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The APE Conference in Berlin offered the first gathering of the international publishing community of 2026. Mithu Lucraft was there to meet TBI clients, connect with colleagues from across the industry, and engage with some of the themes that look set to define the year ahead – including trust, equity, integrity, and the shared responsibility to protect them.
When the house is on fire, you focus on putting it out
The need for cross-sector collaboration came across strongly throughout the conference. In her opening keynote, STM’s Caroline Sutton described the sector’s urgent need to build epistemic trust through collaborative action: when the house is on fire, we must put aside differences to solve what we all agree are priorities.
Her framing was grounded in sociologist Robert Merton’s norms of scientific ethos and became a central theme throughout the conference: no single actor can (or should) hold unchecked power over what counts as scientific truth or knowledge. Publishers, libraries, institutions, funders, policymakers, and researchers all have distinct roles, incentives, and risks. Trust is best preserved when the system has visible checks and balances.
Transparency is not optional
Sessions on academic freedom, equity, and research integrity reinforced the same underlying message: transparency is foundational to trust. Paweł Rowiński (ALLEA) highlighted how excellence is increasingly being questioned and redefined – not only in terms of what science produces, but how, and under what conditions.
We heard powerful commentaries about limitations on academic freedom, scholars at risk, and scholars frustrated by a lack of ability to contribute. What linked these experiences was the sense that solutions require shared responsibility. The publishers’ role goes beyond technical fixes and must include influence, policy engagement, and the willingness to clearly articulate what publishing safeguards are, as well as how (transparent checks and balances).
Prevention versus cure
One of my top takeaways from the two days came from the research integrity session: Miriam Maus (IOP Publishing) gave no doubt of the huge scale and complexity of the integrity challenge facing all research publishers. Trust in individuals can’t be the protection against integrity issues; instead, there must be trust in the process.
This shift comes in the form of new teams, investment in technology and tools, and an increasing reliance on cross-publisher collaboration to disrupt papermills. STM’s new research integrity report, launched at the conference, gives more clarity on this topic.
A helpful analogy shared in the session captured the difference between response and prevention: while retractions treat the symptoms of research misconduct, prevention means looking upstream towards training of individual authors and editors, healthier research cultures, and incentive structures that don’t reward speed or volume at the expense of rigour.
Here again are those checks and balances: integrity isn’t something any single actor can solve; it requires coordinated support and validation at each stage of the research journey.
Progress requires collaboration
Whether the focus is open access, equity, integrity, or AI, the underlying message felt consistent across APE 2026: progress depends on coordinated action, ensuring the right voices are represented as we move forward together.
