This session will discuss how scholarly publishers and stakeholders can utilize AI to unite these domains, ensuring respect for content creators’ intellectual property (IP) rights, enhancing academic knowledge access, and unlocking new commercial possibilities.

New directions in funding opportunities for researchers are fundamental (see what we did there?) to many fields. With the pandemic still very much at the center of our daily experience, this session will examine how funding opportunities have changed or pivoted since the emergence of covid-19. Panelists will discuss how authors— especially early career authors—are required to navigate this new funding landscape, how librarians must consider new mandates and requirements from funding agencies while supporting the interests and needs of researchers within their respective institutions, and how funding as we know it is dynamically changing the landscape of academic research.

Patrick Shafe will be joined on stage by Simone Taylor, Chief of Publishing at the American Psychiatric Association, and Jennifer Regala, Associate Director at Wolters Kluwer Health, to explore key trends impacting academic publishing. The panel will examine findings from Deanta's 2025 Trends in Academic Publishing Survey, with special focus on the technological evolution taking place in the industry over the past two years. The discussion will highlight how this period represents a crucial inflection point for publishers, examining the acceleration of AI adoption, digital transformation, and emerging business models that are fundamentally changing how academic content is created, distributed, and consumed.