Keynote Speaker: Introduced by Steven Heffner, Chief Publication Officer and Managing Director, IEEE / STM Board Chair

Daan du Toit, Deputy Director General, International Cooperation and Resources, South African Department of Science and Innovation

• Scholarly publishing has entered a period of rapid change. Artificial intelligence is transforming how research is discovered and used, while policymakers around the world are introducing new rules that will influence access to knowledge, data flows, content production and consumption, platform responsibilities, copyright, research integrity, and the broader digital economy.
• For publishers, innovation no longer happens in isolation. Technical infrastructure, community standards, and public policy are increasingly shaping the opportunities and constraints facing the research ecosystem. Decisions made by governments and regulators can have significant implications for how research is disseminated, discovered, reused, and integrated into emerging AI systems.
• In this conversation, Rose L’Huillier, GetFTR Board chair; Director at Crossref; Senior Vice President, Research Products, Elsevier, and Claudia Russo, Director, Public Affairs EU, STM, will explore the growing intersection between policy and innovation in scholarly communication. Drawing on perspectives from publishing, research infrastructure, and European policymaking, they will discuss how industry initiatives, infrastructure investments, and regulatory developments influence one another, and what this means for the future of research communication.

Attendees will gain practical insights into the policy trends shaping the publishing landscape, the infrastructure needed to support innovation at scale, and how publishers of all sizes can help ensure that scholarly communication remains effective, sustainable, and fit for an increasingly AI-enabled research environment.

Moderated by Priya Madina, VP, Research Ecosystem Initiatives, Springer Nature

Todd Carpenter, Executive Director, NISO
Tasha Mellins-Cohen, Executive Director, COUNTER Metrics
Todd Toler, Inaugural practice lead for AI in scholarly communication, Ithaka S+R

• As global research output increasingly shifts toward Asia, publishers are navigating new policy frameworks, evaluation models, and knowledge infrastructures emerging from China. This country now accounts for a growing share of global scholarly output and is reshaping how research is funded, assessed, disseminated, and measured. In China, investments in domestic journals, publishing platforms, and new research assessment approaches are strengthening national publishing capacity while expanding global influence.
• This session will examine the drivers behind these developments and their implications for publishers, technology providers, and research organisations. Speakers will explore evolving approaches to research assessment, infrastructure, integrity, metadata, and AI, and discuss how these changes may influence future publishing strategies and measures of success.

Participants will gain practical insights into the opportunities, challenges, and strategic considerations for engaging with one of the world’s most consequential and rapidly evolving research markets.

Bob Howard, Executive Vice President, Research, SAGE Publishing
Yu Sun, Associate  Editor-In-Chief, Tsinghua University Press
Ting Yue, OAJ team lead, National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences

• AI is making decisions across research and publishing. The question is: who is accountable for them?AI adoption in research has accelerated faster than the systems designed to govern it. Elsevier’s Researcher of the Future report (November 2025), a survey of more than 3,000 researchers across 113 countries, shows that 58% of researchers now use AI tools for work, up from 37% the previous year. Yet only 22% find those tools trustworthy, and just 32% say their institution has good AI governance. Wiley’s ExplanAItions study (2024), drawing on nearly 5,000 researchers, finds that 63% cite a lack of clear guidelines as the single biggest barrier to using AI more, not a lack of interest, and not a lack of capability.The gap between adoption and governance is widening. This session is about what happens in that gap, and who owns it.Rather than asking what AI can do, this session takes a provocative focus on what leaders could start thinking towards: where AI should be trusted to act independently, where human judgment must remain in control, and who is accountable when the boundary between them shifts. Ownership of trust, of risk, of the decisions that define how AI is used, is the thread that runs through every question this session asks.The session opens with two researchers, one early career and one mid-career, framing the conversation from inside the research process, grounding the discussion in the lived reality of how AI is reshaping scientific work before the panel engages.Designed as a structured debate, not a traditional panel, the session is built around four questions every research and publishing leader needs to answer, and most have not yet resolved.

Kim Eggleton, Head of Peer Review & Research Integrity, IOP Publishing
Maria Kowalczuk, Research Integrity Auditor Manager, Frontiers
Witold Kozakiewicz, Director of the Information and Library Centre at the Medical University of Lodz
Indira Sen, Junior Faculty Chair of Data Science for the Social and Economic Sciences, University of Mannheim
Jonathan Woahn, Co-founder, Cashmere

• Panel Composition:  This panel brings together voices from across the research ecosystem, each speaking from direct experience of where the human–machine boundary is being drawn, contested, and governed in practice.Researchers: grounding the debate in how AI is already reshaping day-to-day research, where trust is breaking down, and what institutions still owe them
  Publishers: enforcing integrity, provenance, and validation across the research record
  Librarians: navigating institutional governance and researcher support at the point of practice
  Technology providers: building the auditable, transparent systems that trust depends on

Executive leadership perspective: Trust under pressure: Decisions leaders can make in an AI-driven research ecosystem.
Moderated by Caroline Sutton, CEO, STM

Leading in the Trust Era: Governing AI, Defining Boundaries, and Scaling Responsibility:  What can leaders do differently—starting now—to operationalise trust at scale?

This closing Executive-level session brings the conference theme of operationalising trust into the boardroom. Rather than asking what AI can do, the discussion will focus on what leaders may want to decide: who owns trust inside the organisation, where human judgment must remain in control, which governance mechanisms are strong enough to hold under pressure, and how organisations should balance innovation, risk, transparency, and accountability.

Designed as a candid boardroom discussion, not a traditional panel, the session will explore how senior leaders are translating responsible AI principles into practical policies, workflows, disclosure practices, audit systems, and escalation processes. It will also examine where organisations are willing to take risks, where they are not, and how they manage reputational and operational risks in real time.

The session closes with a forward-looking question for every executive in the room: in an AI-driven research ecosystem, will trust and transparency become sources of competitive advantage? The organisations that lead will not simply be those that adopt AI fastest, but those that can define, govern, and stand behind how they use it.

Atul Goel, President, KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd
Laura Hassink,  Managing Director/President for STM Journals, Elsevier/RELX
Steven Heffner, Chief Publication Officer and Managing Director, IEEE
Barbara Kline Pope, Executive Director, Johns Hopkins University Press
Jessica Kowalski, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Research, Wiley