ALPSP Awards Winners announced

The ALPSP Awards 2024 winners were announced at this year’s Annual Conference dinner held on 12 September at the Hilton Manchester Deansgate, UK.

• The ALPSP Award for Contribution to Scholarly Publishing was presented to David Worlock.
• JSTOR Access in Prison was confirmed as the winner of the ALPSP Impact Award 2024, with The Forest of Biologists awarded highly commended.
• The Papermill Alarm was announced as the winner of the ALPSP Award for Innovation in Publishing 2024.

ALPSP Award for Contribution to Scholarly Publishing

This award recognizes an individual or organization who has made a major contribution to scholarly publishing. Jamie Humphrey, Chair of ALPSP and Head of Journals, Royal Society of Chemistry presented this year’s award on behalf of the ALPSP Board of Directors.

David Worlock was described as the "grand seigneur of strategic consulting in academic publishing": "With a focus on digitalisation, he has spent more than 30 years helping to prepare publishers and service providers for the challenges of the coming age. David has connected countless leaders with his Outsell Leadership Councils, and nothing pleases him more than a good conversation among colleagues where he doesn't have to be at the centre. His witty and insightful moderation of large panels at conferences around the world is unforgettable. David has played a major role in making academic publishers more professional and open about change in the digital space, and his advice is as sought after today as it was 30 years ago."

The ALPSP Impact Award

This award, sponsored by PA EDitorial, celebrates significant initiatives, projects or collaborations within scholarly communication and academic research that are making a positive difference.

The JSTOR Access in Prison initiative is a transformative project providing people who are incarcerated – to be10.3 million globally – with access to the same library of academic journals and scholarly resources as are available to students on traditional college campuses. JSTOR bridges the gap between the incarcerated population and the academic world, empowers people without agency to engage with education and research, and significantly contributes to more life opportunities through information literacy.

Highly Commended: The Forest of Biologists: The Forest of Biologists is a bio-positive publishing initiative from The Company of Biologists. It aligns with the concerns of biologists worldwide about climate change and biodiversity loss, with a clear focus on biodiversity (not carbon offsetting). Embedded in core publishing activities, it offers bio-positive options for authors and non-financial rewards for peer reviewers (promoting journal loyalty) and has captured the attention of library customers. 

The ALPSP Award for Innovation in Publishing

This award, also sponsored by PA EDitorial, has run for a number of years and celebrates any new development, product, service, launch or project which is both innovative and of significant value to scholarly communication.

The Papermill Alarm detects signs of fraud prior to peer-review, helping publishers avoid harm. Its web app provides a clear overview of the problem. The Papermill Alarm leverages novel AI Language Models (LLMs) and network analysis to detect signs of research fraud at industry scale with unparalleled accuracy.

Finalists for 2024 were:

• Morressier’s Integrity Manager.
• Signals
• Research Organization Registry (ROR).

David Sommer, Chair of the judging panel, and co-founder at Kudos commented: “The ALPSP Awards are a key event in the scholarly publishing community’s calendar. With a strong theme running through this year’s awards submissions of research integrity and improving access to scholarly publishing, we would like to offer our congratulations to the winners.”

In addition, five winners were unveiled for the ALPSP Rising Star Awards, sponsored by Publishers’ Licensing Services:

• Hazel Rowland, Associate Marketing Manager, IOP Publishing

• Anna Savage, Publishing Executive, BMJ
• Ella Gibbs, Journals Executive, Bristol University Press
• Heather Townsend, Sales and Customer Service Coordinator, Bristol University Press
• Melody (Zhuxin) Zhang, Associate Publisher, Wiley.