In the scholarly publishing world, spring brings the annual return of STM Trends, a future-forward look at the entire ecosystem of scholarly communications by members of the STM Association. STM Trends captures the most impactful changes in research and publishing in a single themed image.

Each spring, the scholarly publishing sector looks forward to the release of STM Trends, which provides a thematic representation of the major advancements in research and publishing — as they exist in the future.

In December 2023, our STEC committee and Future Lab members met in London to deliberate and predict the evolution of scholarly communications over the next five years, using the Delphi method for collaborative forecasting.

The focus extended beyond just technological advancements, incorporating wider perspectives from STM committee members including those from Research Integrity, Open Research, and Social Responsibility — as well as representation from journal editors.

RE-IMAGINING THE HUMAN FACTOR
Defining our place and values in the networked machine era

This year’s STM Trends edition imagines a future in which AI has become an essential part of the fabric of research and scholarly publishing. We see a blended workforce with humans and machines working together to advance trusted research, building a vast network of knowledge that links articles to research data, experiments to code, authors to institutes and funders, and scholarly works to podcasts. Content is produced and consumed by both humans and machines, traditional peer-review is supplemented by automated checks, and trust is a quality that flows between nodes in the scholarly network.

But this future is not a technical utopia: Papermills and pirates attempt to exploit technology for their own gain, and fissures appear in the global scholarly network. And, for some, the world has just become too complex and it’s time to go back to basics. In this hyper-complex system, how do we ensure accountability, transparency, ethics, and equity? How do we preserve the Human Factor?

Download Trends 2028.

Central to this theme are three main tenets — key factors that underpin this year’s story. 

If you’re an STM member, we welcome you to request a Trends 2028 presentation to facilitate future-forward discussions and ideation at your organisation.

STM Trends 2028 Presentation Request

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