Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post is by the group involved with a recent Scholarly Social Talks North event (in partnership with Emerald Publishing) on “Collaborative strategies to #DefendResearch and ensure academic freedom:” speakers Professor Mustafa B. Ozturk (Programme Director and Researcher at Queen Mary University of London), Sara Rouhi (Co-author of the #DefendResearch declaration) Josh Sendall (Acting Leeds University Librarian & Keeper of the Brotherton Collection), Terri Teleen (Americas President at Emerald Publishing); and organizers George Cooper (Scholarly Social) and Sarah McKenna (Scholarly Social).

For almost a year, the current White House administration’s aggressive stance towards federal scholarship and higher education has loomed large, casting a long shadow over the global scholarly communication ecosystem. Looking back to January, it’s hard to summarize the many and various threats facing academic freedom under the veil of appeals to government efficiency, taxpayer value, and ‘Gold Standard Science’. In this post, we do not set out to give a full account of the many instances of censorship in the US. Others, such as Columbia Law School’s Silencing Science Tracker, have, thankfully, done this work for us, as have many committed observers and initiatives aimed at recording and reversing changes to federal datasets in the US, such as the Data Foundation, the Data Rescue Project, the Harvard Law School Library Data.gov Archive, and the newly restored Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool.

Instead, we aim to offer a fresh perspective on the impact of the current political moment on scholarly communities outside of the US. This perspective is informed by a recent panel discussion and networking event held in Leeds, UK, on 25th September 2025, titled “DEI Under Threat: Collaborative Strategies to #DefendResearch” and hosted in collaboration with Emerald Publishing and Scholarly Social. This event set out to build on the work of the Declaration to Defend Research Against US Government Censorship co-authors (DefendResearch.org) by encouraging an open dialogue among the many stakeholders concerned with the instrumentalization of research for partisan ends following recent US policy shifts. The impetus for this panel was, of course, the unfolding situation facing scholarly communities in the US. But more than this, we sought to explore the extent to which these threats implicate publishers, librarians, and academic researchers outside of the US and to discuss strategies of collaborative resistance.

Censorship of US Scholarship Is a Global Concern

To be clear, safeguarding access to US government databases and information sources is a global concern. The US funding cuts have disrupted large-scale research projects and collaborations worldwide. Many of the first medical journals to respond publicly to the censorship of federal research are published outside of the US (see, for example, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal), having faced pressure to retract, correct, and amend authorship details to ensure that no papers written by federal employees contain any of the current administration’s ‘forbidden terms’. And, while we may like to think that heavily centralized state-supported research economies in countries like China and Hungary are uniquely exposed to political interference, the US is not the only democracy facing the same problems. Closer examination of the relationship between funding agencies and the UK government, for example, reveals structural vulnerabilities in the UK on a par with US counterparts, exposing research funders, like UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the UK Health Security Agency, to potential interference by elected officials who are hostile to the scientific endeavor.

Throughout Europe, populism is on the rise, contributing to polarization and an adversarial identity politics that seeks to scapegoat individuals, communities, and institutions for short-term political gain. In this political climate, it would be a mistake to assume that anti-scientific sentiment can be countered without a broad coalition of stakeholders dedicated to safeguarding DEI and academic freedom.

We therefore sought to explore the conditions, prospects, aims, and practicalities of such a coalition, transcending professional and geographic boundaries, with a panel representing activist, librarian, academic, and publishing voices on this topic.

None of this is new, and the censorship of scholarship has a long history. As Sara Rouhi explained, “it’s really easy, particularly in the US where we tend to be very short-sighted, to forget that all of this has happened before,” pointing to an infamous Nature editorial from 1937, calling out the censorship of Jewish researchers in Germany at the time. This editorial is striking in two ways: its argument that scientific inquiry can only develop to its full extent in an atmosphere of political freedom, and that everyone engaged in scholarly inquiry ought to be empowered to pursue their research, wherever it leads. This right to follow results freely has largely been taken for granted in the US and Europe, but is something researchers are increasingly struggling with in the present context.

Building on this point, Professor Mustafa Ozturk highlighted that politics constrains research not only through the curbing of academic freedoms, but also by contesting “the very existence of people and their liberty of self-determination [with] gender self-determination, for example, now at stake.” Put differently, political interventions seek to remove vulnerable populations from the research agenda through defunding, delegitimation, and procedural exclusion, thereby rendering certain lives and experiences invisible and unknowable, an epistemic strategy of willing them out of existence.

Echoes of state censorship from earlier eras are unmistakable, yet the speed and scale of changes affecting global scholarship are cause for alarm, as are the risks borne disproportionately by Black, minority ethnic, and LGBTQ+ scholars when speaking out and resisting. As Sara illustrated, this is a deliberate strategy on the part of the current US administration, to flood the zone and overwhelm; to curtail coordinated action and resistance: “They’re trying to make us tired. They’re trying to wear us out.” But far from wallowing in apathetic despair, the discussion moved quickly to practical steps that can be taken by organizations and individuals to resist censorship creep effectively and collaboratively.

How Organizations Can Resist Censorship

Organizations concerned with censorship face risks of financial consequences for outspoken resistance, and, with the increasing pressures, particularly on smaller organizations, this can weigh heavily on senior staff who have a workforce relying on them. But, as Terri Teleen reminded us, “the danger of not standing up is that your business is gone. Would you rather have a business that’s been targeted, or one that no longer exists?” Political neutrality may feel necessary as a communications strategy, but there are still ways to take positive action:

• Integrity is central to the endeavor of scholarly publishing. Without commitments to editorial independence, the checks and balances of peer review, and a certain standard of behavior agreed upon through cross-industry groups such as the Committee on Publication Ethics, the ecosystem collapses. Organizations must be clear about these shared values and be uncompromising in championing them.
• Collaboration is also vital. Every webinar, working group, and panel discussion contributes towards a conscious coordination of activities, ensuring that topics can’t be swept under the rug. For example, you can follow and support the work of the non-profit EveryLibrary Institute, an organization that is tracking and acting on threats to academic libraries.
• Think strategically about where you hold your conferences. If it’s possible to host outside the US, in a country where visa laws are not so challenging, do so. Or, if you are asking individuals to travel to the US, provide as much support and guidance as possible on what to do if they have problems or are detained.
• Embedding diversity and inclusion practices into day-to-day processes can make a real difference to organizational culture; including goals in strategic planning and decision-making will create ripple effects. Language matters, but advancing DEI in your organization is about more than performative rhetoric. Instead, focus on embedding principles of equity into all your organizational activities. This could include working with a company like B-Radical to help diversify your talent pipeline, as Emerald has done, or engaging with the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC), for example, by joining their DEIA Community of Practice and adopting the recommendations from the five Toolkits for Equity.
• A large motivation of the open access movement is to democratize knowledge. Supporting the increasing accessibility of research is, at its core, inclusive. And, by providing a fixed version of record to a global audience with a comprehensive audit trail, the scholarly record remains protected. All parties involved in scholarly communication, including authors, editors, publishers, and librarians, share a responsibility to ensure that we do not bow to state pressure to distort or constrain access to the scholarly record. Efforts to provide paywall-free indexing services to retain and distribute publisher metadata, such as OpenAlex, ought to be supported as a means of safeguarding a public record of published scholarship.
• Maintain our efforts in publishing the social sciences and humanities, even if there’s less to be gained financially when compared with STEM outputs. As Josh Sendall explained, “the underfunding, or economic censorship if you will, of the social sciences is an obvious form of self-preservation for those in power, insomuch as nobody’s better positioned than a social scientist to critique the actions of the government.”

How Individuals Can Resist Censorship

An important thread woven throughout this discussion was around the balance of risk. We were keen to emphasize that individuals should think about the potential consequences for themselves when choosing how to act. However, there are routes towards quiet resistance that are less likely to place anyone in personal danger or damage a hard-earned career. Any action that we can take as individuals, even if it seems small, helps to empower all of us to defend research against the advancing tide of censorship.

• Know what your ‘red line’ is. Reflect on your own values and decide the limits to which you are willing to flex them within your role. You don’t need to share where your limits fall, but developing an awareness of them will ensure you are more conscious of your own actions.
• Understand your rights. For example, approximately half of the constitutions around the world specifically codify academic freedom in legislation.
• Master the distinction between academic freedom and free speech. It’s essential to assess: is this speaker a professional academic expert operating in their field? Or, are they simply presenting a personal opinion? Conversely, if you are the researcher, be precise: clearly delineate when you are speaking as an expert and when you are speaking as a layperson. Your rights and responsibilities shift dramatically with these roles. An atmospheric physicist’s academic freedom covers controversial empirical research on climate. Their free speech may cover their political views (though not in the lab!). Do not confuse the two qualified rights. The risk lies in attributing expert weight to someone’s opinion outside of their area of expertise, regardless of how authoritatively they speak.
• Use the tools available to you to encourage action on a local level. Call or send letters to your elected representatives, write editorials in local newspapers, or share with your followers online, to keep discussions alive around the dinner table. Many groups, including the AAUP, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Declaration to #DefendResearch are providing resources to enable this kind of engagement.

Speaking as One Community 

The discussion concluded with an appeal from an audience member for publishers, librarians, and academic researchers to find ways to trust one another and collaborate. We support this appeal — for all stakeholders invested in scholarly communication to speak as one community against censorship and in support of our shared values, our shared resilience, and ultimately our survival.

Successful collaboration depends on a level of mutual trust that transcends the transactional thinking that so often shapes interactions between our communities of practice.

There are good reasons to believe that multi-stakeholder collaboration is an effective deterrent to censorship. At the time of writing, there are 491 active legal challenges to the current White House administration’s actions, covering the full spectrum of assaults on higher education and research involving (or merely mentioning) topics of diversity, equity, inclusion, race, gender, sexuality, climate science, and justice. Many of the world’s most prominent trade publishers — ordinarily competitors, vying for market dominance — are engaged in class-action lawsuits to resist the surge in book bans affecting children’s rights to read and access literature and information in public and school libraries. These large-scale efforts represent a victory for far-sighted collectivism over zero-sum fragmentation and demonstrate what is possible at the organisational level. But, as our discussion also illustrated, individuals have a crucial role to play, and small, even quiet acts of resistance can have a big impact.

Above all, for those invested in the notion of open academic discourse, free from political interference, Sara left us with an imperative for this current moment: “Do not despair. It’s a privilege to despair. Don’t lose sight of the fact that resistance takes a lot of different shapes and you know whatever you are able to do, even if it feels small, is something.” Or, as Josh put it, quoting cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”