AI governance in open-access scholarly publishing

The open-access (OA) publishing industry is undergoing its most significant transformation yet, driven by the challenges and opportunities presented by (generative) artificial intelligence (AI). This raises the question: how have the editorial processes of publishers had to adapt to the disruption AI has introduced? The presentation provides answers from 47 interviews with individuals working at publishers of various sizes, in several subject areas, and across 16 countries. The interviews took place between December 2025 and May 2026, were subsequently analysed, and provide a current account of AI integration in the publishing industry. Although OA publishing was the major theme of the interviews, AI was also covered extensively. Preliminary findings suggest that the interviewees utilise AI in various publishing workflows, often as a tool of guiding the governance of scholarly publishing and quality control. AI use ranges from extensive prescreening of manuscripts for research integrity to copy-editing publications. In addition to these opportunities, however, publishers also reported challenges in the use of AI for their own processes as well as those introduced by authors’ AI-enhanced submissions. Those include an increased number of manuscript or book proposal submissions, which are reviewed by research integrity teams, because of (possible) violations of publishing standards, such as fake identities, plagiarism, hallucinated citations, and paper mills. In that context, OA publications are more prone to misuse by third parties than other publications. Contributing to the conference theme of governance models within ethical and legal frameworks, this presentation provides a timely overview of the challenges and opportunities that publishers face during OA transformations due to AI. The aim is to encourage discussions with conference participants about their perspectives on the governance of AI in editorial workflows as part of OA publishing, especially with regard to questions of good publication practices and the quality control of research outputs.