Scientific Communication in a New United States Government Regime: What We Need to Consider Now

On January 20, 2025, a new Administration was sworn into office and issued a flurry of executive orders, initiating a series of actions that I believe will change the course of scholarly publishing, at least for the next several years. Here, I provide an inside view of the immediate consequences of those orders, focusing first on those related to the operations of the federal government staff, offices, and departments/centers. I follow with broader implications for the scholarly publishing community, related to the intricate relationship between this community and the federal government—notably as a critical funder of research and as a financial supporter of several journals. I am writing this from my personal experience and perspective as a (now former) science editor for Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), a journal published with support from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), an institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). My intent is to approach this topic with as much objectivity as possible, but to also share my firsthand experience of how these actions have affected government-backed journals, and to propose necessary considerations for nongovernment journals and publishers. My goal is the spread awareness for those who are not intimately associated with a government entity and to describe how I think the changes to the federal government will affect scholarly publishing as a whole. It Started with an Order To me, it all began with Executive Order (EO) 14151: “Ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing”. This order states […]