STM Response to NSF Strategic Plan

NSF released a draft 2026-2030 Strategic Plan in January 2026 and requested public input on it. STM submitted a response that emphasized the potential for partnership between NSF and STM publishers to achieve their objectives, noting that Gold Standard Science hinges on high-quality, validated articles reporting on discoveries. These are enabled through publisher investments, and thererfore inflexible and unfunded public access policies stand in the way of achieving NSF’s goals. STM’s response also noted that measures of success should be broader than simply counting articles and other items in NSF’s repository, and offered dialogue to share publishers’ expertise with metrics.