Case study · Elsevier
Establishing Elsevier as a leader in research integrity
A dual mandate — support the Elsevier brand and manage reputational risk — met at once, by making Elsevier the name behind the most ambitious reproducibility project in science.
As Head of Scholarly Communications at Elsevier, I had a dual mandate: support the Elsevier brand and manage reputational risk. Establishing Elsevier as a leader in research integrity did both of these simultaneously. Here’s how I did that.
I raised $1.3M, partnered with the Center for Open Science, and used Science Exchange’s platform to replicate the findings of the top 50 cancer research studies. The resulting work set the standard for metascience and got sustained coverage in everything from the top scientific journals to PBS to Wired and The Atlantic for years as the project proceeded, establishing Elsevier as the leader in scientific integrity.
Achieving impact required careful coordination between researchers, our funders, national research funders, and journal publishers. We achieved several years of sustained media attention for Elsevier, changed publisher policies on novelty and resource sharing, and informed funding policies.
“Projects such as this one are important for understanding how to make all of our research more rigorous.”
— Marcia McNutt, President, U.S. National Academy of Sciences