Short Abstract

The ‘More than Publishing Now’ meet-up invites collective reflection on how STS communities can build inclusive, resilient publishing futures, through shared infrastructures, scholar-led practices, and experiments in Open Access that resist authoritarianism and reimagine ownership and labour.

Description

Scholarly communication is undergoing profound transformation. The very structures through which knowledge is disseminated and validated are being reshaped, from discontent with commercial publishing business models and the reputational stratification of outlets through metrics, to the rise of diamond open access, and renewed debates over peer review, licensing, and authorship. These shifts are not merely technical—they raise urgent social, political, and ethical questions about ownership, labour, equity, sustainability, and academic freedom.

Moreover, this moment of change unfolds against a backdrop of mounting authoritarian pressures on scholarship. Across the globe, datasets, journals, and entire infrastructures are being silenced or dismantled. Yet, the broader implications for the governance and resilience of scholarly communication remain underexplored.

For Science and Technology Studies—a field deeply attuned to the politics of knowledge and infrastructure—this moment calls for collective reimagination. This meet-up session contributes to the conference theme of Resilient Futures by treating scholarly publishing as a critical site of infrastructural intervention.

Bringing together editorial collectives, early-career researchers, infrastructure designers, and metaresearchers, we ask: What does it mean to “do” scholarly communication otherwise, and how can STS lead in building equitable, community-owned alternatives? We invite inputs on and beyond:

• Alternatives to commercial publishing models and evaluative infrastructures

• Scholar-led infrastructures and their fragility, including questions of resilience

• Governance, authorship, and accountability in editorial practices

• Challenges and solidarities across regions, languages, and funding ecologies

• The role of early-career collectives in reimagining publishing futures

• Lessons from platform experimentation and global collaborations

• Current and future modes and materialities of in/formal scholarly communication

Imagined as a short-input-based dialogue among practitioners, we aim to map promising practices, surface key tensions, and articulate collective visions for the future of scholarly publishing in STS. We also explore how EASST can actively cultivate and sustain community-owned infrastructures in ways that reflect and advance its values and strategic commitments.