A new research communication paradigm | Future of Scientific Publishing Workshop

"A group of open research practitioners, experts, and innovators gathered at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus in December 2024 to discuss principles and visions for the future of open science communication, moving from abstract ideas and existing one-off experiments toward a holistic model of research communication that promotes robust science and aligns the incentives of scientists, institutions, and funders. This is a daunting task, but this group is optimistic that the time is right, that scientists and funders are ready for a new paradigm, and that there are many opportunities to facilitate convergence of current and future open science initiatives and to work toward a science communication environment that strengthens and accelerates science.

The in-person meeting included 41 attendees, many of whom gave lightning talks to introduce their work. Most of the meeting involved group brainstorming exercises interleaved with breakout sessions. The participants felt strongly that future workshops and meetings on this topic should be held to maintain momentum and generate further opportunities for ideation and collaboration. Current work in this area is largely fractured into independent efforts and at this workshop we detected extensive opportunities for collaboration and consolidation of efforts toward a common goal. Deeper collaboration would also clarify funding opportunities for incentive holders.

We did not discuss the problems with the current structure of science communication—built around static PDFs and story-like narratives—since there was broad consensus that these problems currently hinder science. We did discuss, however, how current incentive structures serve mostly to embolden traditional publishing models and that we can expect little change in science communication structures without bold action by incentive holders (funders, institutions, and academic societies) to support new models. We therefore focused on identifying  the fundamental attributes, both philosophically and practically, of a more positive science communication environment, especially one that incentive holders could promote. There was widespread agreement that science would benefit from publication of scientific results in an integrated research ‘container’ and ‘environment’ that facilitates both more complete reporting of scientific information and a post-publication ecosystem for reviewing, summarizing, synthesizing, and interpreting scientific results...."