In Maverick’s 2024 trends report, we identified several factors shaping the industry’s evolution. These included the continued growth of OA adoption, the lack of resilience in the financial framework, and emerging challenges to the credibility and integrity of the scholarly record. These foundational dynamics remain influential and continue to underpin many of the key trends we are forecasting for 2025. Another emerging factor is relevance—how to maintain it when faced with a rapidly evolving landscape filled with pitfalls and risks whilst making meaningful gains and fostering growth.
We hope that the following insights will serve to help you navigate the intricate terrain of an ever-evolving industry in the year ahead.
Business Strategy and Tactics
Reaffirming the value proposition and ensuring it remains relevant to the current and future market are key considerations for businesses as they face unprecedented disruptors and financial challenges that will continue to drive specific strategies and tactics in 2025. This will entail a resetting of market perceptions and a renewed business focus on content, data, and the value of validated and curated information.
As a result, several trends will emerge, including a search for more licensing opportunities, the development of products based on market needs, continued disinvestment in unsustainable product lines, a reassessment of portfolio and program health, and organizational restructuring to reduce operational costs. Alongside these efforts, we anticipate increased investment in streamlining internal and external services and systems, aimed at improving financial resilience and maintaining competitiveness.
Societies and Associations
Many of the trends we predicted for 2024 continue to have a measurable impact on societies and associations. This includes the effect of open access models on their financial resilience, compounded by a decrease in membership and the lack of profitable services leading to sustained pressure on bottom-line revenue. This trend is further compounded by a skills gap within the volunteer base. Combating these issues will require refocusing on driving membership and diversifying the member base, looking to implement outsourcing strategies and developing educational services and support systems for leadership as well as editors and authors.
Publishing strategy
The inorganic growth of portfolios in strategically advantageous areas is expected to continue in 2025, driven by increasing competition to acquire more content, boost submission volumes, and strengthen positions within key domains. A focus on evaluating the health of journals and maintaining a strong commitment to research integrity will be crucial to mitigating declines in impact factors (IF). This includes addressing the implications of government policies, such as China’s Journal Excellence Action Plan, visa and funding restrictions in countries like the UK, and escalating geopolitical tensions. To manage risk effectively, prioritizing engagement with diverse markets and investing in growth areas that attract funding from governments, corporations, and NGOs will remain a top priority.
Research Integrity
The significant impact of research integrity (RI) on the validity and robustness of the scholarly record, coupled with the diversion of funds from the scholarly ecosystem due to the rise of paper mills, is once again emerging as a key trend for 2025. Addressing this challenge will require substantial investment in this long-underfunded area to reverse the decline in quality. A coordinated, industry-wide initiative to enhance transparency, share insights, and establish ethical and valid reward mechanisms will be critical.
Furthermore, we anticipate increased investment in training programs for editors, peer reviewers, and researchers, equipping them to identify pitfalls and stay alert to emerging issues. Paired with this effort will be an increased focus on the submission systems, both in terms of the tools themselves but also how they are serving both the internal publishing teams and external stakeholders and users.
Community Engagement
Engaging with communities and establishing strong connections with them will remain a significant focus in 2025 as competition intensifies to attract more submissions and increase usage while positioning organizations as the preferred destination for researchers. This will involve conducting extensive market research to better understand researcher behavior, including identifying influencers, how they make decisions, and the evolving roles within higher education institutions. Understanding who the key influencers are, along with changes in procurement patterns and workflows, will be essential.
Refining messaging for both B2B and B2C outreach and ensuring that appropriate channels are used to effectively communicate with various communities will also be critical. Additionally, researcher education will serve as a key driver to enhance author retention and improve the quality of submissions. Experimenting with diverse formats, such as podcasts and videos, to engage specific audiences will further strengthen these efforts.
Whats next for AI technologies
Generative AI (GenAI) innovation is tracking against Gartner’s Technology Hype Cycle and, in the second half of 2024, we entered a ‘trough of disillusionment’ as excitement waned due to its failure to deliver the expected savings and innovations. However, in 2025, we expect to move into the ‘slope of enlightenment’ as organizations get to grips with how they can exploit not just GenAI but also more mature AI technologies like NLP and machine learning and apply them to specific areas such as discovery, pre-submission checks. and RI tools. We anticipate more exploration of licensing opportunities with technology companies, as well as a focus on ensuring data is robust and consistent to allow for greater use of these technologies. We also anticipate more guidance on how both internal users are applying these technologies within their roles and how researchers and authors are utilizing these tools, along with the potential risks.
Technology and Content
2024 proved to be a mixed bag as organizations grappled with financial uncertainty, resulting in delays in modernizing aging infrastructure. While we do not expect OPEX costs to delay changes to legacy systems, we anticipate continued caution in this area. In 2025, we foresee another surge in capital expenditure aimed at transforming enterprise architecture and technology stacks to ensure continued competitiveness. This will be supported by the adoption of end-to-end toolchains and workflow tools designed to enhance automation and integration. Investments in data cleaning and centralized storage systems will also be of importance, including efforts to capture more comprehensive data across various systems.
Although the market has been slow to respond to new accessibility mandates, we anticipate that the industry will start increasing expenditure in this area as institutions seek accessible infrastructure to better support their researchers and students.
Cybersecurity is another area where we expect significant investment. The rise in attacks, such as ransomware, highlights the need for increased awareness about how organizations like Sci-Hub operate to harvest data. This growing awareness will drive a stronger emphasis on security measures and transparency across the industry.
Learn More
For a free presentation of the complete 2025 Trends Research, Maverick’s global network of Associates is available to delve deeper into the insights and discuss opportunities to help grow your organization in the year ahead. To schedule an appointment, reach out to your Maverick representative or email us at info@maverick-os.com.
By Rebecca Moakes, Head of Business Development
Rebecca Moakes is an accomplished senior publishing professional specialising in product and platform development. With extensive experience working for and with publishers, she offers a combination of strategic, commercial, and technical insights to deliver measurable business goals.
Further Reading
Journal Performance Analysis: Navigating Global Publishing Shifts and Impact Factors
Peer Review: tools, training, and integration
Publishing’s increasing dark shadow of cyber threats