Member News & Announcements, June IO 2025
Industry Leadership
Kelley Squazzo Appointed Director of Project MUSE
Project MUSE, Voting Member, Press Release, May 6, 2025
Johns Hopkins University Press has appointed Kelley Squazzo as the new Director of Project MUSE, effective immediately. With 25 years of experience in scholarly and educational publishing, Kelley brings a dynamic vision, deep industry expertise, and an unwavering passion for digital innovation in the humanities and social sciences.
Kelley has been central to Project MUSE’s expansion and transformation since 2018, most recently serving as Director of Library & Publisher Partnerships. In that role, she was instrumental in the launch of Subscribe to Open (S2O) for journals and the expansion of Spanish-language books from Latin American university presses—demonstrating her commitment to equity, global visibility, and innovation in scholarly publishing.
Awards & Honorable Mentions
Sage named Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year at the Independent Publishing Awards
Sage, Voting Member, Press Release, May 8, 2025
Sage has been awarded the ProQuest Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year at the Independent Publishing Awards, organized by the Independent Publishers Guild. The annual awards recognize achievements across the independent publishing sector in the UK and Ireland.
The honor acknowledges publishers demonstrating excellence across strategy, editorial commissioning, design, sustainability, diversity and inclusion, market insight, and innovation. Judges cited Sage’s strong organic growth across books, journals, and learning resources in the UK, noting its deep understanding of market needs and its ongoing efforts to enhance both diversity and sustainability in publishing practices.
AI Technologies & Tools
Data Conversion Laboratory Debuts “Content Crystallizer” for Scholarly Publishers
Data Conversion Laboratory, Inc. (DCL), Voting Member, Press Release, May 27, 2025
Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL), an industry leader in structured data and content transformations, announces the launch of Content Crystallizer. Drawing from DCL’s decades of experience with many of the world’s top scholarly publishers, Content Crystallizer styles, edits, and transforms manuscripts in Word format into high-quality XML through an automated, streamlined, three-step process.
Content Crystallizer provides a configurable production-ready solution that is tailorable to a publisher's or journal's specific editorial style and requirements. From styling and reference formatting to XML output and quality control validation, the system adapts to diverse editorial and production needs. Customizations for styles, citations, references, XML, QC validation, and more are architected to minimize manual effort and increase overall throughput. Content Crystallizer requires no additional investment in software or ongoing system updates; rather, document preparation, reference tagging, editorial review, and Word-to-XML conversion integrates with your existing software and provides secure access to the DCL portal.
Silverchair Expands AI Playground to ScholarOne Manuscipts
Silverchair, Voting Member, Press Release, May 22, 2025
Silverchair has announced a new beta release of an API-driven solution for seamless two-way integrations in ScholarOne Manuscripts. ScholarOne Relay is a new API layer, allowing scalable integrations into ScholarOne from customer and third-party technologies.
ScholarOne Relay will supercharge the flexibility and integration opportunities within ScholarOne workflows, enabling publishers to quickly and efficiently address their most pressing challenges. The ability to create a network of interconnected solutions with a consistent presentation and reliable and modern interfaces will rapidly transform the user experience of ScholarOne Manuscripts.
New Technology Sage Report on Library Futures in the Age of AI
Sage, Voting Member, White Paper, May 20, 2025
Technology from Sage has published the fourth instalment in its acclaimed Librarian Futures series(opens in a new tab): Librarian Leadership on the AI Frontier. The report explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the academic research journey—and the vital role librarians can play in guiding its responsible use.
Drawing on global surveys of over 1,000 students and 300 librarians, the findings uncover a complex relationship between confidence, capability, and trust in the academic use of AI. While over half of the students reported using AI tools like ChatGPT in their research, just 8% say they’ve received support from their librarian in doing so. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity: students overwhelmingly trust their librarians, with more than half saying they’d feel more confident using AI tools if recommended by them.
Standards in Practice
IOP Publishing Enhances Author Recognition with Adoption of CRediT Taxonomy
IOP Publishing, Voting Member, Blog Post, May 12, 2025
IOP Publishing is introducing the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) across all its proprietary journals to enhance recognition for authors. The taxonomy provides a standardised framework to define and recognise the diverse roles authors play during the production and publication of research outputs such as research articles.
Using the CRediT taxonomy, authors can specify exactly how they have contributed to a manuscript by selecting from 14 roles, such as conceptualisation, project administration, data curation, investigation, software and writing.
Company Reports
AUPresses Annual Report
Association of University Presses, Voting Member, News Announcement, May 20, 2025
The Association of University Presses publishes an Annual Report each spring, reporting on the Association’s activities, volunteer board and committees, and financial situation.
In May 2020, the AUPresses Annual Report was published solely online for the first time. This digital publication allowed the Association to disseminate the Annual Report even as the majority of the community worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, and demonstrated the capacity of UP Commons, the AUPresses node on the larger Humanities Commons network.