NEWSROOM CATEGORY:
*Policy & Advocacy

To kick off the new year, Congress agreed to a “minibus” spending package that rejects the Administration’s draconian cuts to federal science funding. The package includes several key science agencies, with only slight reductions for NSF, NASA, USGS, and NOAA, and modest increases for the DOE Office of Science and NIST. While these numbers might ordinarily disappoint the…

Last year, NIH abruptly cancelled or rejected thousands of grants based on their alleged non-alignment with Administration priorities. This included the unilateral rejection of projects addressing disfavored topics such as diversity, equity, and inclusion. In response to legal challenges — though without admitting wrongdoing — NIH has agreed to reconsider more than 5,000 grants. According…

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) last year issued a Request for Information (RFI) on “how DOE should best structure and enable partnerships to curate DOE scientific data across the National Laboratory complex for use in artificial intelligence (AI) models.” In response, STM highlighted the importance of clear licensing frameworks, the value of high-quality and validated information,…

The European Commission has released a report examining how copyright law affects the ability of institutions — such as libraries, educational establishments, research organisations, and museums — to provide remote access to digital materials for education and research. The report highlights legal and practical challenges and explores potential avenues to improve the framework for conducting research remotely…

On January 13, NSF released a draft of its 2026–2030 Strategic Plan and invited public comment by January 26, 2026. The draft is shorter and more high-level than previous versions, outlining nine objectives along with broad strategies and success measures for each. For example, to measure progress on the first objective — “Uphold tenets of Gold…

The French CSPLA has published the findings of a much-anticipated inquiry into a key legal question: Do European copyright laws apply to large AI models developed outside the EU? The report concludes that once AI models are marketed within the EU, European copyright law applies—regardless of where the servers are located or where training occurred. An…

In an article on growing threats to research integrity, Times Higher Education covers STM’s report Safeguarding Scholarly Communication: Publisher Practices to Uphold Research Integrity. The article describes how publishers are increasingly focused on identifying integrity issues before publication—responding to paper mills, AI-enabled fabrication, and coordinated fraud networks—while scaling up research integrity teams and collaborating on…

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (January 13, 2026) – A new report, released today, offers the first collective look at the range of approaches scholarly publishers are deploying to tackle threats to research integrity, threats that have evolved in nature and scaled dramatically in recent years. The STM-commissioned report was researched and compiled by research firm Research…

STM has endorsed an amicus curiae brief filed by the Copyright Alliance in the ongoing U.S. appeals case Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence. The case raises important questions about copyright protection for editorial content — including material similar in nature and function to content produced by STM’s members. The case also presents a set of facts under which the lower court rightly found ROSS’s…

On 9–10 December 2025, STM’s annual Innovation & Integrity Days brought together publishers, startups, funders, researchers and infrastructure providers for two days of focused, cross-sector collaboration in London.  Now in its third year (building on the legacy of STM Week), this year’s Innovation & Integrity Days reflected a noticeable shift: more dialogue across traditional boundaries, more…