This year has brought unprecedented challenges to the U.S. research enterprise – sweeping federal funding cuts, capricious reductions in the federal workforce, and destabilizing attacks on universities, laboratories, and federal research agencies. 

More than simply a policy shift, these actions adversely affect America’s scientific enterprise and will negatively reshape higher education for generations. These disruptions are not merely a flashpoint, but underscore a deeper crisis: a loss of public trust in the essential role of American research and scholarship in driving economic growth, innovation, and the public good. 

View from above of people joining and gathering wooden gears together.

Libraries and publishers represent the interests of thousands of authors, readers, scientists, researchers, students, and lifelong learners. While we don’t always agree, we are speaking out together to convey our shared commitment to the integrity, trustworthiness, accessibility, and continuity of the scientific and cultural record. Today, we stand united to face the mounting risks to public trust and the social benefit that research delivers. 

Future generations depend on our actions today. That’s why we must stand together to uphold trust and integrity in the research enterprise.

Research does not occur in isolation—it is a collaborative process involving researchers, libraries, government agencies, publishers, associations and societies, local communities, and the broader public. Inquiry-driven investigation has yielded countless innovations that would otherwise have been impossible. 

While the systems enabling these advances are not perfect and should never be static, safeguarding the core engines of U.S. prosperity — institutions that foster economic mobility for all Americans and deliver new knowledge to improve Americans’ lives — is crucial.

Research is essential to delivering on the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for generations to come. 

In response to these challenges, we reaffirm our commitment to the scientific process and scholarly dialogue, and we call on our colleagues, policymakers, institutional leaders, and the public to do the same.

In response to these challenges, we believe in and support:

  • Public investment in basic science and the humanities — investments that drive new discoveries and provide the cultural context necessary to responsibly enable technological and scientific breakthroughs.
  • The need for broad access to validated, trusted information — for today’s citizens and future generations — along with robust support for the infrastructure and information provided by libraries, archives, and publishers. 
  • The Importance of research integrity and the professional scholarly process of free and evidence-based discussion of competing claims.
  • Protecting and advancing freedom of speech, academic freedom and nondiscrimination in the marketplace of ideas. And ensuring research and scholarship remain free from political interference.  

All change and advancement in the research and scholarly enterprise must be grounded in these principles. Without them, we cannot build public trust in science and the scholarly enterprise. Our shared concern is not based solely on this rededication to trust and integrity in the research process. It is born of genuine concern for and commitment to public health, economic prosperity, equity of access to information, and ensuring the value of public good. Future generations depend on our actions today. That’s why we must stand together to uphold trust and integrity in the research enterprise. By working collectively and collaboratively, we can achieve meaningful and lasting improvements.

If you’d like to provide feedback or express interest in the ongoing work of this group, please use this form.

Andrew K. Pace, Executive Director
Association of Research Libraries (ARL)

Caroline Sutton, CEO
International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM)

Teresa Anderson, Executive Director
Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)

Melanie Dolechek, Executive Director
Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP)

Peter Berkery, Executive Director
Association of University Presses (AUPresses)

Teresa Anderson

Teresa Anderson

Teresa Anderson is the Executive Director for the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) at the American Library Association (ALA). Teresa came to ALA from ASIS International, where she served for 32 years in a variety of positions in publishing, content strategy, association management, partnerships, and product development.

Peter Berkery

Peter Berkery has served as the Executive Director of the Association of University Presses since early 2013. Berkery came to AUPresses (then AAUP) from Oxford University Press, where he served for the previous five years as Vice President and Publisher for the US Law Division. Prior to that he worked for Wolters Kluwer for 11 years in a series of positions, publishing works on securities licensing examination training, securities law, taxation, and financial planning. He began his publishing career at a division of Thomson Reuters.

Andrew K. Pace

Andrew K. Pace

Andrew became Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries 2024. He leads a team of scholarly communication, policy, advocacy, education, DEI, data, and governance experts for ARL's 125 member libraries. Prior to ARL, Andrew was executive director for the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions library consortium. He held Executive Director positions at OCLC from 2008-2022, where he managed cloud-based application development and later led teams in OCLC Research focused on metadata policy, data science, and applied research. Andrew was Head of Information Technology at North Carolina State University Libraries from 1999-2007. He is active in the American Library Association and currently serves on ALA Council and was elected to the NISO Board of Directors in 2023. He has presented at dozens of conferences and is the author of several works dealing with library technology, product and project management, and community building.

Caroline Sutton

Caroline Sutton

Caroline Sutton is CEO for the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM). Prior to joining STM Caroline served as Director of Open Research for Taylor & Francis. She co-founded Co-Action Publishing, a pioneer in Open Access Publishing and was one of the founders and first President of OASPA where she served on the board between 2008-2021. She has served on numerous boards within the scholarly communications space including the Board of Directors of Dryad (2017-2023), and Infrastructure Services for Open Access (IS4OA), the managing organization of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (2013-2022). Caroline holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Uppsala, Sweden.

Discussion

1 Thought on "Trust and Integrity: A Research Imperative"

Thank you all (and your organizations) for this public statement! At this point in time, it’s absolutely imperative for libraries and publishers to put aside their differences and focus on the shared need to protect the research endeavor, so it’s great to see this happening. However, I do wish you’d been able to say something more specifically about censorship and DEIA — while these are implicit in the fourth bullet, they are so fundamental I would have liked to see them called out explicitly. But again, many thanks for your leadership!

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