Scholastica and Maverick Publishing Specialists announce the release of a new report on the “Technology Needs of Small and Medium Journal Publishers.” The report details the results of a 2025 global survey of individuals working with independent scholarly publishing organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees about their current journal technology stacks and future priorities. Survey focus areas included research integrity risks and sentiments toward the rise of AI.

The full report is available here.

Survey background

Over the past decade, the duties and expectations of scholarly journal publishers have grown exponentially — from managing new metadata standards and digital platform integration needs to expanding research integrity checks, and everything in between.

Increasing technical demands, compounded with pressures from open access mandates and market instability, have created a challenging environment for smaller-sized publishers in particular, as discussed in Ithaka S+R’s 2024 report, “The Second Digital Transformation of Scholarly Publishing,” and Research Consulting’s 2025 report, “Safeguarding the future of society publishing.” For many smaller publishers, current circumstances beg the question: How can we do more with less?

Arguably, the trajectory of publishing technology development in the near term could either open new pathways for small and medium publishers to operate more effectively, enabling them to compete with larger companies, or introduce new hurdles to their change management and innovation efforts.

Scholastica and Maverick teamed up to launch the “Technology Needs of Small and Medium Journal Publishers” survey to gain insight into the digital tools and workflow optimizations that will best serve the small-to-mid-sized publisher community and support their longevity. The survey welcomed responses from individuals who worked with publishers across academic disciplines with fewer than 1,000 employees (based on Gartner’s SMB criteria).

Key survey findings

Run between March and June 2025, the “Technology Needs of Small and Medium Journal Publishers” survey received 83 responses from individuals working with various types of publishers, including scholarly societies, university presses, independent nonprofit presses, and small commercial presses. The survey results primarily reflect the perspectives of participants working for publishers based in North America and Europe, with smaller subsets of responses from Oceania, Asia, South America, and Africa lending valuable international perspectives.

Key survey findings include:

  • Research integrity check automation was a priority: Over 60% of total respondents said their publishing organization would seek to further automate research integrity checks to a “great extent” or “somewhat” over the next two years. Publishers that mainly represented STEM research were more likely to use “research integrity software” than those that mainly represented non-STEM research.
  • AI content and plagiarism were top research integrity concerns: Considering the extent to which their organization will increase automation in multiple research integrity areas over the next two years, over 60% of respondents expected increased automation for “AI-generated content detection” and “plagiarism detection.”
  • Sentiments toward AI were mixed: Survey respondents had a cautiously optimistic outlook on AI, with 58% reporting they felt “somewhat” or “very” positive about AI’s potential to improve scholarly publishing.
  • Participants primary technical challenges were related to resource constraints: When asked about challenges with their current publishing technology stack, more than half of the respondents indicated “budget constraints” and “human resource constraints.” Other leading technical challenges reported were “integrating with external platforms/tools” and “lack of technical support.”

Read the full report

The “Technology Needs of Small and Medium Journal Publishers” survey report reveals many more rich insights into the technology categories small-to-mid-sized publishers are currently using, their workflow optimization priorities, and primary research integrity concerns.

Scholastica and Maverick recognize that the survey response pool is limited in size and may not be wholly representative of the small-to-mid-sized publisher community. While acknowledging these limitations, we hope this report will nonetheless provide valuable data points to stakeholders seeking to understand the needs of smaller publishers and encourage further discussion on the topic.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to this survey! We encourage you to read the full report here.

Please send any questions or constructive feedback about the survey to support@scholasticahq.com.