As part of our Annual Forum this year, we’re taking the opportunity to hear directly from the organisations supporting the event and learn more about their perspectives on Open Science and open research. Through this interview series, we’ll explore what openness means to different stakeholders, the opportunities and challenges they see across the Arab region, how they are supporting researchers and authors, and what they hope to see develop across the research ecosystem.

We spoke with Giulia Stefenelli, Scientific Communications Lead at MDPI, about the role of open access in supporting research and the challenges of making open research sustainable. We discuss the future of scholarly communication, including the importance of research transparency, the effective reuse of research outputs, and the impact of AI on research integrity.

Emily Choynowski: Could you tell us a bit about your company?

Giulia Stefenelli: MDPI is a fully open access scholarly publisher headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, with roots dating back to 1996. For 30 years, we have been supporting academic communities and scientific exchange worldwide. We publish open access peer-reviewed journals across a broad range of disciplines, including the natural and applied sciences, medicine, social sciences, and humanities. We work with researchers, authors, reviewers, and academic editors worldwide.

One of our hallmarks is publishing articles under the Creative Commons Attribution licence, CC BY, which allows research to be made freely available to readers immediately upon publication. Under this licence, authors retain their copyright, while others can share, build upon, and reuse their work without seeking additional copyright permission, provided they give appropriate attribution.

Beyond journals, MDPI supports the broader research ecosystem and community through various platforms and services. For example: Preprints.org enables the early sharing of research outputs; SciLit is a scholarly database that helps users discover academic literature; and SciForum supports academic conferences and scientific events. These services reflect our commitment to reinvesting in the research community rather than limiting our work to journal publishing.

Emily: Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your role as well?

Giulia: Sure. I’m a Scientific Communication Lead at MDPI. My background is in research, with a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from ETH Zurich, and I joined MDPI in 2020. I previously chaired our Scientific Officers Board, leading an international team working on scientific quality, editorial standards and the development of our journal portfolio.

Today, my role brings together scientific communications, external affairs and stakeholder engagement. I work closely with colleagues across the company on topics such as Open Science, research integrity, publishing policies and AI. It’s a broad role, but a common thread is helping explain our approach and bringing external perspectives into our work.

Emily: Why does MDPI support open science?

Giulia: Open access is central to MDPI’s publishing model and mission. We operate exclusively under a fully open access model, where all research is free to read and use. Promoting open science has been a core focus for the company since its inception. Open science accelerates scientific discovery and delivers greater value when people can read it, scrutinise its findings, and build upon it, regardless of their institutional affiliation or ability to pay for access. Openness can strengthen collaboration, reduce unnecessary duplication of research, and help findings reach wider audiences, including practitioners, the public, and policymakers. In this way, open research can also have a tangible impact on society.

Emily: You mentioned publishing specifically, but I believe some of your other tools and resources also function as open infrastructure and are free for everyone to use. Could you tell us a little more about them?

Giulia: MDPI develops community and publishing platforms and services that are openly available, in line with the company’s values, and support research sharing, literature discovery, scholarly networking and academic conferences. The idea is to democratise science by providing access not only to publishing opportunities but also to the tools that support research. As I mentioned earlier, reinvesting in the research community is very important to MDPI. The aim is to make science more accessible by providing tools that help researchers share, find and discuss their work.

Emily: Moving towards our region, specifically the 22 Arab states, where do you see the biggest opportunities for developing and expanding open science policies and practices?

Giulia: I believe there are significant opportunities for open science in the Arab region, as there are elsewhere in the world. First, open science can increase the visibility and reach of regional research. It can help locally relevant findings reach international audiences while also supporting local research communities, practitioners and policymakers.

Another opportunity lies in collaboration around shared challenges. Access to data, alongside the sharing of methods and findings, can strengthen cooperation and help address societal issues such as public health, food security, and energy. Shared infrastructure is also important. Open repositories, common standards, training, and educational materials can help institutions pool their expertise and resources.

Partnerships with local institutions and scholarly societies can support local development and help make these approaches sustainable. Universities and consortia in the region can also partner with MDPI through its Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), which offers publication discounts for affiliated researchers and tools to help institutions monitor and manage their publishing activity. MDPI has a long-standing practice of partnering with learned societies and publishing their journals. One example in the Arab region is the Journal of the Oman Medical Association (JOMA), which MDPI publishes on behalf of the Oman Medical Association. The journal follows a Diamond Open Access model, making it free for both readers and authors, with publication charges covered by the association. This demonstrates how partnerships with scholarly societies can support open access while reducing financial barriers for authors.

Emily: You mentioned Diamond Open Access, which is currently a major topic, particularly in discussions about sustainability, funding, and where the money should come from. Against this backdrop, what do you think is the biggest barrier to making open science more sustainable?

Giulia: That’s a very relevant question indeed. I think the main barrier is the gap between expectations around openness and the funding, infrastructure, and incentives needed to sustain it. Making research free to read, or free to publish in a Diamond Open Access journal, does not eliminate the costs associated with peer review, publication, data stewardship, long-term preservation, or research integrity checks. Those costs still need to be covered. The challenge is to secure reliable funding without creating barriers for researchers or placing an unsustainable burden on institutions and scholarly societies. APC affordability is part of that discussion, but sustainable open science goes beyond publication fees. Sustainable open science requires more predictable funding and greater recognition of the work involved in sharing useful data, code, and methods. Discounts can help, but they cannot solve the wider funding and incentive problem.

Emily: Given these challenges and the points you’ve raised, how do you see the roles of publishers, librarians, and funders evolving in open science over the next five to ten years?

Giulia: This is a topic of ongoing discussion within the publishing ecosystem. I think it’s important for these different stakeholders to work together more closely. The challenge will be to move from separate initiatives towards shared priorities, clear responsibilities and more coordinated support for researchers.

For publishers, I think a key priority should be supporting a more connected research record. This means linking publications with the underlying data, code, peer review, and subsequent corrections. Maintaining editorial quality and making that record easier to navigate and assess will be essential.

But publishers, of course, are only one part of the ecosystem. Funders, librarians, universities, and research leaders all have different roles to play. Funders can help by financing the practical costs of openness, including shared infrastructure and long-term preservation, and establishing clear, proportionate expectations for sharing research outputs.

Librarians, meanwhile, could take on a greater role in data stewardship, repository management, and research training. I see that role growing, particularly in helping researchers navigate publishing options, licences and data-sharing requirements.

Universities and the wider education system also have an important role to play. They should do more to recognise and reward collaborative contributions, including peer review and other forms of scholarly collaboration, in academic career progression and research assessment.

Emily: If there was one change you’d like to see, either as a company or as an individual, in the way scholarly communication works, what would it be? This could relate to research assessment, funding, or the general approach to openness.

Giulia: I think we need to shift some of our attention from open access alone towards making research easier to reuse effectively. Making research outputs accessible is an essential first step, but we still need to improve the availability and visibility of the underlying data, code, and methods. That means supporting well-documented research outputs and reliable repositories that bring this information together and make it easier to find and reuse. That is where I think we should be directing more attention in the future to make openness more useful in practice, so others can check findings and build on the work.

Emily: Is this something MDPI might build into its many products in the future?

Giulia: Yes, that’s a direction we would like to explore, to build on what we’re already doing and extend our reach and societal impact beyond publication itself. Areas such as research integrity, data viability statements, and better connections between different aspects of the research process are areas where MDPI would like to become more involved and potentially help drive progress across the industry.

Emily: Is there anything else you’d like to share on MDPI’s broader contributions to the research community and open science communities?

Giulia: Research transparency remains a very important subject for both me and MDPI. Research should not only be accessible but also trustworthy. One major issue we haven’t discussed in depth is how AI changing the way people find, interpret and use research.

An increasing proportion of literature searchers and access to research now takes place through AI tools rather than directly through publishers’ channels. This means we need to engage with technology and AI providers to understand how research outputs should be presented to make them more machine-readable and ensure that AI systems represent the information accurately. For me, this is an important area for collaboration across the sector, and one that will shape research integrity, ethics and scholarly communication in the years ahead. I explored this in a recent article in Research Information, arguing that scientific literacy must keep pace with AI so people can assess both the reliability of research and how accurately AI represents it.