JOINLatest wave of U.S. policy moves signal an intensified push to redefine scientific publishing norms
On 23 May, President Trump signed an executive order to ‘restore Gold Standard Science’ — but what exactly does that mean?
In the executive order and related fact sheet, the administration claims there is a ‘reproducibility crisis’ in science and that the government needs to restore transparency to research. The direct targets here are policies that the administration disagrees with, such as environmental protections and COVID-19 precautions, but the rhetorical target is science itself.
This is different from, but echoes, previous efforts in 2015 and 2017 to limit EPA policymaking to data that is fully available to the public. The new order’s impact on scholarly publishing is unclear, but troubling.
In a move that affects our community more directly, on 27 May, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. threatened to stop government scientists from publishing in major medical journals, claiming that these journals are ‘corrupt’ and influenced by pharmaceutical companies. He also suggested that the National Institutes of Health might create their own journals. This coincides with Environmental Health Perspectives, a prominent science journal, closing to new submissions citing cuts in funding from NIH.
On a more promising note, in a separate interview earlier in May, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya committed to maintaining academic freedom for NIH’s scientists and disavowed efforts to censor their work.