In today’s post, three Scholarly Kitchen Chefs — Haseeb Irfanullah, Phill Jones, and Alice Meadows — report on the recent European Association of Science Editors (EASE) Conference, which took place in Oslo, Norway, on May 14-16. 

Alice Meadows

After more decades of working in scholarly publishing/scholarly communications than I care to admit to, this was my very first European Association of Science Editors (EASE) conference. Having spent my career in a succession of marketing, communications, and community outreach roles, a conference for editors wasn’t really on my radar. I attended because the incoming EASE President, Bahar Mehmani (Elsevier), kindly invited me to deliver one of the keynotes. (And also, if I’m being honest, because it took place in Oslo – a city I’ve been wanting to visit, and that’s a rather beautiful six-hour train journey away from my daughter in Sweden.)

What a treat I was in for!

EASE is a pretty small conference – about 100 in-person attendees and another 50 or so virtual – but the global mix was impressive. By my count, a total of 39 countries, across all continents (except Antarctica), were represented – from Australia to Vietnam – 25 of them in person. Unsurprisingly, there was a good showing from Scandinavia and from Europe in general, but I also met people from Brazil, Iraq, Korea, and more. Not to mention, I finally had the pleasure of meeting fellow Scholarly Kitchen Chef, Haseeb Irfanullah (from Bangladesh) in person.

This interesting mix of attendees also made for an interesting mix of speakers and perspectives, but all with a shared commitment to tackling the very real challenges we are all facing around misinformation. Everyone I spoke to and heard from was passionate about their role as a gatekeeper of high-quality research findings, something that is more important today than ever. I learned a lot from all the sessions, but a few stood out to me as especially valuable.

Nicolien van der Linden (Elsevier) gave a great opening keynote on how false narratives are infiltrating scholarly communications through misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, including the role of researchers, editors, and the media in tackling these challenges. Her talk set the scene for the rest of the conference, much of which was focused on concrete and practical tips for editors.

For example, Research integrity checks: the promise and perils of new tech and how to find a balance (moderated by Brian Cody of Scholastica) included sensible advice about when AI can be useful (e.g., per Kim Eggleton of Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP), identifying patterns that no individual, or even a group of people, could possibly detect); and when it is not (Kim, again: “Science, at its nature, is weird and subjective. It requires nuance and an awareness of bias – things that, for now, no technology can handle as effectively as a human”).

There was more practical advice in Intercepting Misconduct – Practical Tips for Editors (moderated by Jason Roberts of KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd), where Dan Stuckey (Elsevier) shared a checklist for identifying suspected image manipulation and for suspected generative AI, as well as a helpful list of free tools and resources for editors (many thanks to Matt Hodgkinson of the Directory of Open Access Journals for those links).

And in How can you contribute to your journal’s sustainability (moderated by Iva Grabarić Andonovski of Food Technology and Biotechnology journal), I especially appreciated both Jo Wixon’s walk-through of the soon-to-be-launched EASE SDG checklist for journals, and Londa Schiebinger’s recorded introduction to the recently published Guidelines for Intersectional Analysis in Science and Technology (GIST) – also covered by Ana Heredia in this recent Scholarly Kitchen post).

There were many more excellent talks and takeaways from the conference, but I can’t end without a virtual round of applause for Haseeb who, in the closing debate, somehow managed to successfully make the case that journal editors do not need to worry about preventing misinformation from being spread! (Note to self, don’t ever agree to a debate with Haseeb!)

Phill Jones

In common with Alice, this was my first year as an EASE conference attendee. In the past, I’ve worked with EASE and a number of its council members on various volunteer activities, like events and webinars, usually focusing on the intersection of editorial practice and emerging technologies like AI. I was surprised and honored when last year, I was approached and asked if I’d like to run for the EASE council, an invitation that I gratefully accepted. I am proud to say, I joined the council officially during the annual general meeting, which took place immediately before the main conference program.

As a new council member, it seems to me that EASE is beginning something of a period of introspection and, I expect, growth while under Bahar’s excellent leadership. The rise of misinformation, industrialized research fraud, loss of public confidence in science, threats to funding, and geopolitical uncertainty are a worrying mix. The world is changing fast, and all facets of the academic enterprise need to adapt to face emerging challenges and threats. Editors, whether scientific, European, or otherwise, and the organizations that support them, are no exception to this. EASE is extremely well placed to play an important role in addressing these challenges, given its core mission ‘to improve the global standard and quality of science editing, by promoting the value of science editors and supporting professional development, research, and collaboration’.

The program for this year’s conference strongly reflected one of these big challenges: misinformation. Camilla Stoltenberg, Director General of the Norwegian Research Centre, gave a fascinating keynote presentation on Day Two of the conference, where she addressed some of the more systemic issues around the risk of government interference in urgent public health research and intervention. Her central thesis was that public health institutes are too easily influenced, not well enough regulated, and have insufficient guidelines to fall back on, which can lead to delays in reporting emergent health crises as governments seek to limit the economic impact of bad news. She cited the SARS and COVID crises as being good examples of this. Her work on how the COVID pandemic was handled, and how that lack of independence may have hampered responses, was published in the Journal of Public Health Policy in 2022. This talk felt particularly timely, given research funding cuts and restrictions that have been imposed recently in the US, but it’s important to remember that this phenomenon is neither new, Prof Stoltenberg’s example of SARS being a case in point, nor restricted to any particular country, a good example being former Australian education minister Simon Birmingham’s blocking of research in arts and humanities fields in 2018.

Big picture issues like the risk of government interference with research for geo-political reasons are important challenges for the entire research sector, but the obvious question arises: ‘What can scientific editors do about it?’ In some cases, the only lever available may be to speak out, act with personal integrity, and try to influence others to stand up too. On the other hand, it’s important to think creatively about the impact we can have directly within our own remit. On that subject, the conference had no shortage of ideas, specifically for editors looking to tackle research fraud, whether industrial scale or individual.

If you’ll forgive my slightly non-linear approach here, there was some great advice in the pre-conference workshop, Achieving an Effective Editorial Office in the Age of Misinformation, presented by EASE sister organization, ISMTE. Chaired by Mary Miskin of Charlesworth, alongside co-facilitators Charlotte McSharry from Emerald, Liliana Costa from Oxford University Press, and an excellent lineup of speakers, the workshop explored how editorial practice, workflows, and technology can work together to strengthen research integrity. Curiosity-driven innovation was a central theme of the workshop. Acting like a researcher is key; that is, it’s important to not only consider what the right questions are to ask but also how to go about answering them in a rigorous manner.

Liliana described how her team surveyed authors, drilled down into their editorial processes to understand where inconsistencies and inefficiencies happen, refined guidelines and ways of working to improve both quality and efficiency, and strengthened ethical oversight. This was later followed up by Julie Macdonnell’s talk on how to run a workflow or technology pilot. The questions to ask when making changes seem deceptively simple, but are often tricky to answer: ‘What problem are we trying to solve?’, ‘How do we choose what to pilot?’, ‘How will we know if the benefit is worth the cost?’ Asking and answering these questions in the right way requires both curiosity and an ability not to get overinvested in a given outcome. It also requires the support of leaders, with a willingness to accept that a negative outcome for a trial is just as much of a success as a positive one.

Jumping back to the main program of the meeting, the range of presentations and discussions was excellent, with diverse perspectives. The focus on how to use metadata as a trust marker was an important theme for me. Madhura Amdekar of Crossref made the excellent point in the panel on preserving the integrity of the scholarly record: metadata itself helps establish trust because it enables transparency and cross-checking. Surfacing that metadata and validating it based on who is making the assertion is how you create a trust marker. Bahar Mehmani chaired a panel on trust markers that explored this very idea. In that session, John Willinsky presented the publication facts label, which aggregates and presents statistics about peer review, time to publish, and integrity markers at the journal and article levels. George Cooper of F1000 also spoke about how they use badges to indicate which quality checks have been done.

There were many other interesting discussions over the three days I was there, but there was just too much interesting stuff for me to write about it all. I’m very much looking forward to working with the EASE council and membership over the next couple of years, as there’s a lot to be done and I think we’re well placed to make an impact defending research integrity and the role of editors in ensuring it.

Haseeb Irfanullah

Alice and Phill have touched upon the contents of the EASE Conference. Let me share my thoughts on three points: Hybrid modality, geographical representation, and beyond conference expectations.

First, similar to the last two editions in Valencia (2022) and in Istanbul (2023), the 18th EASE Conference in Oslo (2025) was a hybrid one. But, I must admit, I have some reservations about hybrid events. Just after the COVID-19 pandemic, I virtually attended a modest-sized hybrid conference on publishing. After that, I kind of promised myself not to join a hybrid event online as I felt so alone between the sessions while watching people in the main hall! Nevertheless, during all breaks of the 2025 EASE Conference, the gather.town platform was used to help online attendees interact with in-person and virtual session speakers. This year, 43% of registrants were online. Some sessions had both in-person and online speakers. All the session moderators gave online questions and comments a priority to reduce the gap between online and offline participants. So, overall, it seemed to me, hybrid modality worked well for the EASE in Oslo. Of course, the ongoing conference feedback survey will reveal if the online participants faced any challenges or had any serious complaints, besides missing out on delicious traditional Norwegian waffles with sour cream and strawberry jam in one of the afternoon tea breaks!

No doubt, in-person participation is unmatched and rewarding. My physical presence in Oslo was only possible with EASE’s support, as I was on its Council for 2023-2025. As a result, I could meet many people, and some for the very first time, in-person, with whom I’ve been virtually interacting almost every month for the last 3-5 years — my EASE Council and Environment & Sustainability Committee members, and, of course, my SSP colleague Alice Meadows!

Second, although Alice has touched upon it, let me dig a bit deeper into the geographical representation. With 200 registrants (in-person 114, online 86), from 39 countries, geographical coverage was simply amazing: Asia 20 (highest: India 7), Africa 13 (top 3: Ethiopia, Ghana & Nigeria 3 each), Australia 1, Europe 137 (top 4: UK 31, Finland 17, Ukraine 16, & Norway 13), North America 17 (USA 13 & Canada 4), and South America 5 (Brazil only); 7 didn’t disclose their countries (data source: EASE Secretariat). Role-wise, delegates were 57.5%, speakers/moderators 23%, sponsored delegates 16%, and the rest were council members and EASE staff. It is obvious that non-European attendees would be low in an event of an organization having “European” in its name. But EASE’s active 13 regional chapters, its year-round online events, supportive sponsors, and arranging of three hybrid workshops in the venue by EASE (on editor’s career), COPE (on ethics), and ISMTE (on editorial office management) before the conference, on May 13 & 14, indeed drove registrants’ diversity, with around 30% from outside Europe.

Finally, the reception by the honorable Mayor of Oslo in the fascinating Oslo City Hall, where the Nobel Peace Prize has been given since 1990, was just amazing! But, one of the highlights of the week came on the very next day of the conference. May 17 is Norway’s Constitution Day, locally known as ‘Syttende mai’ (Seventeenth of May). The EASE conference was, in fact, arranged keeping that occasion in mind! A superb children’s parade through the city paid tribute to the King and concluded in front of the palace. The photos I took say it all — how vibrant and colourful the day was! This was very thoughtful of our conference host (Norwegian Medical Association) to think about it. In-person conferences are great opportunities to connect with local history, culture, heritage, and nature.

As post-conference activities, different organizations do some specific things: EASE publishes a Conference Packet to generate revenue, and the Researcher2Reader Conferences publicly share survey results as a means of (re)connecting with its past and future delegates. This year on May 28-30, the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) Annual Meeting was fully in-person. The SSP has introduced an innovative Annual Meeting Highlights Webinar to be held on June 17, where virtual participants, with a reduced registration fee, will also be able to access and discuss the recordings of the annual meeting. We need innovations in our annual events to go beyond the event dates. These are essentially conduits to enter into the future, not only a place to reflect on the past and present.