Strengthen the case for DEI.

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.

Students and postdocs deserve more.

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.

Public access is not equal access.

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 and the family of journals) strongly supports this guidance. As written, several paths to public access remain possible.

Inequality in science and the case for a new agenda.

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.