The American Society for Indexing held its 2026 Virtual Conference, Indexing in Interesting Times: Strategies for Thriving Amid Chaos, on Wednesday, June 10, 2026, and Thursday, June 11, 2026. Melanie Dolechek, Executive Director at Society for Scholarly Publishing, and Rebecca McLeod, Managing Director for the Harvard Data Science Review, presented the Keynote Session, The Current State of Scholarly Publishing.
Scholarly publishing and the research community are navigating significant disruption, reshaping both how publishers operate today and how the research ecosystem may evolve in the years ahead. Over the past six months, the Society for Scholarly Publishing has conducted a series of pulse-check polls exploring key topics including artificial intelligence, the economic outlook, and community advocacy priorities.
They discussed key influencing factors such as AI-driven disruptions for commercial publishers and service providers. Libraries and institutions face federal and state funding cuts, while society and nonprofit publishers and university presses face subscription erosion and funding reductions.
They discussed Scholarly Publishers and artificial intelligence. They said that AI adoption is widespread, but uneven. Organizations are proceeding with cautious optimism. Preparedness lags behind adoption. Ethical, legal, and capacity concerns dominate barriers. Perceived opportunities focus on scale, quality, and access. Concerns are deeper and more existential than opportunities.
Concerns regarding artificial intelligence include the following:
- Quality and Integrity Disruption
- Transparency, Detection, and Authenticity
- Erosion of Peer Review
- Research Misconduct and Ethical Violations
- Trust and Credibility Erosion
They discussed challenges with using AI, particularly with indexing and maintaining quality control.
I will discuss the next session of the ASI 2026 Virtual Conference in the following blog posting. For more information about the services provided by the author of this blog, please see the Stellar Searches LLC website, https://www.stellarsearches.com.