What’s the word?
Editors look into the future of scientific publishing.
Editors from some of the world's most influential anesthesiology journals will share the podium to examine how emerging technologies, open access publishing, research integrity initiatives, and big data are transforming scientific communication. Their Saturday session, “From the Editors: Recent Innovations in Anesthesiology and Scientific Publishing,” will include key editorial perspectives from Anesthesiology, Anesthesiology Open, Anesthesia & Analgesia, and the British Journal of Anaesthesia.
“Scientific publishing is changing at several points along the continuum, from generating evidence to communicating it,” said James Rathmell, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Anesthesiology. “In anesthesiology, electronic health records, clinical registries, administrative claims, and multicenter data collaboratives now allow investigators to study hundreds of thousands – or even millions – of patients.”
The session will address the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in publishing. According to session panelist and Anesthesia & Analgesia Editor-in-Chief Jaideep Pandit, MB, PhD, FRCA, researchers are increasingly using AI tools to conduct literature searches, organize manuscripts, improve language quality, manage references, and create visualizations. Publishers and editorial teams are also considering adopting AI-assisted systems for manuscript screening, reviewer selection, plagiarism detection, and image-integrity assessments, he said.
Dr. Pandit said a key concern is one of scientific integrity, particularly data fabrication and fraud.
“Both are made easier by AI,” he explained. “Like all developments, they have potential for great good, but also for harm. Publishers and editors need to be vigilant about the latter.”
Fellow panelist Hugh C. Hemmings, MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Anaesthesia, will address technology in publishing, including how large language models (LLMs) are reshaping nearly every stage of academic publishing. Although these systems can improve scientific writing, literature reviews, reviewer support, and journal operations, he said they also introduce risks, including fabricated references, biased outputs, confidentiality concerns, and questions about accountability. Dr. Hemmings emphasized that human oversight remains essential despite the growing prevalence of AI-generated content.
“Use of LLMs in academic publishing has increased over five-fold in the last three years, with over 60% of published articles now showing elements of LLM influence, from subtle language polishing to full LLM-generated text,” Dr. Hemmings said. “LLM use is now firmly entrenched and will only become more pervasive as models improve and familiarity increases, with major implications for scientific publishing.”
In that same spirit, Dr. Rathmell will tackle another hot topic in publishing: the rise of big data in anesthesiology. Dr. Rathmell will detail how electronic health records, clinical registries, administrative claims databases, and multicenter collaborations have enabled researchers to study patient outcomes at unprecedented scale. Still, he warned that larger datasets do not automatically produce better science. Researchers and reviewers must carefully evaluate data quality, methodology, reproducibility, and potential biases, he said.
“Big data expand what investigators can study, but they also create new opportunities for error,” Dr. Rathmell said. “Authors must describe the hypothesis they set out to test, where the data came from, how they were collected and linked, how variables and outcomes were defined, how missing data were handled, and whether findings were validated in other populations. A very large dataset can produce an extremely precise answer to the wrong question.”
That makes the peer review process even more critical, he said.
“Peer review must extend beyond conventional statistical assessment. Reviewers increasingly need to examine data provenance, representativeness, coding decisions, residual confounding, reproducibility, and external validity,” Dr. Rathmell said.
Finally, Dr. Rathmell and his colleagues will cover the shift in open access publishing from a niche alternative to a mainstream model for sharing scientific research. According to Dr. Rathmell, journals are increasingly offering open access options, while funding agencies are requiring immediate public access to research findings. Broader access allows clinicians, researchers, trainees, policymakers, and patients to benefit from scientific discoveries without subscription barriers.
Open access publishing is about reach, said session panelist Yandong Jiang, MD, PhD, Executive Editor of Anesthesiology Open. Major journals are responding through fully open access and hybrid models, companion journals, and institutional “read-and-publish” agreements. Dr. Jiang said these approaches extend the visibility and impact of authors’ work while making findings immediately available to readers worldwide.
The need for open access is growing as funders require immediate public access. Under the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, effective July 1, 2025, NIH-funded author-accepted manuscripts must be publicly available in PubMed Central without embargo upon publication.
“Open access is no longer a peripheral publishing option; it is becoming part of the infrastructure of modern scientific communication,” Dr. Jiang said. He emphasized that wider access must be paired with affordability, equity, transparent licensing, and rigorous peer review: “The business model may change, but the standards of science and peer review must not.”
