Confidence in Science: How to ensure sustainable and trustworthy channels of scientific information?

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The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the importance of science into sharp focus. It has also highlighted significant challenges for the research community, including the need to navigate an increasing amount of misinformation and greater public scrutiny of research than ever before. 

In parallel, there have been growing calls for “open science” over the past decade, especially in Europe, and in part to meet the challenges of developing trustworthy and reliable scientific findings. The Council of the European Union recently emphasised the importance of a high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing system in supporting open science for the public benefit.  

This paper summarises a multi-stakeholder roundtable discussion regarding mechanisms to support the EU in the creation of an environment in which “the outcomes of research and innovation are understood and trusted by informed citizens and benefit society as a whole.” The event, which took place on 15th June 2023, was hosted by Science|Business in partnership with Elsevier, a global leader in scientific publishing and data analytics supporting the research and healthcare communities. The roundtable brought together experts from the EU institutions, academia, scientific publishing, media organisations, research assessment and other sector-specific stakeholders. Science|Business is ultimately responsible for the content of this report.