On April 15, IRIS executive director Jason-Owen provided testimony before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Dr. Owen-Smith was invited as an expert witness for the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee’s hearing on “The State of Scientific Publishing: Assessing Trends, Emerging Issues, and Policy Considerations”. He was joined by Mr. Carl Maxwell, Senior Vice President, Public Policy at the Association of American Publishers, and Ms. Kate Travis, Managing Editor at Retraction Watch.
The purpose of the hearing was to “examine the current state of scientific publishing, including open access policies, the current state of peer review, conflict of interest policies, data access and reproducibility, as well as the emergence of predatory journals, paper mills, and ‘publish or perish’ incentive systems that prioritize publication quantity over quality.” The hearing also considered “how technologies like machine learning, large language models, and artificial intelligence are influencing the quality of science, scientific integrity, scientific misconduct, and the advancement of gold-standard science.”
As a research data scientist specializing in science and innovation and founder of a national data infrastructure, Dr. Owen-Smith discussed how the lack of transparency from major scholarly publishers creates substantial risks for the talented people and frontier discoveries that are so central to our health, prosperity, and security. His testimony underscored the importance of treating detailed data about publicly funded research and researchers as a strategic national asset without relinquishing responsible public access and accountability.
You can watch the recording of the live stream below. Dr. Owen-Smith’s written testimony is available online.