricky, and they're mainly focused around time and budget constraints, as you can see here. So again, our progress report for this question says that there is a real desire for independence. But the process of transitioning is challenging and technology alone is not the answer.
On to our fifth question. Is publishing working within a hyperconnected digital infrastructure. And by that, we mean is it using interoperable cloud based systems which can talk to each other. So things like Title management systems, production systems, exchange of metadata and so on. And certainly these systems, the advantage of them is that they make the management of the process more transparent and should provide publishers with real time data and insights.
However, our survey this year is showing that the majority of publishers are still using word and Excel for tracking and integration is still difficult, as not all technology is equal or indeed compatible, and many publishers besides still describe themselves as siloed, which is a persistent cultural barrier towards greater connectivity. So again, our progress report for this trend is that whilst individual technologies are being adopted, there is evidence of an appetite for integration, but the vision still remains aspirational.
So on to our final two part trend. Firstly, have market pressures changed. And secondly, are publishers responding in New ways. And our trend survey shows that the headline that economic complexity of the business is still the primary concern. And by economic complexity, I think we can all take that to mean economic sustainability.
However, the impact of AI is rapidly climbing up the charts. It's now at 56% which is up 20% year on year from 2024. And when we look at how publishers are responding, again, modernizing systems is the clear strategic priority. And that's clearly up from last year. But the real headline is that user experience using of authors and researchers is now the second priority beating cost cutting to second place.
And we've always argued that cost cutting is a bit of a 20th century metric. It's not a strategy in itself. So it's great to see that publishers are seeing modernization of systems rather than cost cutting as a strategic drive. So again, our final report card. Some new strategic drives are emerging in publishers, most notably cost cutting.
However, the change is gradual, not transformative. So that was a whistle stop tour of our key trends that we've seen from the last survey or two, I just want to hand over to the panel now. We've got a two or three questions for them. I'm going to start with the first question, which I'm going to ask Jennifer to jump in on. Looking at whether attitudes towards AI are relaxing.
Absolutely, yes. So I would say in publishing that if that AI will not replace you, it will not replace me unless you're not embracing AI. And I think those who aren't embracing AI ethically and responsibly are going to be left behind. There's a lot of ways in my day to day work with my organization, and also individually, I'm thinking about how AI can be used.
Of course, there's all of the things that we think about with ethics, with peer review, et cetera but another thing that I think about especially in my current role working on medical news platforms that have a wide global reach with freely accessible content, is how can we distribute that content even more widely and more effectively, and how can we use AI to do that. I only have, I do have a really great team, a strong team, but there's only so much that human power can do.
So where could we use AI for social media distribution. Where can we use AI for. For plain language summaries. And if we're not thinking about how to do that and how to extend our relevance, I always find that the relevance goes hand in hand with the revenue. So I'm paying very close attention to that. And I know Simone has some similar thoughts. Do we want to let Simone jump in on that.
But it's interesting because she's going to take you on the society side for a moment. Thanks, Jennifer. Yes, I just want to add to what Jennifer's been saying, I think AI, particularly generative AI is really is going to be transformative in the same way that the printing press was in its day or the computer. But those things didn't really replace us. They just changed the way we worked and the way and the tasks that we had to do in the medical space.
And I know that Jennifer works in that space, too. We really have to be careful and thoughtful about how we apply AI because there are many implications for ethics, for privacy and confidentiality, for accuracy in the information. Because as much as generative AI is taking us all by storm and developing new things every day, one of the challenges is that sometimes generative AI systems make things up.
Now, if you're publishing in the medical space, you cannot afford to have those mistakes go out and get published because clinicians use this information. So I think going back to Patrick's survey that said, people were cautiously optimistic. I would think I am in that camp of being cautiously optimistic about how this new technology might drive change. Can I just ask both of you whether your organizations do you have a policy about AI, or do you have a committee that looks at innovation.
Are there particular areas that you're looking at. Are you relying on vendors to talk to you about what's coming through in the market. So if you can comment on that a little bit. Yeah a mixture of both. So we do have policies on AI in terms of what we publish. So authors are allowed to use AI. But if they have used AI then they have to declare that on submission so that everyone so that it's clear and they have to highlight where they have used AI.
We do not allow AI to be used in images, so images generated by AI are not in terms of how we use AI internally. We're still working through that to find out how these technologies might help us improve. Now we should make the distinction between generative AI and what now gets called AI, which is pattern recognition and machine learning and things that in publishing we have been using for decades.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, to build on that from the publisher perspective, of course, we've been using those tools as long as I can remember. And I've worked, a very long time in publishing, longer than I wish to state publicly. But I'll also say that we work with a number of societies, obviously. So we're also talking, having a lot of conversations with those societies and seeing what they think about it and how they're implementing and how their level of comfort within.
And we learn a lot from our societies. Obviously, we have a bunch of trusted vendors that we work with. But then also to Patrick's point about production and editorial and peer review, we have all of those teams internally at Wolters Kluwer as well. And we do have experts, those of us across those different groups who work together to put together tools that make sense for us to use internally.
And we do have a number of proprietary titles, and some of those titles are in my purview, where we're experimenting with AI tools and testing their efficacy and so forth. So I do think it's really, really important, though, to be paying attention and being in a big room like this one and listening to what other people are doing and how they're using it. And just one last follow up question on AI, if I can.
I mentioned RAG systems and ScienceDirect, which is what Elsevier is based on and I'm sure everyone knows that's a system whereby within a contained LLM, users can come on and interrogate the system and get bespoke answers back from the data which had the original citations, and it doesn't allow for hallucination from an AI tool. To me, that seems like a very innovative way to use AI, and I wonder if your organizations you mentioned trying to reach a wider audience, are considering tools like that, or other forms of AI to help with dissemination.
Oh, absolutely. And we're looking at to how can we get content. So I'm not exactly answering your question directly, but I'll tell you one thing that I'm actually working on with our Wolters Kluwer team is to figure out within each specialty of news platforms that I work on, we're trying to see who's advertising with us, who's reading with us, where globally we're trying to reach, and how can we curate the best content based on those things.
It takes a lot of human time to find those articles to find that content and to get that together. I'm not necessarily saying writing the content, but even just curating it and putting it together, and we're working on that. And I feel really good about that because again, the finding of the content is often the challenge and the struggle.
Once we figure out what we want to cover and what we know our audiences want to read, then we can take it from there and put together some good content. That didn't really answer your question, but I wanted to give you a real life example. That's great. Thank you. So just on to our second question.
I was going to target this to is Simon. And the question is really around is technology supporting a shift towards independent publishing. And Simone being from a society, I wonder if you can give us your view on that. Yes, in one word, I think it is. I think there aren't that many societies still around who still self publish. But I do think being able to do that is an added advantage if you can make it work now.
The advantage of technology is that it can allow us to look more closely at workflows and see how we might improve efficiencies. So rather than saying, oh, this is really expensive and it costs too much, let's save costs by maybe outsourcing the work or offshoring the work or doing something like that. Turn that on its head and say, OK, maybe we can use technology to allow us to do more and raise revenue that way.
So I think technologies do offer us a way of trying to be more efficient. The challenge is changing established workflows and getting everyone on board into that space. But I do think that technology does offer an advantage. Thanks, Jennifer. Do you have some thoughts. And so I'll answer this question as Jennifer Regala, the individual acknowledging that I work for a commercial publisher.
But I've worked for societies too. And I do believe technology does support this. I think the challenge in our industry is that we've all been trying to well, I mean, the industry would like to make things as easy as possible, standardize workflows, make things identical. But once you acknowledge every journal, every publication as a community and a unique fingerprint, that's when I think you see the advantage of using technology than to support those workflows throughout the process.
The challenges to this I see though, for a full true self publishing model is the open access and subscription. Negotiating those items. That's tough if you're a smaller society and then also alternative revenue models. I think those are really important for everyone to be thinking about at the society level, and that is where you need good support or a good team internally to handle that as well.
Thank you. I'm mindful for time, so I'm just going to try and summarize this last question, which is around whether market pressures have changed and whether publishers are responding in a different way. And I wanted to ask you both. The survey talks about a shift away from cost cutting and more towards modernization and towards opportunities, rather than just shaving off costs.
I'm wondering whether you both recognize that in your own organizations, and whether you believe there has been a shift in publishing towards technology and opportunities rather than a kind of retrenching. I do I think it's a difficult question to answer because it's kind of highly nuanced. But I do think the advent of things like ChatGPT and new technology and new products and just the way we live our daily lives outside of publishing, means the expectation for people who read is changing.
So people might want to access their content in different ways. Rather than going to a print book or going to a computer, they might want to use an app. They might want to use different things. So these are the things. Yes, I think that these drivers will encourage us to try to do more in terms of innovation. Thank you. And what I always challenge myself to do and everyone that I work with and I think it's important for any organization who wishes to be successful within this industry is to think about the circular aspect of publishing.
It used to be, just get that article published, get the journal issue out, literally throw it over my shoulder, collect dust in the corner. It's not like that anymore. It's of course, the deadlines are still important, but how do you get the research in the door. How do you make those authors feel good. Once something publishes, how do you continue to tell that story effectively.
And then how do you bring it all the way back to the beginning. Because that research doesn't just die right there. That research is either confirmed, or it's refuted. And you have to continue to tell that story, and you have to be the one that is, compelling people to do it with you. Fantastic Thank you both. I wonder if you've got time for just one or two questions from the audience, if anyone would like to raise their hands.
Any questions. I've got a question here, so I'm not sure if there's a mic or. Oh, please. Yeah oh. Not working. I can hear you. Yeah So I just wanted to pick your Brains On the idea of using AI to diversify revenue for publishers.
It's a lot of talk using AI for peer review and production editing. But do you foresee AI being used to create derivative products from primary articles or anything like that. So that's actually why I took the job at Wolters Kluwer, because I do work on an interesting portfolio of news platforms. I got a little I still work with my wonderful peer review colleagues, on traditional journals, but I focus on news platforms where we are trying to use AI tools to do things like podcasts, plain language summaries.
Also curating the content that I'm talking about with you. And we're looking at how to monetize that with our industry partners. I fell in love with doing that when I worked at the American Urological Association. I was director of publications at the peer reviewed journals, but then we had a digital publication where we were able to have great success, with doing just that. So that's why I moved over so I could just work on that full time.
So I do believe that is a future. And it's also doing good work. You're getting a lot more content out there a lot more effectively. Thank you. Any other questions from anybody. Well thank you I think that's a half hour. I just want to say again, thanks to Jennifer and Simone and thank you all for coming along today.
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