The value of accurate, timely, and effective science communication to the public is undisputed, especially considering the devastation caused by misinformation during the pandemic. The entire scientific process is now under ever greater public scrutiny and science communication professionals find themselves walking a tightrope to retain or gain back public trust. As science media and scholarly publishing organizations worldwide refine their efforts to communicate science to lay audiences, ethical considerations are bound to arise. These go beyond the given issues of accuracy and impartiality and include cryptic questions about preprints for clinical trials, the timing of clinical study disclosure to mainstream media, and how to display confidence in research findings while stating caveats. In this session, publishing and science communication specialists will share different strategies they use to ensure ethical research communication, with the ultimate goal of helping viewers audit and refine their own organization's communication policies and practices. || Speakers: Donald Samulack; Laura Helmuth; Sara Serritella; David Mellor

The world has faced and continues to face a multitude of crises, enhanced by the current pandemic. As COVID-19 took hold around the globe, it underscored how science must be in the conversation to tackle these crises on an immediate, collaborative, and interconnected scale. This conversation can no longer just be 'academic' but one with a much higher social consciousness attached to it. The discussions surrounding Open Science (OS) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals are central to the intersection of social consciousness and science. Where OS policies can promote unhindered global sharing of knowledge, those surrounding SDGs can guide science towards impact. This session, featuring speakers from Cabells, Springer Nature, and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), addresses ways that the scientific community and journalism can drive change and wider societal outreach through open science policies and by embracing SDGs as a key topic in research impact. It addresses case studies around the current state of open science, open science policy, and the practical ways that open science is impacting the SDG program. It also explores and demonstrates a method for operationalizing SDG-mindedness as a tool for measuring both research impact and potential. || Speakers: Laura Helmuth; Rachel J. Scheer; David Steingard; Lucas Toutloff; Paul Perrin