Publishers and Funders: Future of Manuscript Review and Proposal Evaluation

Although every year in the scholarly publishing ecosystem is a balancing act of innovation, optimization, and value creation, 2025 is shaping up to be particularly challenging as the pace and scale of change is accelerating more than we’ve ever seen before. There is increasing pressure to provide value to and to meet the incredibly diverse needs of the global research community while maintaining financial health for our own organizations, living our values, and continuing to protect the scholarly record. With AI, open access, integrity, and mistrust frequently dominating the conversation, we are in the midst of an unprecedented shift in both our industry and society as a whole. As always, the SSP community continues to focus on bringing together academics, funders, librarians, publishers, service providers, technologists, researchers and countless others with a communal interest and stake in disseminating scholarly information. We look to the 47th Annual Meeting as an opportunity to continue this tradition and welcome all colleagues and community stakeholders.

Oleg is an active scientist with a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. Currently, he holds a professor position at the University of Copenhagen, where he leads a group focused on particle physics and artificial intelligence in physics. As an entrepreneur, Oleg is the co-founder of Prophy—a scientific knowledge management company with the ambition to revolutionize scholarly publishing. As Prophy's CEO, he strives to empower researchers worldwide. Oleg's visionary leadership and scientific expertise shape Prophy's mission to transform peer review, making it more efficient, transparent, and collaborative. With a passion for driving positive change in academia, Oleg's unique blend of expertise and innovation is driving Prophy’s mission to reshape the future of scholarly communication.

Oleg Ruchayskiy is the CEO of Prophy, leading the company's mission to transform academic publishing through AI-powered solutions. Oleg combines deep technical expertise with a vision for making scientific collaboration more efficient.

Sara Rouhi is the new Director of Open Science and Publishing Innovation, reporting to Chief Publishing Officer, Penelope Lewis. Rouhi is charged with developing new publishing models and sustainable business strategies to accelerate AIPP’s mission to advance open, equitable research communication and empower researchers to accelerate global progress. Sara joins AIP Publishing from Public Library of Science (PLOS) where she was Regional Director, Publishing Development, The Americas. In this role she focused on engaging with high-level stakeholders, including funders, policymakers, and institutional leaders in local scholarly communication ecosystems. Before this role she built up PLOS’ institutional business models and partnership base as Director of Strategic Partnerships, launching three new, non-APC business models (including the 2021 ALPSP Innovation in Publishing award winner, Community Action Publishing) and implemented over 200+ partnerships globally. Sara is active in the scholarly communications community as a volunteer and thought leader, speaking frequently on open access, equity in publishing, and diversity in scholarly communications. She is was Board Member for the Society of Scholarly Publishing (SSP) from 2022-204 and was the recipient of SSP’s Emerging Leader award in 2015. She is active in the Washington DC improv comedy scene with her troupe Sistine Robot and she tweets/bleets @RouhiRoo and @RouhiRoo.bsky.social.