Standards & technology

Collective innovation and standardization to advance open, trusted research.

Standards & Technology are central to all that STM does. Our work here convenes STM members of all shapes and sizes to pool ideas, resources, experience, and innovations to advance open, trusted research — together. This is how STM accelerates positive change.

The way we see it

Collectively, we identify issues that affect us and the research communities that we serve today, and forecast problems that potentially lie ahead. We brainstorm solutions and develop ideas into standards or technology concepts.  We build prototypes, run pilots, and work with partners — particularly with STM Solutions — where appropriate. We organize learning events, track critical standards and technology developments in the wider publishing industry, provide input for standardization efforts and consultations, track the publishing participation in various standards bodies and alert members and the STM Board on important developments. We zero in on topics that are at the heart of STM’s strategy including topics in Research Integrity, Open Research, and Social Responsibility – for example solutions to increase the visibility and consistency of retraction information, standard mechanisms to express rights reserved and license information for text & data mining purposes, and guidance for authors to declare the use of AI in a consistent and clear manner.  

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WHAT'S AHEAD?

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Meet the committee

STM’s Standards & Technology efforts are guided by the Standard & Technology Committee (STeC) that works to guide the priorities, create task & finish groups to carry out specific projects, and lend expertise and services to all committees across the association.

  • Tony Alves, Highwire
  • Rachel Bock, Wiley
  • Stacey Burke, American Physiological Society
  • Scott Dineen, Optica Publishing Group
  • Nisha Doshi, Cambridge UP
  • Samantha Green, Silverchair
  • Andrew Kelly, Taylor & Francis
  • Anna Rabitti, Frontiers
  • Henning Schoenenberger, Springer Nature
  • Adam Sewell, IOP Publishing
  • Brian Sieger, IEEE
  • Myles Slater, Emerald Publishing
  • Andrew Smeall, Sage Publications
  • Heather Staines, DeltaThink
  • Mark Wilmshurst, Elsevier
  • Aaron Wood, American Psychological Association
  • Ralph Youngen, American Chemical Society (Chair)

Core Initiatives

Content-update Signaling and Alerting Protocol

CUSAP enhances transparency and integrity in scholarly records, notifying platforms of updates to published works for responsible dissemination.

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Researcher Identity

Examining publisher methods for verifying identities of authors, reviewers, and editors to strengthen research integrity through a unified framework.

 

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Article 4 Implementation

Task & Finish Group (TFG) on implementation of Article 4 of the 2019 EU Directive for Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM).

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The STM Future Lab

The Standards & Technology Future Lab is a platform for a wider STM Community to share input and insights to help us advance trusted research. Our Lab is composed of a diverse membership of inspired individuals, appointed by their own organisations, who are eager to help envision future strategies to drive our mission forward.

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Alt-Text Accessibility

The Alt-Text Accessibility Task & Finish Group (TFG) aims to deliver best-practice recommendations for the creation of alt-texts for scholarly images, to help to enable publishers to in making their content accessible to users with disabilities, and in meeting the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA standards.

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The Latest from STM

Global Reporting Standard for AI Disclosure in Research: first consultation is open

*AI *Announcements *Research Integrity *Standards and Technology 01/27/26

Transparency about the use of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in research articles and other scholarly outputs is an important aspect of research integrity. At present, practices for  how  to disclose AI use vary widely across disciplines, regions, and publication cultures.  To address this issue, STM has released a report “Recommendations for a Classification of AI…

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Making scholarly images more accessible: STM’s Draft Taxonomy now open for feedback

*Announcements *Standards and Technology 01/21/26

The STM Alt Text Task & Finish Group (TFG) has released a draft image-type taxonomy for scholarly images — and we’re inviting your feedback.  This draft is the result of a collaborative effort by STM members to support accessible publishing, with a focus on helping authors and publishers write better image descriptions (alt text). Not only does…

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In the Media | Times Higher Education — “Unseen efforts to catch paper mill outputs bear fruit”

*AI *In the media *Paper Mills *Research Integrity 01/13/26

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…

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New Report Documents Publisher Investment in Research Integrity Infrastructure

*Announcements *Research Integrity

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…

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