Four Pillars
The 2027 edition approaches research-system transformation through four connected scientific pillars. The pillars are not separate conference tracks. They provide a shared framework for examining how technologies, incentives, institutions, infrastructures and public expectations interact across the research lifecycle.
A contribution may sit primarily within one pillar while connecting to another. The Forum is especially interested in questions that reveal dependencies, tensions or unintended consequences across different parts of the research system.
Responsible AI & Research Practice
This pillar examines how artificial intelligence is changing research practice, from question formulation and evidence synthesis to analysis, writing, peer interaction and dissemination. The focus is not only on tools, but on the institutional conditions needed for responsible use.
Questions in scope
- Disclosure, authorship and accountability when AI contributes to research workflows.
- Human oversight, methodological transparency and reproducibility.
- Confidentiality, research data, sensitive information and intellectual property.
- AI-supported literature review, coding, analysis, translation and writing.
- Institutional guidance, training and uneven access to AI capabilities.
- How AI changes expectations of research quality, speed and labour.
Trust, Integrity & Research Assessment
This pillar focuses on the systems through which research quality, credibility and contribution are judged. It connects research integrity with peer review, incentives, careers and institutional assessment.
Questions in scope
- Integrity risks and safeguards in AI-mediated research environments.
- Peer review, editorial practice and new forms of quality assurance.
- Research culture, incentives, workload and responsible leadership.
- Metrics, rankings and the reform of research assessment.
- Recognition of diverse research contributions, careers and team science.
- Institutional responses to misconduct, paper mills and manipulated evidence.
Open, Equitable & Multilingual Knowledge
This pillar examines how research is made discoverable, reusable and accessible, and how knowledge systems can better reflect linguistic, geographic and disciplinary diversity.
Questions in scope
- Open Science and FAIR practices across different institutional settings.
- Scholarly communication, publishing models and bibliodiversity.
- Repositories, identifiers, metadata and open research infrastructures.
- Multilingual scholarship and the visibility of non-English research.
- Costs, access barriers and inequalities in knowledge circulation.
- Global South participation and cooperation across research systems.
Research Systems, Universities & Society
This pillar places research within the institutions and public systems that fund, organise and use it. It considers universities and research organisations as actors that must govern change, not simply react to it.
Questions in scope
- Research governance, institutional strategy and organisational change.
- Funding systems and the incentives they create.
- Science-for-policy, evidence use and the relationship between research and government.
- Public trust, participation and the social legitimacy of research.
- Knowledge transfer, innovation and mission-oriented research.
- Capabilities that universities and research organisations need for system-level transformation.
A system-level perspective
The Forum uses the four pillars to connect conversations that are often separated across research integrity, Open Science, assessment, AI, institutional governance and scholarly communication. Programme curation will seek connections between these areas so that participants can examine not only what is changing, but how changes in one part of the system reshape others.