Beyond open access: Rethinking how we make science meaningful and trustworthy

Presented by Bernard Becker Medical Library, Center for Health & Science Communication at Becker Library and WashU Libraries, in recognition of International Open Access Week.

Making research publicly available, once seen as an end goal, is now more like the starting point. As scientific information moves through an increasingly complex ecosystem of journals, repositories, AI tools, media, and social platforms, we need to rethink what it means for research to be truly accessible. This talk will explore the next chapter of scholarly communication: how we can build channels that add meaning and context to research, embed stronger signals of trustworthiness in the scholarly record, and empower researchers to help shape how their work is understood and used beyond the traditional paper. Drawing on efforts underway at Science to rethink how research is communicated and contextualized, the talk will consider how publishers and researchers can work together to make scientific findings more discoverable, understandable, and trustworthy in a rapidly changing information environment.

Meagan Phelan
Communications Director, Science Journals & Publishing at American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Meagan is the Communications Director for Science Journals & Publishing, where she oversees efforts to support accurate communication of Science family journal content. In this role, she’s been able to help innovate how science communication is done in response to key issues, including science integrity and public access. Prior to joining AAAS in 2013, she served as a senior writer at a catastrophe risk modeling company in Boston, where she worked with more than 65 Ph.D.-level scientists and engineers. Previously, she was a senior writer and editor at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Meagan holds a Bachelor's degree in Biology and Spanish from Gettysburg College, and a Master's degree in Science Writing from The Johns Hopkins University. In 2008, Meagan received a Fulbright Scholarship to work with researchers at the University of Valencia in Spain as they studied the cause of morbillivirus resurgence among dolphins in the Mediterranean.