The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) has long dominated research evaluation, shaping funding decisions, institutional rankings, and academic career advancement. However, as the scholarly publishing community pushes for more holistic and responsible research assessment, alternative metrics and incentive structures are gaining traction (e.g., Citescore, Altmetric, DORA initiatives, etc.) This session will explore the current state of models for evaluating research impact, including open science practices, real-world applications, community engagement, and qualitative measures, while addressing the challenges of cultural change in academia and publishing. Panelists from across the scholarly ecosystem will share insights on how publishers, funders, researchers, and institutions can work toward policies that reward diverse contributions to knowledge. The discussion will also highlight case studies of successful transitions toward broader evaluation frameworks.

As the long tail of smaller publishers shortens, new entrants and partnerships are on the rise, plus new competitive dynamics are reshaping our industry. This panel brings together the perspectives of an information scientist, a marketing director, and an industry expert who will discuss the cycle and barriers of a partnership, a bold, new coalition built on purpose above profit, and the consolidation happening in publishing/technology and its impact on competition today. The panel will address problems in common that scholarly communication stakeholders face and would be better solved through partnerships, and the barriers to consolidating these partnerships due to challenges such as power imbalance, conflicts of interest, and competition.

Making underlying research data openly available is a prevailing expectation of many institutions and funders, accelerated by new guidelines from OSTP and others. We can expect the demand for data publishing to only increase over time, but is the scholarly communications community prepared to respond? What are the impacts of data-sharing mandates on researchers? Do these impacts vary across fields of study? What new data types and formats are coming out of the latest research? This panel will explore the challenges and opportunities in research data sharing, indexing, publishing, and archiving from the perspectives of data librarians, publishers, editors, and researchers. An esteemed group of speakers will give us a sense of what research data publishing will look like in the next decade.