“STM firmly stands for advancing open and trusted research, where researchers and the rest of society can rely on information that is credible, accessible, linked and searchable in perpetuity,” said STM CEO, Caroline Sutton. “It is part of our mission to strive for improved access to, and re-use of R&I results, publications, and data for scientific purposes.”

“However, we believe there are better approaches to achieve these goals than those outlined in the report.”

Considering that the Commission intends to use it to guide and inform priority action 2 of the European Research Area Policy Agenda—“Propose an EU copyright and data legislative and regulatory framework fit for research”—STM urges the Commission to undertake additional consultations and engagement. 

While STM appreciates the efforts of the consortium responsible for the study to gather feedback from various stakeholders, including STM, and acknowledges the minor adjustments made to the preliminary findings, the organisation remains concerned about several aspects of the study itself:

• The survey underpinning the report’s findings, intended to identify potential barriers to access and reuse of scientific publications, was flawed. It gathered feedback from stakeholders through leading and biased questions focused on a few pre-selected measures rather than offering a broad array of questions or open-ended responses, suggesting a pre-determined agenda.
• Considering the complexity and gravity of the issue, the timeframe allotted to conduct the study was far too brief and possibly compromised the quality and number of meaningful engagements. Publishing houses were never directly heard by the consortium, despite having been led to believe they would be.

Before considering any new measures, STM recommends a thorough analysis of the impact of the recently adopted digital and data legislation, which was only recently implemented by EU Member States. STM is prepared to assist the EU Commission and EU Member States in successfully implementing this existing legislation so that the current framework can reach its full potential. 

STM is committed to constructive engagement and is open to collaborating with stakeholders and policy-makers on policies that genuinely support the advancement of trusted research. It is essential that any examination of the industry is conducted fairly and considers all options, and STM recommends further consultation and engagement. 

You can now find the detailed comments here.

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“Publishers have invested heavily in shared infrastructure — at the same time, we’re continuing to witness rapid change, new opportunities, and new challenges to the system,” said Hylke Koers, Chief Information Officer, STM Solutions. “In commissioning this report, we sought an independent, comprehensive study of the current landscape to provide recommendations where collective action and further investments are needed to develop and sustain a scholarly communications system that is open and trusted at scale.”

While the report is detailed and offers many insights, among the report’s recommendations for areas to target for further development and investment, the following key themes emerged: 

• How to design a system that delivers both ‘open’ and ‘trusted’ at scale.
• The increasing presence and role of AI in scholarly communications.
• The importance of PIDs, metadata, and common standards in enabling a seamless user journey across different publishing platforms and discovery services on the scholarly web.
• Research Integrity.

STM is already driving multiple initiatives addressing these themes, from our recent white paper on AI in Scholarly Communications to the STM Solutions Integrity Hub and UNITED2ACT, and to our involvement in GetFTR and SeamlessAccess.

What’s Next?

In the coming months, STM  will convene its members and stakeholders to collectively explore ways we can act on findings from the report. “The intent of this work is to spur thought, conversation — and ultimately, action,” said Koers.

The post A strategic deep dive into our shared scholarly infrastructure | Paper launch appeared first on STM Association.

While the volume of data continues to increase exponentially in the current research environment, the consistency around the sharing of research data is lacking — yet it is essential. To this end, this joint statement formulates 12 recommendations for all stakeholder groups that will help to address this critical gap.

It offers a common framework for sharing research data for key stakeholders across the research community: researchers, publishers, funders, data repositories and policymakers — offering a means to advance a more open and collaborative research environment.

“This collaboration isn’t just about sharing best practices; it’s about shaping a future where research data sharing becomes the norm, not the exception,” said Hylke Koers, CIO, STM Solutions. “Our goal is to cultivate an environment that champions reproducibility, integrity, openness, and fairer research assessments. We eagerly anticipate the advancements and collaborations this new era will bring.”

Explore the Joint Statement here and see how to get involved.

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Introducing the inaugural STM OA Progress Report, a highlight-focused companion to the newly launched STM OA Dashboard, a dynamic resource for exploring in-depth figures pertaining to OA uptake by research discipline, funder, region — and model. A key takeaway from this edition —35% of all articles published were via Gold OA, continuing an upward trend. 

This report, which offers a snapshot of data and trends, looking beyond OA uptake to include research integrity and social responsibility, sets a benchmark for annual updates to chart ongoing developments in Open Access.

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ACCESS THE FULL PROGRESS REPORT 

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This report, which offers a snapshot of data and trends, looking beyond OA uptake to include research integrity and social responsibility, sets a benchmark for annual updates to chart ongoing developments in Open Access.

The report is freely available for download.

The post 2023 Open Access Progress Report Launch appeared first on STM Association.

Addressing critical dimensions relating to intellectual property, transparency, accountability, quality and integrity, fairness, safety, design, and sustainable development, the Global Principles on AI mark an unprecedented collaboration that safeguards the interests of content creators, publishers, and consumers alike.

In the Principles, the organizations call for the responsible development and deployment of AI systems and applications, stating that these new tools must only be developed in accordance with established principles and laws that protect publishers’ intellectual property, brands, consumer relationships, and investments. The Principles state explicitly that AI systems’ “indiscriminate misappropriation of our intellectual property is unethical, harmful, and an infringement of our protected rights.”

Among other things, the Global AI Principles stipulate that developers, operators, and deployers of AI systems should:

• Respect intellectual property rights protecting the organizations’ investments in original content.
• Leverage efficient licensing models that can facilitate innovation through training of trustworthy and high-quality AI systems.
• Provide granular transparency to allow publishers to enforce their rights where their content is included in training datasets.
• Clearly attribute content to the original publishers of the content.
• Recognise publishers’ invaluable role in generating high-quality content for training, surfacing and synthesising.
• Comply with competition laws and principles and ensure that AI models are not used for anti-competitive purposes.
• Promote trusted and reliable sources of information and ensure that AI generated content is accurate, correct and complete.
• Not misrepresent original works.
• Respect the privacy of users that interact with them and fully disclose the use of their personal data in AI system design, training, and use.
• Align with human values and operate in accordance with global laws.

The full Global Principles for AI, which can be found here, elaborate on each of the points above in greater detail.

Organizations signing onto the Global AI Principles include:

• AMI – Colombian News Media Association
• Asociación de Entidades Periodísticas Argentinas (Adepa)
• Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers
• Associação Nacional de Jornais (Brazilian Newspaper Association) (ANJ)
• Czech Publishers’ Association
• Danish Media Association
• Digital Content Next
• European Magazine Media Association
• European Newspaper Publishers’ Association
• European Publishers Council
• FIPP
• Grupo de Diarios América
• Inter American Press Association
• Korean Association of Newspapers
• Magyar Lapkiadók Egyesülete (Hungarian Publishers’ Association)
• NDP Nieuwsmedia
• News/Media Alliance
• News Media Association
• News Media Canada
• News Media Europe
• News Media Finland
• News Publishers’ Association
• Nihon Shinbun Kyokai (The Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association)
• Professional Publishers Association
• STM
• World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA)

The Principles are open to future signatories.

The post Global Publishing and Journalism Organizations Unite to Release Comprehensive Global Principles for Artificial Intelligence (AI) appeared first on STM Association.

Questions in the NASA RFI are similar to the NIH RFI, with the addition of a prompt on software. STM will submit a response and encourages members to do so as well.

Note that NASA had earlier released a new policy for the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) requiring immediate access to publications and broader access to data and software, but this only applied to SMD, not to other Directorates in NASA. Additionally, revisions to that policy (SPD-41a) were already underway before the August 2022 memo was issued.

Each agency is pursuing its own approach to revising its public access policy and may or may not issue requests for public comment. STM continues to engage directly with agencies where we can and will keep members posted on opportunities to participate in public comment or private dialogue.

The post NASA releases revised public access plan, solicits comments appeared first on STM Association.

“As we enter a new phase of Open Access at a new and greater scale, as we  laid out in STM Trends 2026,  common infrastructure to support scholarly communications is more important than ever,” said Hylke Koers, Chief Information  Officer for STM Solutions. “It will be essential in ensuring researchers can publish, discover and read scholarly works  with ease and rely on the quality, integrity and trustworthiness of published research.”

“Ithaka S+R has a well-established and very strong reputation conducting this type of work within academia and we are delighted that they will be carrying out this project,” said Koers.

Roger Schonfeld of Ithaka S+R notes that, “Building the infrastructure necessary to advance scholarly research and disseminate it effectively is a vital priority. At Ithaka S+R, we’ve been invested in the organizational structures and institutional design necessary to advance these objectives, particularly within research libraries, for many years. I’m so pleased that our work will contribute to building and sustaining community infrastructure that will enable all parties invested in the scholarly communication ecosystem to better support scholarship today and into the future.”

As the rapid evolution of research communication continues, and the academic record grows, dozens of platforms and tools and services have emerged – many of which play an essential role in the discovery, communication and interpretation of research findings. 

This project will enable a deeper understanding of this infrastructure, to identify weak points as well as opportunities for innovation and future development that will better support the needs of researchers, funders, publishers and librarians. Long-term trends in scholarly publication and how those trends place new and/or changing demands on the infrastructure will also be examined. Finally, a gap analysis will identify issues that currently are not being sufficiently addressed, where additional investments are needed, and where collective action is required.

Among those key stakeholders who will be interviewed during the research portion of the work: authors/researchers, funding agencies, publishers, libraries, organizations that provide services for scholarly communications, and organizations that represent these stakeholders.

Ithaka S+R will have full editorial independence in the production of this paper. 

This work is supported by funding from the American Chemical Society, Elsevier,  IEEE, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley.

Read Ithaka S+R’s Roger Schonfeld’s blog piece on the project.

The post New white paper to report on current and potential future ecosystem of scholarly communications infrastructure appeared first on STM Association.

Regardless of the field of study, sharing data is one of the most fundamental aspects of maintaining the integrity of research. The availability of research data plays a vital role in ensuring reproducibility and the ongoing development of Open Science.

A lot of progress has been made in the last years by the entire scholarly ecosystem. Nearly 100 million data citations are tracked and thousands of repositories have adopted data citation best practices. An equal number of journals have adopted data policies, data availability statements and have established persistent links between articles and datasets, and an increasing number of funders have adopted data policies. Data Management Plans are increasingly used, and institutes are supporting researchers with data software tools, data stewards, and launching institutional data repositories.

In the process, the challenges of how to collect, share and present data to a range of audiences must be integrated with questions as to whether the data is accurate and addresses the questions researchers wish to answer. We must better understand what constitutes quality data, how it can be ensured, and the processes and roles involved. Understanding of the importance of these issues emerged from group discussions at the STM Research Data Program (RDP), aimed at boosting the effective sharing, linking and citing of research data alongside publications. This Research Paper has developed from desk-based research and in consultation with leading experts, all of whom are involved with aspects of data quality across scholarly communications and research.

We hope this Research Paper offers a valuable perspective on the ongoing transition to data-dependent science. We also hope that our framework and the highlighted initiatives will inform current debate on how to ensure data quality.

ACCESS THE DATA QUALITY IN RESEARCH PAPER

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