From Cold War science diplomacy to today's AI arms race, research has always been entangled with political forces. In 2025, however, the impact of political messaging (and other forces) has put a bright spotlight on these questions: Can the public trust science? Do scientific journals have value? This keynote explores how publishers can operate amid such challenges, responding to areas of great public and policymaker interest and concern. With a special focus on tactics, including some that have been recently explored at the Science family of journals, the keynote highlights strategies for leveraging publishers’ strengths and assets in ways that stand to help replace public doubt with public confidence.

This session will look at how methods of scientific communication affect trust in published research and its societal impact, in addition to the importance of public trust to publishers, researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and communities. Communicators at all levels of the scientific process, from the individual researcher trying to break through the noise, to the communications professionals getting science to journalists, policymakers and the public, will discuss how they think about science communication, what methods are most effective and least effective, and how open access and AI might affect these variables.

Decades after the first Open Access publication, many publishing scholarly research still question the right route to achieve a balance between equity and business models—between providing access and how to fund it. Join us as we explore the potential future direction of Open Access from a variety of perspectives and discuss and debate the pros and cons of current options and future opportunities and challenges.