RESUMEN
The history of the scientific enterprise demonstrates that it has supported gender, identity, and racial inequity. Further, its institutions have allowed discrimination, harassment, and personal harm of racialized persons and women. This has resulted in a suboptimal and demographically narrow research and innovation system, a concomitant limited lens on research agendas, and less effective knowledge translation between science and society. We argue that, to reverse this situation, the scientific community must reexamine its values and then collectively embark upon a moonshot-level new agenda for equity. This new agenda should be based upon the foundational value that scientific research and technological innovation should be prefaced upon progress toward a better world for all of society and that the process of how we conduct research is just as important as the results of research. Such an agenda will attract individuals who have been historically excluded from participation in science, but we will need to engage in substantial work to overcome the longstanding obstacles to their full participation. We highlight the need to implement this new agenda via a coordinated systems approach, recognizing the mutually reinforcing feedback dynamics among all science system components and aligning our equity efforts across them.
RESUMEN
Three years ago, addressing racial justice in the United States moved firmly into the mainstream. Following the murder of George Floyd, the ongoing struggle for social justice was again laid bare, and pledges to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) began sprouting everywhere. Now, the pendulum is swinging back on these commitments. A backlash against DEI initiatives is rising across all sectors, especially at the state level. Last year's decision by the US Supreme Court to strike down the consideration of students' racial status in college admissions has emboldened many who oppose any advancement of DEI. Although there has been specific attention to higher education, other sectors have also been attacked. The retreat includes recent anti-DEI legislation that would affect structures, programs, practices, and curricula that aim to support success for all, including persons who have been historically excluded from or marginalized within science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM). Before this backlash worsens, DEI advocates, the scientific community, universities, and federal agencies need to collectively call out the dangers of setting aside DEI and come up with robust ways to demonstrate its value to society.
RESUMEN
A slow-motion crisis is underway among graduate students and postdocs in the United States who comprise today's indispensable research and teaching workforce and tomorrow's scientific leaders. Low pay, lack of benefits, and sometimes toxic research environments have persisted for years. Frustrated graduate students, postdocs, and nontenured faculty are protesting and pursuing unionization to address worsening conditions. A few senior leaders are starting to recognize that today's research environment is much more challenging than that of their sepia-tinted memories. In response, some universities have offered salary and benefits relief. Unionization and overdue adjustments are incomplete and temporary responses to deeply embedded problems-with long-term implications that everyone may regret. So where do solutions lie?
RESUMEN
On 25 August, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy provided guidance for scientific publishing aimed at making publications and their supporting data-the products of federally funded research-publicly available without an embargo by the end of 2025. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, the publisher of Science and the Science family of journals) strongly supports this guidance. As written, several paths to public access remain possible. It will matter greatly to the scientific enterprise which become predominant.