18 April 2025
Stephen Macdonald, Academic Subject and Research Services Librarian, University of Lincoln
My UKSG conference started on Sunday evening with a ‘first timer’ introductory reception. It’s often difficult going to a conference with no one you know but I soon found some like-minded delegates and the hour soon went.
Aside from the normal pleasantries, I found myself talking to others in Higher Education about familiar financial challenges facing the sector including budget cuts and redundancy schemes. We wondered how this is shaping the interaction between HEIs and publishers and commented on recent trends within the sector, including subscription cancellations and sector-wide scepticism towards the renewal of transformative agreements. Given this, I was interested to gauge how suppliers viewed the changing financial landscape within UK HE and whether this would influence the prices institutions would have to pay to renew content. I also spoke to delegates from the US who spoke about the Trump administration’s impact on federal funding and the political constraints placed on universities. More broadly, this made me reflect on ways that broader political and economic trends influence the Higher Education sector, with an isolationist and anti-immigration rhetoric shaping policy decisions in the UK and internationally.
Monday morning saw the conference open with ‘Navigating AI Futures: Community Insights and Strategies’ and Leo Lo’s compelling four AI scenarios: democratisation, laissez faire, autonomous and consumer oriented. The presentation brought a rare intellectual clarity to an ill-defined and much debated topic in Library and Information Science (LIS). Although AI represents a new venture, each scenario builds on established themes within LIS: Democratization represents the tenants closest to the ethical core of the profession, with a commitment to user education and algorithmic literacy, the promotion of informational equity and intellectual freedom. The laissez faire approach, by contrast, reflects an opposing agenda where the library becomes caught up in a web of power relations controlled by a neo-liberal status quo, making it ill-equipped to deal with misinformation and, instead, focusing on ‘damage control’. The commercial scenario represents an extension of the current tension between libraries and publishers, where the sale of AI products is prioritized over wider societal benefit. The autonomous scenario, by contrast, represents a dystopian future where AI ‘takes over’, creating and disseminating knowledge of its own accord. This alarmist scenario also has precedent within LIS, representing the natural uncertainty generated by new technology typified by the digital revolution. Seen this way, I was struck how each scenario underlines how AI may be used to exacerbate existing power structures or bring them into check and, whilst the technology may be new, the challenges can be largely reformulated as the familiar juxtaposition between a capitalist ‘big tech’ and the democratisation of knowledge for wider public good.
In contrast, Kate O’Riordan focused on the practical challenges of generative AI in HE. Over 80% of students use AI in some form; institutions are scrambling to form a consistent attitude or clear guidance, with divergence of opinion widespread. The ideological underpinning of HE often reflects a consumerism where students take the shortest route to success; this is a trend I see in my own role and, whilst institutions need to embrace AI as a positive, I can’t help thinking that a return to old fashioned exams may be the way to go. This could be accompanied by mandatory AI literacy training, encouraging responsible and sensitive use of technologies.
Next up was a session on ‘supporting PGRs in scholarly communication’. PGRs represent a diverse range of students (from master’s to PhDs) across a range of disciplines with different attitudes and conventions reflecting open access and open data. This diversity was portrayed as a continuum stretching from open sciences, through the social sciences and finishing at the closed humanities. As a librarian I am an advocate for open access, but as a research librarian supporting arts and humanities, I am often surprised how librarians treat open access as a positive tout court; fields where the monograph is the main vehicle of publication have legitimate reasons for taking a cautious approach to an open repository deposit and, whilst this caution can be misguided, I often wonder whether librarians should adopt a more measured and responsive approach to OA for those working on the closed end of the continuum, especially given the prevalence of small or non-profit publishers.
The next session I attended reported on the University of Manchester’s approach to ‘Using Data to Analyse Read and Publish Deals’. The session was (unsurprisingly) well attended given budget constraints in HE and ongoing renegotiations between publishers and JISC. There has been a recent change in attitude towards previously sacrosanct publisher agreements, with high profile institutions biting the bullet of cancellation. I was struck by the sheer work involved for institutions who want to gain an accurate picture of cancellation impact and the various options available spanning from a full termination to a bespoke read package based on cost per use. Having been responsible for digesting TA terms and conditions, I am amazed at the density and obliqueness of documentation; if publishers are serious about helping the sector navigate its financial predicament, it would be well advised to improve both the clarity and transparency of terms and usage.
Tuesday opened with ‘Cyber Security and the Academic Library’ with first hand recollections of cyber attacks in both HE and the private sector. The University of Manchester’s 2023 cyber-attack, orchestrated via phishing, highlights the very real threat of malicious intent; a theme further underlined by the high-profile attack on the British Library, with tangible damage to services still felt. For me, the key takeaway was greater appreciation that often boring and monotonous processes, including two factor authentication and phishing awareness training, play a vital role safeguarding user data. The session also touched on the ethics of pirate libraries, including library genesis and sci-hub, and potential harms from allowing access via content harvesting. Preparing for cyber-attacks should represent a ‘new normal’, where robust processes and procedure absorb the shock, anger and frustration that accompanies a security breach.
Next, I headed to ‘Doing Dora: A small-scale project to upscale research culture and research integrity’ which charted how a small funding bid was used to raise awareness of responsible metrics. The session highlighted the importance of networking and communication in overcoming the familiar theme of poor attendance and interest. This made me reflect on my own role, and difficulties engaging academics in a harsh financial climate; for me, the key lies in translating issues to have relevance for attendees. One of the speakers referenced work relating to academics taking part in their session; this small touch, often overlooked, has potential to increase engagement. Finally, I attended ‘Academy-owned: Supporting scholars who are taking a stand for nonprofit, equitable, inclusive, and open alternatives to high-profit journals’. The session focused on all too familiar themes where large publishers control high impact ‘prestige journals’. Whilst attitudes towards traditional metrics and prestige publication are softening in the UK, there is a mixed picture internationally where traditional impact metrics have a direct influence on employability and career progression. In the globalised world of academia, therefore, it may take an international effect to bring sustainable changes to publishing – a demoralising thought. The panel also highlighted the integrity non-profit publishers provide; all too often commercial publishers accept manuscripts rejected in other titles, with the financial incentive of an APC. This worrying trend highlights weaknesses in academic rigour and peer review. As a librarian, we frequently preach the merits of ‘peer review’ as a gold standard, but having spoken to those involved in the process, there are signs both peer review and editorial standards are neglected by publishers who prioritise volume and the ensuing financial incentives. In libraires, we often focus on discoverability and coverage, but should we place peer review under more scrutiny?
On the final day, I attended ‘Evaluating Rights Retention, almost two years on’ where the University of Aberdeen was evaluating the implementation of its Rights Retention Strategy. At an institution where a policy has just been approved, I was interested in the main challenges that accompany implementation, including the range of practice relating to the engagement of academics with publishers during submission. Some encourage engagement, transparency and an inclusion of a declaration, whilst others discourage explicit mention, instead relying on bulk notification to inform publishers. I think this issue boils down to the copyright literacy of academics and, although engagement may be preferable in an ideal world, I understand the challenges of asking academics to shoulder the burden of explaining the often-nuanced implications of policy and further demonstrates need for a wide-ranging publicity and user education. Evaluating the RR policy will be a step for the future, and I was impressed at the capability of tools such as openalex.org. Equally interesting was the focus on OA monographs in rights retention which, although slowed by a watered down REF policy, is something coming to us all soon.
I left Brighton having learned a lot but, reassuringly, with knowledge that challenges faced in my own role are common among the sector, typified by financial challenges, uncertainty, and the rise of AI. Given this, I was struck how neatly these issues align with wider national and international economic, political and social challenges.