The Researcher to Reader 2025 Conference, to be held in London on 25-26 February, will feature two Keynote speakers to inform and inspire the Conference participants.
Professor John Willinsky, Stanford University (emeritus) and Public Knowledge Project founder, will be giving the Opening Keynote on Tuesday 25 February, with a talk on Research Integrity, which is one of the major themes of the two-day Conference. Professor Willinsky said, “I am honored to give the opening keynote for R2R, given the importance of addressing the current integrity crisis with strategies for both the academy and publishers to increase scrutiny.”
Dr Kamran Abbasi, Editor-in-Chief at the British Medical Journal, will wrap up the conference on Wednesday 26 February, speaking on scholarly communications from an editorial viewpoint.
Previous keynote speakers have included Antonia Seymour, CEO at IOPP & President of the Publishers Association, Alison Mudditt, CEO at PLOS, Susan Gibbons, Vice Provost for Scholarly Communication at Yale and The Rt Hon the Lord Willetts, Chair of the Resolution Foundation.
The full Conference Programme for the 2025 Researcher to Reader Conference is now available on the website. Some highlights are listed below.
Keynotes: Dr Kamran Abbasi, Editor-in-Chief at the British Medical Journal, and Prof. John Willinsky, Director of the Public Knowledge Project, will be giving us inspiring keynote presentations.
Workshops: Our collaborative and interactive workshops will be on peer review, making content more accessible to readers, research integrity, open science, the Global South and GetFTR.
Presentations, Panels and Roundtables: There will be informative presentations and lively discussions on: open science, trust indicators, preprints, putting research into practice. research integrity, business models (including APCs and ‘diamond’ open access) and much more.
Debate: We will, of course, have our usual very popular formal debate.
People: The presenters, panellists, moderators and facilitators will include:
Dr Kamran Abbasi / Rick Anderson / Damian Bird / Toby Green Nicko Goncharoff / Dr Mark Hahnel / Dr Phill Jones / Hylke Koers Dr Chris Leonard / Dr Elliott Lumb / Blessing Mawire / Dr Joana Osório Sarah Phibbs / Dr Joris van Rossum / Sara Rouhi Dr Heather Staines / Prof John Willinsky / and many more
Registration is open, with early-bird rates until the end of November, and generous discounts for academics & librarians.
Initial Programme information is being announced for the 2025 Researcher to Reader Conference, which will take place in London on 25-26 February. This will be the 10th annual Conference. The opening of Registration for the Conference is also being announced.
Programme development for the Conference is almost complete, and full details will be announced over the coming weeks. The programme will include:
A Keynote Presentation by Dr Kamran Abbasi, the Editor in Chief of the BMJ.
CollaborativeWorkshops covering:
Peer review innovations: implementing solutions
Making research content more readable
Guaranteeing image integrity in the age of AI
Co-creating a pragmatic open science future
Leveraging Research4Life to build Global South capacity
Supporting researchers with GetFTR infrastructure
Plenary sessions including:
Taking research into policy and practice with Toby Green & Damian Bird
A discussion on trust indicators
Dr Kira Hopkins & Dr Rose Harris-Birtill on ‘diamond’ books & journals
Funders and publishers talking about preprints
Dr Elliott Lumb and Nicko Goncharoff on the future of research integrity
and many more
And we will have our usual lively Debate.
The Royal Society of Chemistry is returning as the Gold Sponsor for 2025, and R2R is very grateful for their continuing enthusiastic support for the event. Further renewals and new sponsors will be announced over the next few months.
Registration for the Conference is now open, with ticket prices maintained at last year’s levels, and generous discounts for academics & librarians. People can take advantage of our October and November early-bird discounts by registering today, risk free, as R2R offers a 100% refund option until the end of January.
We are delighted to announce that the Royal Society of Chemistry has once again renewed their Gold Sponsorship of the Researcher to Reader Conference. With the 2025 Conference still about 5 months away, this early renewal by RSC is a a great vote of confidence in the Conference and its enthusiastic support for sponsors. By sponsoring at this stage, RSC secures its Gold position, gives the Conference an early boost, and also maximises the exposure that the the Society gets from its involvement with Researcher to Reader over the coming year.
The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a globally respected organisation dedicated to advancing chemistry. Through research, education, and collaboration, the RSC promotes excellence in chemical science. RSC members drive innovation, address global challenges, and foster sustainable solutions. From supporting groundbreaking research to inspiring the next generation of chemists, the RSC plays a vital role in shaping the future of science.
The 2025 Conference will be on 25 & 26 February and the Call for Papers will be closing very soon, on Friday 7 September.
We are very pleased to announce that Jayne Marks has joined the Advisory Board for the 2025 Researcher to Reader Conference.
Jayne has worked in academic publishing for over 40 years. Starting as a copy editor and proof-reader, Jayne spent a number of years as a managing editor, helping to managing the peer review process. In the 1990s Jayne was a director of the newly formed Nature Publishing Group and managed a range of Nature journals in both the UK and US. She spent a number of years working in the US for Sage Publishing and Wolters Kluwer and now is a consultant, working with a wide variety of clients in North America and Europe. She is also the Head of Business Development, EMEA at Maverick Publishing Specialists. Jayne has also had a leading role in managing the R2R workshop programme over the past two years. In 2024, she was appointed to the Board of Canadian Science Publishers.
We welcome Jayne to the R2R 2025 Board, where her knowledge and expertise will be a significant asset to the Conference.
Several people who participated in the 2024 Researcher to Reader Conference, on 20-21 February in London, have written up their experiences in reviews of the whole event or particular sessions.
There are reports from Jason de Boer and Tony Alves on the Peer Review workshop. Plus a review by Romy Beard, and an article by R2R Advisory Board member (and Scholarly Kitchen ‘chef’) Dr Haseeb Irfanullah for the International Science Council.
Click on the images below to view the reports.
Further comments on the 2024 Conference may be found in the feedback from the participant survey and in the R2R Community Forum.
Participant feedback for the 2024 Researcher to Reader Conference, which took place at BMA House in London on 20-21 February, demonstrated continued high levels of satisfaction with the event, with delegates rating the Conference very positively.
Of those responding to the survey, over 98-100% rated the Conference relevant, valuable and recommendable (up from 94-98% in 2023), with the content overall receiving 94% positive ratings (up from 89%).
Plenary sessions in the main hall had average scores ranging from 3.1 to 3.7 (out of 4), with an overall average score of 3.3. The lightning talks (offered during the breaks) averaged even better, with the same range, but an average of 3.4 overall. Four out of the five breakout workshops received 100% positive feedback, with the average score for each of the five workshops ranging from 3.3 to 3.9 (out of 4), and an average score overall of 3.6. The structure of the event (timetable, mix of sessions, etc) was positively scored (92%), the food highly regarded (95% positive), and the event administration got 96% positive feedback.
Detailed Report
The survey, completed by over 50% of participants, showed 98% of respondents agreeing that the Conference was relevant to them professionally, and 100% saying it was valuable use of their time. 98% of those responding said they would recommend the event to others – we hope they will do so!
The overall content of the Conference was positively reviewed, with almost all respondents giving very positive scores and comments on the scope, content and delivery of the sessions. A few people suggested we should give more attention to the humanities and to books, and we will definitely aim to improve on this. Including more funder voices was also mentioned, and we would welcome any funders who wanted to join our conversations. We also continue to strive to include more voices from outside Europe and North America, and would welcome ideas and proposals that would help with this.
“A diverse array of topics, all interesting and valuable”
“Overall, great content”
“Excellent mix of high profile speakers”
“Fantastic speakers”
“I am impressed how interesting a conference can be”
The plenary sessions at the Conference (including panels, presentations and the debate) received highly positive ratings across the whole timetable. All sessions received an average rating of 3.1 to 3.7 (out of 4). This consistent range of high scores shows that the vigorous curation of the programme is highly effective in ensuring all sessions are of high quality, and are valued by the vast majority of participants. Particularly highly-rated were the opening keynote, the debate, the pair of presentations on transformative agreements, and the closing summary.
The highly interactive workshops were also all positively viewed, receiving an average rating of 3.3 to 3.9 (out of 4). Almost everybody rated their workshop positively, and for two of the five topics on offer, over 85% of the participants rated their workshop ‘Great’. Even in the lowest-scoring workshop, almost 80% of respondents rated it ‘Good’ or ‘Great’. As usual, nobody rated their workshop ‘Poor’.
Some people said that we did not allow enough time for their workshop topic, while others said they wanted to attend multiple shorter workshops, so perhaps we have the balance about right!
The R2R workshops are the most demanding part of our programme, both for the facilitators and the event management, but they are highly rewarding for the participants (and, usually, for the facilitators); we particularly welcome proposals for workshops in our Call for Papers.
“R2R workshops are always a delight”
“The workshops facilitated strong interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and opinions”
“I thought the workshops were great”
The lightning talk sessions also received generally positive feedback, with average scores ranging from 3.1 to 3.7 (out of 4). The lightning talks are proving to be consistently (and increasingly) popular, even though some are purely commercial presentations.
Several people we unhappy that we scheduled the lightning talks during the breaks, but we want to keep commercial presentations optional for the delegates, and it is hard to see how we could integrate about 90 minutes of this material into the main programme. Video recordings of the lighting talks were made available soon after the Conference, so that people who wanted to focus on conversations with fellow participants on the day didn’t have to miss out on this content.
The overall format and timetable for the Conference was, however, positively reviewed by over 90% of respondents. We pack a lot into two days, and some people say that they find the timetable a bit intense (“It was a little bit too busy and full on”), but others seemed to like the energy this generates (“Fast paced, always something happening”). We will try to add a few extra breathing-spaces into the programme in future, while somehow keeping all the content!
The overall dates and duration for the event received 97% positive responses, with people generally liking the format of two full days, although there were some calls for an earlier start and finish on the second day (which was a bit late this year). A couple of people suggested some sort of pre-Conference on the Monday, and we will have a think about whether that might be desirable and manageable one day.
“Appreciate the plenary structure, and that you cram so much into two days”
“Good balance of formats (and breaks)”
“I liked the mix of standalone speakers and panels in the plenaries”
“Two days is the exactly right length”
“Liked the concentrated format”
“February is the perfect time for a conference”
We were also pleased (and relieved) to see that 86% of participants feel that the R2R Conference is good value for money. Events are continuing to get more expensive to deliver, as the cost of venues, catering and other aspects rise, but we try to keep ticket prices affordable, helped by the support from our sponsors.
The event administration, managed by The Events Hub, got 96% positive scores, the same as for 2023, with many very positive comments. There were also positive reactions to our Registration process (96%) and to our Marketing messages (81%) although a couple of people mentioned minor registration problems, or over-long marketing emails, and we will keep an eye on this.
“Very easy to register online”
“There were the right number of reminders to register”
“Promotion of R2R is good”
“Amazing staff”
“A great team”
The Conference venue (BMA House) got many positive comments during the event, and the catering received 95% positive ratings in the feedback survey, although a couple of people found the food too ‘experimental’ or ‘spicy’, and some said the coffee was cold. We are glad that our participants share our satisfaction with the venue.
“Food was great”
“Some of the best conference food I’ve had”
“The food is noticeably better than the typical conference food”
“The lunches were really tasty”
R2R works hard to host a very inclusive event within the scholarly communications community, and this includes the breadth of our scope, the diversity of our participants and the collaborative ethos that we try to maintain during the meeting. Encouragingly, there were many positive comments in the survey responses about this, including:
“Good mix of viewpoints, perspectives, and topics”
“The overall ‘vibe’ was friendly and open”
“Compared to other conferences, this feels much more collegiate and collaborative”
“A friendly atmosphere, with a good mix of new and returning delegates”
“Very relaxed and friendly”
Overall the survey results, and other feedback, suggest that the 2024 Researcher to Reader Conference was useful, enjoyable and good value for the overwhelming majority of participants. We are continuing to review all the feedback carefully to see what improvements can be made in future, to ensure that we keep up this very positive reputation.
R2R is having some email issues, around 13-15 February, with quite a lot of emails sent from admin@R2RConf.com or info@R2RConf.com ending up in ‘spam’ folders. Apparently this is something to do with a DMRAC record, whatever that is. We are working on a fix.
We are delighted to announce that Atypon has returned to sponsoring the Researcher to Reader Conference, with a Silver Sponsorship. Atypon is also sponsoring the Workshop Programme at the Conference.
Atypon’s Literatum does more than host scholarly content; it empowers partners to further research, amplify their impact, and connect with their communities, providing tools for accessibility, engagement, and revenue growth, all backed by technical expertise, ongoing investments, and a secure, scalable platform.
The Programmefor the R2R Conference, on 20-21 February in London, is available on the Conference website. Registrations are continuing to come in at a high rate, but some places are still available for people who wish to Register today.
Jayne has worked in academic publishing for over 40 years. Starting as a copy editor and proof-reader, Jayne spent a number of years as a managing editor, helping to managing the peer review process. In the 1990s Jayne was a director of the newly formed Nature Publishing Group and managed a range of Nature journals in both the UK and US. She spent a number of years working in the US for Sage Publishing and Wolters Kluwer and now is a consultant, working with a wide variety of clients in North America and Europe. She is also the Head of Business Development, EMEA at Maverick Publishing Specialists. Jayne has also had a leading role in managing the R2R workshop programme over the past two years. In 2024, she was appointed to the Board of Canadian Science Publishers. 
Researcher to Reader Conference — London — 24-25 February 2026 
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