Read the recap below or watch the recording here.
The Financial Reality of Innovation
Cost barriers emerged as the dominant tension facing publishers, confirmed by audience polling. Brodsky articulated a dilemma facing mission-driven organizations: vendor partners investing heavily in AI development expect customers to fund that innovation through price increases, but nonprofit publishers cannot simply pass costs to their communities. "We're seeing cost increases from our technology stack that means we're going to have to lay off three people every single year if we keep going at this rate. Because we refuse to pass the costs along to our partners."The constraint intensifies because societies and associations operate under fundamentally different financial models than commercial publishers. They cannot access public debt markets, private credit, private equity, or venture capital. Meanwhile, their missions preclude charging unsustainable fees to researchers in underfunded disciplines, minority-serving institutions, or HBCUs. The result: mission fulfillment increasingly conflicts with keeping pace technologically.
Grathwohl highlighted an additional challenge: during periods of incremental change, smaller publishers could rely on market leaders to conduct R&D that benefited the entire ecosystem. "But during a time of radical change rather than incremental change, they start playing their cards really close to their chest." Competitive pressures mean less knowledge sharing precisely when collaboration matters most. Organizations must develop their own AI literacy and capabilities, but funding that development without immediate ROI proves difficult when customers aren't yet demanding these innovations.
Partnership Models: Benefits and Compromises
The panelists represented three distinct operating models, each with unique trade-offs. Ricci discussed AGU's partnership with a large commercial publisher, acknowledging both advantages and tensions. The partnership provides access to technological capabilities AGU couldn't develop independently, but transparency remains an ongoing challenge. When major publishers signed initial AI licensing agreements with technology companies, societies often discovered their content was included without full disclosure of terms or use cases.AGU responded by establishing a formal framework with their publisher covering transparency requirements, governance processes, and communication protocols. Specific provisions now prohibit agreements with corporations focused primarily on fossil fuels and reject confidential licensing arrangements. "We will not accept any of our content to be included in a license agreement where the licenses are opaque or insufficiently transparent," Ricci stated firmly.
Brodsky offered the contrasting perspective of maintaining independence through self-publishing. "At least I have control. I don't have to wait for my partners to go in a certain direction. I don't have to get mad at them when they do go in a certain direction. It's my fault - it's always my fault. But at least it's my fault." This autonomy enables AAAS to pursue research integrity priorities aligned with their specific concerns and allocate resources according to their own timeline, even if that means deferring certain investments.
The Grounding Influence of Community
Amid discussions of technological disruption and strategic pivots, Ricci offered crucial perspective: "My members and authors and editors aren't throwing pitchforks at us. They aren't screaming about this." While publishers feel pressure from multiple directions, researchers remain focused on fundamental concerns - securing funding, conducting research, and navigating peer review. The core value proposition of scholarly publishing hasn't changed, even as the technological landscape transforms rapidly.This observation highlights a risk inherent in industry conversations: publishers can become swept up in technological urgency that exceeds their communities' actual priorities. AGU's governance structures - council, board, publications committee, and editor relationships - help calibrate response speed. "Whatever's cheapest get done first," Ricci joked, but the underlying point was serious: mission-driven organizations must balance technological exploration with resource constraints and community readiness.
Grathwohl acknowledged this tension while suggesting publishers have a responsibility to educate constituencies about necessary adaptation. The ecosystem now intersects more closely with fast-moving technology companies and operating at traditional scholarly publishing pace risks marginalization. Finding the balance between respecting community culture and preparing for market shifts requires ongoing dialogue and careful change management.
AI Licensing: Navigating Unknown Territory
Questions about licensing content to AI companies revealed significant uncertainty across the panel. Grathwohl emphasized that "not licensing" doesn't eliminate risk—it simply creates different types of risk. These companies can access content through various means; licensing at least establishes accountability frameworks and usage terms. The challenge involves understanding actual use cases, tightening specifications around inputs versus outputs, ensuring attribution requirements, and establishing escalation processes for addressing unforeseen issues.Brodsky described practical complications for mid-sized publishers. AI companies often seek either deep specialization in a specific domain or broad coverage across many topics. AAAS, with six journals, fits neither profile attractively. Additionally, some historical content raises concerns - material that deserves acknowledgment in historical context but shouldn't inform current AI responses. Meanwhile, other players "think they don't need to do any licensing because we've got a website, and they can just come and scrape whatever they want."
The traffic implications are significant. Publishers must determine how to serve legitimate bot traffic that represents genuine user queries without subsidizing computational costs for companies generating no revenue opportunity. "I can't afford to have 75% of my traffic be from bots who are not allowing me to deliver these other potential revenue opportunities," Brodsky noted.
Mission as North Star
The discussion concluded with powerful reminders about core purpose. Brodsky emphasized: "We're 175 years old. Our goal is to stick around for another 175 years. They are not thinking that way, and it's OK." Understanding that technology companies operate on fundamentally different timescales and priorities helps mission-driven organizations resist pressure to compromise values for short-term alignment.Ricci brought the conversation full circle by reframing "platform" itself. Beyond technology platforms, publishers serve as platforms for their research communities. AGU's response to the cancellation of the Sixth National Climate Assessment - partnering with AMS to create a special collection for dismissed authors - exemplifies this broader mission. "There's other ways to think of these different lenses of platforms, and our role as publishers, as infrastructure providers, as technologists in meeting the moment."
The session demonstrated that while technological challenges are real and resource constraints genuine, mission clarity provides essential guidance for navigating complexity. The organizations best positioned for the future understand their core competencies, maintain honest dialogue with their communities, and remember that longevity requires playing a fundamentally different game than their technology partners.
View all of the Platform Strategies 2025 session recordings here.