The STM Conference Frankfurt 2024: Advancing Trusted Research in the era of AI
We’re thrilled to invite you to join us this October for the STM Annual Conference in Frankfurt: a night of connection over dinner, followed by a full day of ideation, collaboration and connection—right before the Frankfurt Book Fair. This year, we’ve tailored a program that delves into the theme: Advancing Trusted Research in the AI Era.
Let our program committee set the stage, below. Read on to see what’s in store, and register to join us while you can (this event sold out last year).
—
Many STM members remember the shift from print publishing to digital. We embraced the changes by offering new features, creating shared infrastructure such as CrossRef, and allowing readers to access content as soon as possible, wherever possible. We launched new journals before Google launched its first search engine. We introduced new business models to accommodate the needs of funders, governments, corporations and the academy. We confronted new challenges as the cost and efficiency of making copies—lawfully and unlawfully—declined and as our users embraced preprints, mobile, social media, and demanded ever faster, ever more robust, tools.
With the growth of artificial intelligence and generative AI, our industry faces a new moment of inflection, opportunity, threat and innovation. Our content may not always be perfect, but it is the best available in terms of validation, quality markers, use of PIDs, consistency of formats, and other attributes. In contrast to materials found randomly on the web, this quality makes our books, journals and databases, especially as versions of record, highly sought after and indeed crucial for the high-stakes application of AI.
AI introduces noise into the system. It offers new paths to revenue and new ways to improve workflows and research outcomes, while challenging key assumptions underpinning subscription, rights-based, and open access business models. Here, at the STM Frankfurt Conference, we will explore what is at stake as AI becomes a norm. We will investigate the importance of quality to AI. We will discuss what it means to be “AI ready” from the perspective of our users and our members. We will debate the policy implications of broader and narrower copyright protection in a market where everyone agrees the content is valuable, but not everyone wants to pay to support its ongoing viability.
This—and more—awaits you in Frankfurt. Won’t you join us?