- Hello, and welcome to the Physics World weekly
- podcast.
- I'm Hamish Johnston.
- In this episode, I'm joined by Antonia
- Seymour, who is chief executive
- of IOP Publishing.
- A wholly owned subsidiary of the Institute of
- Physics,
- IOP Publishing produces more than 100
- scholarly journals.
- It also publishes Physics World, so Antonia is
- a colleague of mine.
- Antonia has more than thirty years experience in
- a publishing industry that has evolved
- significantly
- from the days of paper journals to today's
- sophisticated
- digital technologies.
- In this interview, we explore how scholarly publishers
- are responding to the rapid growth in research
- output,
- the rise of artificial intelligence,
- and the increase in threats to research integrity.
- Here's that conversation.
- Hi,
- Antonia.
- Welcome to the podcast.
- Hi, Hamish. Thank you for having me.
- So, Antonia,
- global research output is growing at an astonishing
- rate. Is the current peer review system still
- fit for purpose when it comes to dealing
- with this volume of information?
- Or do we need to develop alternative methods
- for disseminating
- high quality information?
- That's a great question. I mean, peer review
- for me is still absolutely fundamental
- to how we assess research,
- but we can't take it for granted. So
- we need to keep strengthening it, making smart
- use of technology
- to ensure that it remains fit for the
- future.
- Because as you point out, research outputs continue
- to grow at this amazing rate,
- and that's driven by an increased research activity.
- Yes. But it's also as a result of
- AI tools making
- generating research papers
- faster and easier
- because it can accelerate pretty much every stage
- of the research workflow
- from literature review through to drafting and revision.
- So
- I I think for for me, in an
- AI era, if you like, peer review becomes
- even more important, not less.
- Because as information becomes easier to generate,
- trust is harder to come by and trust
- in that content is harder to establish.
- So,
- I think it's fair to say that peer
- review is one of the strongest trust trust
- signals available,
- but,
- it needs to evolve so that it becomes
- more visible and machine readable
- so that AI systems can recognize that it's
- authoritative
- research.
- And that's gonna help protect against one of
- the biggest risks of the AI era, which
- is
- the amplification
- of errors and misinformation.
- So you can see how easy it is
- for AI to generate summaries and make connections
- at rapid speeds,
- but it can't confer trust.
- So if peer review
- can do something that AI can't, which is
- that human expert judgment and accountability,
- then that becomes ever more important.
- Because at the end of the day, the
- editorial standards
- through peer review are applied by humans, by
- real named individuals.
- So I think, you know, in the past,
- peer review helped determine whether a paper merited
- publication,
- but going forward, it's gonna be more of
- a a a signal, a trust marker to
- both humans and machines
- that that research has been independently
- scrutinized
- and is therefore
- of of the caliber that you would want
- it to be if you were going to
- use it.
- So I don't think the challenge is as
- much about whether peer review remains relevant.
- It's more about
- how we can evolve it
- to develop from the, publishing process into more
- of a kind of trusted infrastructure.
- So it's not a one off event,
- but it's something that
- lives and creates this this trust around the
- research itself.
- I think it's safe to say that when
- you when you speak to people in the
- academic community, you know, research physicists, there is
- huge support for peer review, isn't it? I
- mean, I don't think I've never heard any
- complaints
- about, oh, we you know, about peer review
- from the community. Maybe they want, you know,
- it more streamlined
- or,
- you know, more open.
- But I think it it does remain the
- the sort of the backbone of science, doesn't
- it? I don't I don't think anyone's come
- up with anything better. I think that's the
- point. I mean, it has its flaws, and
- overload is a big problem for peer reviewers.
- You know, as research grows, there's more that
- needs to be validated and filtered.
- So I think that problem is is endemic
- and getting worse. So, again,
- AI can help, not just AI, but there
- are many tools available now that can take
- some of the the burden away from peer
- reviewers so that they can do the the
- the kind of human judgment piece and look
- at the originality
- and the kind of credibility of the science
- rather than having to to sift through some
- of the technical aspects or look for for
- research integrity problems, which, you know, I know
- we're we're gonna go on to talk about
- a bit more. So I think I think
- peer review remains
- foundational,
- but it has to evolve, and it has
- to
- has to remain relevant in a world where
- so much more of,
- research
- creation, but also research discovery is gonna happen
- by machine.
- So that would be my my view at
- the moment. So so peer reviewing something produced
- by a machine,
- is that, I mean, is that something that
- we're gonna have to start thinking about? I
- suppose it is. Aspects
- of the peer review could be produced by
- a machine,
- but led by the human. I mean, the
- human will be operating the machine, interpreting the
- machine's results.
- But I think,
- the point that that where peer review needs
- to evolve is that at the moment,
- you see an article in a journal and
- you know by virtue of the brand or
- the publisher behind it that that content has
- been peer reviewed, but there isn't actually anything.
- There's no sort of kite mark that says
- that is a peer reviewed article.
- So when the content from that article
- becomes unlocked from the article as it might
- do if you if you create an AI
- summary in a in a question you ask
- Claude or ChatGPT,
- then there is no peer review trust marker
- that travels with that
- content,
- let alone the whole article. So we need
- to work out how we codify
- that peer review trust marker into the content
- so that it travels
- with the content through machine to machine interfaces.
- And that's really important, isn't it,
- These days, I suppose, because there's just so
- much information being produced
- and and modified and transcribed and translated
- and moved around. Absolutely. And and that, I
- suppose, has opened the door to fraud. I
- mean, I think fraud in, scholarly publishing
- is is something that you're you're seeing more
- and more of
- year on year.
- So so how is
- IOP publishing,
- dealing with the submission of fraud fraudulent papers?
- How how do you,
- identify them and and reject them?
- Yeah. I mean, I I agree. I think
- the rise in fraudulent papers is one one
- of the most concerning
- issues for the scholarly
- publishing ecosystem. Well, the scholarly ecosystem, frankly, because
- it threatens not only
- the individual journals, but the publishers behind them,
- and also the confidence in the research record
- itself and therefore
- how much trust society puts into science.
- So it's it's absolutely critical that we
- address this, and IOPPAEC's
- always has done, but more so now than
- ever has put research integrity at the front
- of its strategic priorities.
- It fits with our purpose led publishing
- mission.
- So our response is a combination of
- human expertise
- and
- tooling, as we've just been talking about. So
- we've invested since I became CEO. The number
- of people that work in our peer review
- teams and in our research integrity teams has
- grown very significantly.
- So there are there are people,
- experts at the heart of trying to make
- sure that we maintain the trust in that
- scientific record through
- catching the fraudulent content early.
- But the tooling is,
- is helping us spot patterns that the human
- eye probably wouldn't spot.
- So you probably heard about tortured phrases. You've
- heard obviously, plagiarism has always been around. But
- with the with the ability of machines
- now, we can,
- weed out we can spot and weed out
- this content much more easily than we used
- to,
- used to be able to. So I would
- say that AI, again, is a positive in
- that regard because it's,
- helping us get better at this. In many
- cases, we're using AI to fight AI because
- many of much of the fraudulent content has
- been generated using AI because it makes it
- so much easier to just, you know, push
- out a paper that
- that would have taken years
- to prepare in the past,
- and fraud,
- create fraudulent citations and fraudulent data, etcetera.
- So the problem is growing, but we have
- on the on the other side of it,
- we have better armoury, if you like, to
- fight it.
- So it's a combination of of both.
- I think the important thing, as we just
- said before, is that the humans are still
- in charge of
- the peer review end to end process well,
- the whole publishing process, but the peer review
- process
- because that then means that,
- you know, the flags that these tools
- are sending up when they look through the
- content
- are being checked because, you know, these people's
- this is people's reputation, and if we get
- it wrong,
- that's, you know, that's on us. So making
- sure that we have human judgment in the
- loop and that the time that the humans
- spend is on that critical thinking and judgment
- rather than on trying to spot the things
- in the first place.
- And we've also engaged,
- at IOP, along with many other publishers with,
- various different collective actions.
- So there's, something called the STM Integrity Hub.
- So it's combining signals not just from, you
- know, our corpus of content, but from Springer
- Nature's or from Wiley's or from,
- American Institute of Publishing,
- American Institute of Physics Publishing, you know, you
- name it.
- All of publishers are being,
- attacked, if you like, by these bad actors
- trying to infiltrate the the system with fraudulent
- papers. So if we can read the signals
- across all of the content, then if we
- reject something
- at IAPP, hopefully,
- there aren't ways in which it can be
- then picked up by another publisher.
- So we keep it out once, and we
- keep it out for for all, if you
- like.
- And the other thing I think that's really
- important,
- and this is a difficult one because you
- have organizations like Clarivate who index journals
- and and,
- basically manage the citation reporting of journals to
- give the the impact factors that are so
- unfortunately,
- remain so important in
- in research,
- in research recognition.
- But Clarivate and others are
- trying to clean up the scholarly record too.
- And so if you're found to be publishing
- too much fraudulent content, then your journal can
- be delisted.
- And sometimes that can be a disincentive
- for trying to
- clear up the record because if you're penalized
- for doing this, then maybe you don't want
- to go looking to see if you've published
- stuff that, you know, maybe you shouldn't have
- done in the past. And it's fair to
- say that, you know, maybe we didn't see
- these problems quite as much because we didn't
- have the tooling in the past to be
- able to ask to do that. So,
- I think, you know, transparency and and correcting
- the record's really important. But at the moment,
- we've got quite a lot of sticks and
- perhaps not enough carrots for publishers
- to do that.
- But one of the things I'm most proud
- of that we've done at IAPP, and that's
- back to our values and our and our
- purpose,
- is that when we retract an open access
- article where someone's paid an article publishing charge
- or an APC,
- we actually donate that retracted
- APC payment to an organization called Research for
- Life
- that helps, people in lower and middle income
- countries to gain access and and and better
- publishing,
- opportunities.
- So I think that's the right thing to
- do, but it really, I think, demonstrates that
- for IOPP, putting research integrity above revenue and
- profit is is what we is what we
- need to do. And do you know,
- or do publishers know, you know, what the
- main motivation
- behind fraud is? I mean, I would have
- assumed it's sort of publish and pair or
- perish, and someone's desperate to, you know, by
- the end of the year, they need a
- a publication, and so they they just make
- it up.
- I mean, I'm guessing that that's probably most
- of the fraud. But has anybody identified anything,
- you know, more nefarious?
- You know, because we live in a in
- a world now where we have to be
- worried about misinformation coming from a number of
- different sources. I mean,
- has anybody identified
- any,
- you know, sort of organized misinformation?
- You know, either to discredit a publisher, as
- you said,
- or, I don't know, discredit a field or
- discredit a a concept in a in science,
- or or or maybe it's mostly just people
- desperate,
- to get something on their publication list.
- Yeah. I I think I think you're absolutely
- right. It's the publish or perish mentality, and,
- you know, that's why you're here
- repeated calls
- to look again at the way
- research is,
- measured and how researchers
- are,
- rewarded and how their careers progress because it
- does all center around
- the quantity as well as as well as
- the quality, but increasingly quantity of,
- publications that a researcher has. So it does
- put undue pressure on them. So I think
- the vast majority is being driven by
- by those
- those sort of base needs for a researcher
- to have to to publish,
- to progress in their career. But it has
- become much more organised and it's become sort
- of industrialized, if you like, because,
- you know, it might be one or two
- bad actors in the past, but it's become
- much more visible. And there are companies out
- there now selling,
- you know, the chance to add your name
- onto a paper
- or, you know, as a a a number
- of citations to a to a range of
- different papers, etcetera.
- And that's because people can see they can
- make money out of it. And that's not
- researchers
- doing that. That's,
- you know, tricksters seeing an opportunity to to
- make quite big money, and they're advertising in
- plain sight on a lot of the social
- media platforms.
- And so, you know, even if you're a
- researcher that hadn't even thought about doing that,
- you know, now it's being promoted to you
- as something you could do. I think it's
- probably tempting more people than would have done
- it in the past because it's being done
- at scale. So it's sort of a a
- form of organized crime, really. Absolutely.
- Oh, that that is unfortunate.
- Yeah. But I suppose that's the way it
- goes when when money and and prestige and
- is involved.
- You you've mentioned artificial intelligence,
- a few times already,
- and, I think it's safe to say that
- it offers great challenges and tremendous
- opportunities
- for those who create
- and document scientific knowledge.
- How how is AI changing scholarly publishing?
- Yeah. You're right. I mean, I've started the
- podcast off talking about AI from the get
- go, and that's because it's,
- a pervasive force
- that touches every aspect of our business. And
- I would argue pretty much every business.
- And, you know, I sort of lost track
- of how many times colleagues and actually board
- members as well have have asked me, what's
- IAPP's
- AI strategy?
- And I I actually push back on that.
- I don't think that's the right question to
- be asking. The question is is really how
- does AI shape everything that we do?
- You know, we couldn't really have an AI
- strategy because it's so many different things. It's
- it's a technology. You'd never have an Excel
- strategy or you'd never have a you know,
- in the past, to be fair, we did
- used to have digital strategies, and you had
- people with titles that were digital this or
- digital that. Now you've got people in companies
- with titles AI this or AI that, but,
- ultimately,
- it's an enabler of lots of different things.
- So we're in the process of developing our
- new 2027
- to 2030
- company strategy.
- And so we've approached that by considering
- the implications of AI across all dimensions
- of our
- of our thinking and our activities.
- So it's a source of disruption
- to traditional publishing models. We've talked a little
- bit about that. It's a driver of new
- opportunities
- for growth and,
- differentiation,
- and also a catalyst for step change improvements
- in in how we operate. So for me,
- the opportunities are very exciting and and pretty
- significant.
- And we talked a little bit about how
- more discovery,
- particularly research discovery, is being mediated by AI
- systems.
- So scholarly publishers really need to invest in
- making our content much more machine readable,
- discoverable, but also
- attributable
- in those kind of environments.
- And so I think
- for us
- as as a publisher of domain specific,
- high quality, trusted content,
- the opportunity to license that content to make
- sure it's discovered and integrated and monetized in
- different ways, as I say, is quite exciting.
- So I think if you think about the
- traditional journal container
- or even the article container,
- AI creates an opportunity to break out of
- that and enable our content to be found
- in
- totally different
- workflows and use cases.
- You know, we've we've never really been that
- successful in reaching
- corporates and professionals.
- Content and the way it's produced and served
- up at the moment is very academic in
- nature.
- But I think we can reach entirely new
- audiences,
- and
- basically meet them in their workflows
- through the benefits of of AI and machine
- to machine
- discovery.
- So I think a new generation of,
- of,
- content delivery,
- and I think the opportunity
- to
- improve the way that we deliver the services
- we do through, you know, the productivity that
- AI gives us in our day to day
- work. I mean, that's not distinct to us
- at IAPP or or to any
- anyone in the publishing sector, but the productivity
- that you can get through using AI tools,
- I think, is is is fantastic.
- So going forward, I think everyone that works
- in
- in our sector, everyone that works in IAPP
- is going to need to be AI fluent.
- We're going to need to make sure that
- we're helping,
- you know, colleagues
- basically feel equipped,
- with the skills, with the tools, but I
- think most importantly, the mindset
- as well
- to you use AI effectively,
- confidently,
- and, of course, responsibly as well.
- And
- as a academic publisher,
- I suppose we, you know, we're we're the
- stewards of a huge amount of very high
- quality information
- that, I mean, in a way, the scientific
- community has entrusted
- us with.
- I mean, do you feel, I mean, is
- there a certain responsibility
- that goes along with that to make sure
- that that information is used
- correctly
- and appropriately
- by AI systems and that it's not used,
- well, for lack of a better word, in
- a bad way
- or in a way that's misleading. I mean,
- is that is that the view that publishers
- are taking?
- It's absolutely the view we're taking. You know,
- if we're going to license our content to
- to AI tools,
- AI agents, AI companies,
- then we need to make sure that there
- are the right guardrails around it and making
- sure that the
- attribution, the provenance,
- the the ability to be able to update
- the content if a retraction happens to make
- sure that we're not repeating the same, you
- know, bad information and that's feeding through all
- of the systems. That's all easier said than
- done, but that is the goal. And and
- and absolutely, I think
- what we've noticed more recently is that the
- AI companies
- themselves
- are are are really interested in understanding how
- to do this better.
- So they've gone through their kind of brute
- force stage of large language model training where
- they just wanted to train the machines on
- everything that they could get their hands on.
- And frankly, they,
- you know, the the I think there's evidence
- that they've scraped a lot of our content
- without permission to do so,
- but many of them are now realizing that,
- you know, their users aren't necessarily trusting the
- answers that are being given by their tools.
- So they need to rectify that or they're
- not gonna be commercially successful. People won't want
- to continue to use the tools. So many
- of them going back to the drawing board
- and thinking about, oh, okay.
- You know, Reddit content is not the same
- as IOPP
- journal content. We need to
- treat this content differently.
- It has higher value in terms of that
- trust marking that I was talking about earlier.
- So I I think there's a coming together
- and a an evolution of what started off
- very much as a as a pure licensing
- sort of market to
- partnering.
- So, you know, the job we do is
- validation and filtration as publishers.
- That's a job that, at the moment, looks
- like traditional peer review.
- But could we be supporting AI companies in
- making sure that the content
- that
- they use and that they produce
- from their large language models or or small
- language models
- is also validated and filtrated.
- So I think that that, you know, we
- are people that know under we're organizations.
- We're people. We're
- an industry that knows how to produce trusted
- content, and that's what the AI companies need
- right now. So, Antonia,
- many other things in scholarly publishing have changed
- dramatically
- over the past thirty years.
- The demise of paper, for example, and the
- move to open access publishing are two very
- important
- examples of change.
- How has this changed the role of publishers,
- and what further changes can we expect in
- the future?
- Yeah. You're right. The research land landscape has
- changed dramatically over the last thirty years, and
- that's thirty years I've been working in
- scholarly publishing.
- But I think the fundamental purpose of publishers
- hasn't changed, and that's really around helping researchers
- communicate trusted knowledge
- and then helping others to
- discover and then build on that knowledge
- ultimately for the benefit of society. So, you
- know, I think I think the world around
- us changed, but the the the purpose of
- publishing hasn't.
- But one of the challenges for publishers
- is that
- some of our most important contributions
- are behind the scenes.
- So researchers rightly focus on the article in
- front of them, but there's a huge amount
- of infrastructure and quality assurance and stewardship
- that sat sat behind that article.
- And that's something publishers
- haven't done a good job of
- describing,
- that that value that we add.
- And as the research ecosystem becomes more complex
- and and AI driven,
- those functions become more important, not less.
- So in the past, we've typically been judged
- on,
- you know, our ability to distribute the content.
- You know, electronic made it more easy to
- disc to discover it and find it all
- around the world. Open access then made it
- even easier, you know, barriers to be able
- to find it. But in the future, I
- think we'll we'll be judged
- much more by our ability, again, to help
- people identify the trusted content,
- sort the chaff from the is that the
- right expression? Sort the chaff from the chaff.
- Weak from the chaff. Weak from the chaff,
- I think. Thank you. Yeah.
- So I think, you know, again,
- research has been consumed through journal articles,
- and we've moved those journal articles from print
- to digital and from behind a paywall to
- now freely available.
- And I think the future is now about
- making sure that,
- we can we can put that information into
- the workflows where people need it. And that
- means our role as publishers is going to
- evolve again to look different. But the purpose
- will remain the same.
- But that that
- that sort of custodian
- of trusted content, not just content, but trusted
- content, I think becomes the imperative.
- And that that that whole sort of custodian
- role is an interesting one because, you know,
- thirty years ago,
- that role was still being played by libraries,
- you know, big university libraries.
- They had their stacks and stacks of paper
- journals, and that's where the information was kept
- safely,
- and could be accessed by people.
- But now, I mean,
- is it one of the unintended
- consequences
- of getting rid of paper for the most
- part? Is that now it's down to
- academic publishers to to maintain that record. It's,
- you know, sort of is it on you
- now? Or or do you or is
- do you still send paper journals to to
- libraries? You know, it's funny. I work for
- IOP publishing, and I don't know. I I
- assume that stopped, but maybe It's pretty much
- stopped. There are a few,
- a few
- rare libraries around the world that still require
- print, but our digital,
- our our print footprint is so small now,
- that most but but there is still a
- a way to archive digital versions, and that's
- what we need to continue to do. So
- we submit all of our content to clocks
- as one one archiving
- solution, for example. But I think the role
- of librarians, again, just like publishers,
- is going to shift. I mean, librarians ultimately
- have to enable
- access to research for their patrons so that
- they can do more research or that they
- can learn to be a researcher if they're
- students. So
- the the the sort of gateway role of
- a librarian between all the content that is
- available out there in the world and, you
- know, the discoverability
- for their faculty and students
- remains. But, again, increasingly,
- that will be,
- mediated through
- machines.
- You you know, you see examples now of
- researchers, particularly in physics, because they're pretty,
- technology
- minded and and,
- you know, innovative in their in their thinking.
- And you're seeing physicists using tools like Claude's
- science
- to basically do all their research work within
- this one environment. They don't wanna have to
- come out of that to go and check
- a reference source or to go and find
- some
- some more information about a particular topic. They
- want to be able to do that within
- the same environment that they're using to do
- their research.
- So the onus is on publishers and librarians
- to create
- a seamless access
- between
- the the AI tooling that the researchers are
- using or the students are using and the
- content that we continue to produce through the
- through the research process. So librarians will increasingly,
- be engaged in supporting their, patrons, whether those
- are faculty or students,
- in interacting with the scientific literature
- via things like MCPs, which are called model
- context protocols or APIs, which people will have
- heard of. But these are sort of gateways,
- if you like, between
- an AI tool and the the established literature.
- And so I think, you know, librarians are
- similarly gonna have to evolve
- what they do,
- but their purpose will remain the same just
- as publishers' purposes
- purpose will remain the same.
- So I think it's a technology
- evolution,
- rather than
- a kind of disintermediation.
- Well, I'm glad we we got to speak
- about librarians because I know that here at
- IOP publishing, we do have a lot of
- interaction
- with librarians, but often they're left out of
- this discussion when it comes to scholarly publishing.
- So you've spent your career helping people connect
- with trusted research and knowledge.
- What words of encouragement would you give to
- someone who is interested in embarking
- on a similar career in scholarly publishing?
- Well, I think it's one of the most
- exciting times
- to consider a career in scholarly publishing, so
- I would absolutely encourage everyone to do so.
- I think I've been saying that for thirty
- years. But, genuinely, I think the
- the pace of change,
- the
- uncertainty
- that we face now is is unprecedented.
- And for some people, that that might be
- frightening.
- But if you're somebody that really enjoys,
- learning,
- and who's curious to understand
- things that are changing and intersections that are
- shifting between research people and emerging technologies, then
- then it's a fantastically
- interesting
- profession
- to to come into. I mean, what attracted
- me to the sector
- thirty plus years ago has has kept me
- engaged ever since, and that is that sort
- of
- intersection between
- science, technology,
- creativity. I mean, a lot of people think
- creativity in publishing is, you know, magazine publishing
- or publishing novels or whatever, but there's a
- lot of creativity in scientific publishing.
- And, of course, the communication piece. We have
- to be expert in communication, in scientific communication.
- So I think, you know, it's pretty motivational
- to think that every day you're helping researchers
- get their research out into the world to
- be built upon and and hopefully to improve,
- you know, improve society through through saving,
- saving lives or, you know, addressing some of
- the massive societal challenges that we we face.
- So I think it's it's got a purpose,
- which has always been a big thing for
- me.
- It's got the intellectual stimulation,
- and it's got the kind of fast changing,
- you know, constant reinvention
- going for it. And so you put those
- things together, and it's pretty compelling.
- Yeah. I mean, especially,
- I suppose, now that, you know, publishing
- is especially scholarly publishing, you're right at the
- edge of AI.
- You know, your
- your information is crucial for the success of
- AI. You know, that interaction must be must
- be fascinating, I would imagine.
- I I, you know, I was starting out
- on this this new strategy work,
- having, you know, been working under our previous
- predominantly open access strategy that we had when
- I became CEO. And,
- you know, it it took me a while
- to think,
- where is the nub of this? And it
- it is absolutely
- re AI is reshaping everything we do. And
- that's terrifying,
- but it's also incredibly exciting and it opens
- up huge opportunities.
- And particularly,
- I think, for a society publisher like
- IAP Publishing because that trust
- we we we have a reputation and we
- have trust in the market that's
- pretty high compared to many commercial
- publishers.
- We're also, you know, deeply rooted to the
- communities
- that we serve, broader than physics, but all
- within the kind of physical science area.
- So that confers quite a lot of advantage
- when you think about how we navigate through
- and still remain relevant in this sort of
- AI era. So
- I I think it presents us with a
- a whole new sort
- of toolkit
- to be more relevant and more successful in
- the future.
- Well, that's great. That's a great place to
- end.
- Thanks for coming on the podcast, Antonia.
- Thank you very much, Hamish. I mean, one
- thing I would just say to end is
- that, you know, we haven't talked about geopolitical
- fragmentation
- or
- scientific nationalism,
- and
- and that's huge in and of itself. We
- could have had another podcast all about that.
- But for me, whatever the changes are ahead,
- that trusted research, international collaboration,
- and human expertise are gonna continue to be
- the foundations
- on which scientific progress is built. So thank
- you.
- That was Antonia Seymour,
- chief executive of IOP Publishing.
- Thanks to Antonia for her insights into the
- challenges and opportunities
- in scholarly publishing.
- I'm afraid that's all the time we have
- for this week's podcast.
- I'm Hamish Johnston, and our producer is Fred
- Iles.
- The music in Physics World's podcasts
- is called one three seven, and it was
- composed and performed
- by the physicist
- Philip Moriarty.
- We'll be back again next week.