Today’s post is by Alice Meadows and Suze Kundu, science communicator and research community engagement consultant – both writing in a personal capacity as members of the team that initiated the Declaration To #DefendResearch Against U.S. Government Censorship.

Yesterday marked the 100th day of the second Trump administration. Since his inauguration on January 20, the President has issued 137 executive orders,* many of which, if adopted, will impact federally-funded research and researchers, either directly (eg, via defunding and censorship) or indirectly (eg, via immigration and tariffs). They pose a – literally – existential threat to science and scholarship, not just to federally-funded research, and not just in the US.

We know we are not alone in feeling overwhelmed, scared, and dispirited by what’s happening. But, as two members of the group that initiated the Declaration To #DefendResearch Against U.S. Government Censorship, we’re also not willing to give up the fight. As researchers and innovators at our core, we’re all about a good SWOT analysis. So, in this post, we share some thoughts on how, if all stakeholders worked together to stand up for research, the scholarly communications community could turn Trump’s threats into opportunities.

At the moment, with a few notable exceptions (including, most recently, Harvard University), almost all the resistance to the Trump administration’s efforts to defund research, stifle dissent, and destroy academic freedom has been at the grassroots level. Researchers, federal workers, and others have been speaking truth to power, both as individuals and collectively. We believe that, at a time when research is increasingly under threat from political interference and censorship, this sort of solidarity is not just symbolic, it’s strategic. But it will only be truly effective if it involves all stakeholders in the research ecosystem. Because research doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It flows through networks of collaborators, institutions, funders, and publishers. When bad actors attempt to silence or suppress research – particularly in subject areas like climate science, reproductive health, or social justice – it doesn’t just hurt individual scholars; it destabilizes the entire ecosystem. Now, more than ever, we need publishers, institutions, funders, and libraries, as well as researchers themselves, to stand together in a united front to protect the independence and openness of scholarly communications. By joining forces across the research community we can send a much stronger message: attacks on research are attacks on the infrastructure of progress itself.

There are some indications that coordinated action is starting to happen within individual stakeholder communities. Libraries, of course, have a long history of acting collectively, for example, through consortia. So it’s not surprising that organizations like the American Library Association are pushing back strongly on behalf of their members, while EveryLibrary has developed a super-easy tool for contacting elected officials about the IMLS cuts. Institutions are finally beginning to unite too. This recent letter from university presidents protesting “against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education” has over 500 signatures at the time of writing. And the faculty senates of the Big Ten universities are creating a ‘mutual defense compact’ against Trump action, with 10 institutions already on board.* Philanthropic funders are also joining forces, as seen in this public statement, which invites “all charitable giving organizations to join us in this effort to protect our freedom to express ourselves, to give, and to invest in our communities.” And a group of societies have signed a letter to Congress organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists. We haven’t (yet) seen much in the way of collective action by publishers although AU Presses, for example, has issued several strong statements. And, encouragingly, we are seeing leadership on the part of some individual publishers and journals. We are especially delighted that Emerald Publishing have  signed the Declaration and are publicly sharing their own campaign to #DefendResearch, in order to help other publishers get a head start on developing their own resources. Through their partnership with EveryLibrary, they are also supporting academic librarians in navigating attacks on intellectual freedom. We strongly encourage you to watch this recording of their recent webinar.

But, while it’s encouraging to see some organizations coming together within their existing siloes, that’s not enough. There’s a real opportunity – and imperative – for all stakeholders in the research community to join forces. Each group plays a vital role in the research endeavor. Now is the time to show our support for everyone’s contributions, and to help everyone understand that, by dismantling the research infrastructure through censorship and defunding, we hamper research progress and its benefits in the US and across the world. We call on the industry bodies that represent all these different stakeholders to leverage their relationships and networks to develop something that’s bigger than just a campaign — a movement that spans all individuals and organizations working to fund, conduct, support, and disseminate the science and scholarship essential for our survival and success.

For example, let’s look at the defunding of federally-funded research. This is already underway and clearly has the potential to be catastrophic – but the way it’s being reported isn’t helping make the case for why this is bad for anyone other than the universities and institutions involved. The narrative is almost always about these organizations “losing” the money they’ve been “given” by the government when, in fact, the impact will be felt by all of us. Not just the researchers, administrators, staff, and students at those institutions, but everyone, everywhere. That’s the message we need to be getting across, over and over and over again.

The Trump administration’s censorship of research is another area where much of the public debate is being framed in terms of “academic freedom.” This is, obviously, a major concern – but, like the defunding of research, the censorship being enforced under Trump will harm everyone, not just academia, and it’s vital to get that message across. For example, it is literally impossible to conduct credible research on just about anything without taking into account what is now being banned as “DEI.” How can you carry out a valid clinical trial without knowing the demographics of the patients who are participating? Meaningfully evaluate someone psychologically without knowing how they perceive their identity? Learn from our history without first understanding it, warts and all? Or (one of our personal “favorites”) treat someone with a peanut allergy if the words “peanut allergies” are on a list of banned words?

The truth is that, for decades, many (most?) of us who are involved in scholarly communications have taken it for granted that the benefits of the research we conduct, support, and publish are obvious – and that there will therefore be a pretty much never-ending stream of public support and government money for it. We haven’t collectively made it a priority to properly educate either the public or our policy-makers about the importance of the research their dollars are funding. The open access movement has helped to address this, but it’s one thing to make research articles publicly available and quite another to help people understand the importance of their findings.

And by people, we also mean journalists. How many headlines have you seen in the past couple of months that focus on what we, the people, are losing rather than what they, the institutions, are losing? The top three headlines from a quick Google search for “trump research funding cuts” brought up: Beyond Ivy League, RFK Jr.’s NIH slashed science funding across states that backed Trump; How Trump 2.0 is slashing NIH-backed research — in charts; and Universities are facing big cuts to research funding. At Duke, it’s a time for ‘damage control’. Imagine how much more powerful it would be if, instead, they read more like: RFK Jr.’s NIH slashed science funding for cancer treatments that have saved XXX lives in the past year; How Trump 2.0 is slashing NIH-backed research estimated to generate $XX million in 2025; or Universities are facing big cuts to research funding: here’s how that will affect your community.

Now imagine if those sorts of headlines were part of a bigger public education campaign, developed, funded, and delivered jointly by funders, institutions, libraries, publishers, and researchers themselves. And let’s think big! Email and letter-writing campaigns, phone and text banking, and more – to make it easy for people to contact their elected officials. Advertising on TV, radio, billboards, and in local newspapers – to help everyone understand how they and their community will be impacted by the Trump administration’s attacks on research. Viral social media campaigns on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, etc – to share meaningful stories about the value of science and scholarship. Heck, what about a nationwide tour à la AOC and Bernie, but with high-profile academic authors like Robert Reich or Heather Cox Richardson talking about the great return on investment that research delivers for us all?

So often, organizations in our space focus on their differences rather than their commonalities.  But we also have a strong history of successfully partnering on shared goals – from persistent identifiers and metadata standards to global knowledge equity, and more. The same spirit of collaboration must now urgently be harnessed to defend research against suppression and silencing – something that everyone who works in scholarly communications cares passionately about. So let’s set aside our usual disagreements (open access business models, pricing, copyright, etc., etc.) to focus on what’s really important right now. Let’s seize this opportunity to all stand together in the fight to #DefendResearch!

*at the time of writing

With thanks to Catherine Mitchell, Lisa Schiff, and Peter Suber from the Declaration team for their thoughtful review of this post