Welcome to the latest edition of the Open Pharma monthly update! Each month, our team curates the most important news, milestones and insights from the Open Pharma community and beyond, delivering them straight to your inbox.
In this issue, we’re excited to highlight Open Pharma’s contribution to the International Science Council consultation on AI disclosure standards and to explore how the DOME framework is improving transparency and reproducibility of AI methodologies.
Open Pharma updates
Contribution to the global AI disclosure standard consultation
- Open Pharma convened two multi-stakeholder workshops in February to inform the joint initiative Towards a global reporting standard for artificial intelligence (AI) disclosure in research. Insights from the workshops were synthesized into a consultation report, which was submitted on 27 February 2026. We will continue to work with the International Science Council, World Conferences on Research Integrity, Committee on Publication Ethics, Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers and the Global Young Academy throughout 2026.
PIF topic meeting
- We were delighted to be joined by Sophie Randall (Director of the Patient Information Forum [PIF]) for a topic meeting on AI, misinformation – and how to tackle it earlier this month. Together, we reflected on the importance of health literacy, the challenge of misinformation, and the role of the PIF TICK as a marker of quality healthcare information.
AI discussion forum with DOME
- On 20 March, we were joined by Silvio Tosatto (Professor of Bioinformatics at the University of Padova) for an AI discussion forum looking at how AI and machine learning methods are currently reported in the life sciences and where there is room for improvement. Silvio highlighted common challenges – including inconsistent reporting and limited methodological detail – and presented an overview of the DOME Recommendations and Registry, which aim to make AI and machine learning methods easier for authors, reviewers and publishers to understand. Learn more about how the DOME Recommendations and Registry bring clarity, standardization and accountability to AI and machine learning research in this blog post by Gavin Farrell (PhD student at the University of Padova).
Insight of the month
Crossref and DOAJ renew partnership to improve equitable scholarly metadata and global support via DOAJ Blog | 3-minute read
- Crossref and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) have announced a renewed collaboration focused on improving “sustainable and equitable services and infrastructure”. The collaboration will support article‑level metadata quality and interoperability, including author affiliations, persistent identifiers and open references, alongside funding for the DOAJ Ambassador Programme to train and support editors, particularly in low‑ and middle‑income countries. With around 90% of DOAJ journals already registered with Crossref, these improvements are expected to improve findability and reuse of open access research and support consistent compliance with funder metadata requirements.
Recommended reads
Clinical trials regulations reform via NHS Health Research Authority | 11-minute read
Why K‑Dense, the ‘AI co‑scientist startup’ from Palo Alto is next promising thing in the research and scientific field via Financial Express | 7-minute read
The eLife model: three-year update via Inside eLife | 8-minute read
Towards a DOI-first referencing model: opportunities, limitations and implications for scholarly publishing via Learned Publishing | 12-minute read
Upcoming dates and deadlines
- 22nd Annual Meeting of the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals – 20–22 April 2026 at the Grand Hyatt Washington, Washington DC, USA. Registration closes 3 April 2026.
These meetings are for Open Pharma Members and Supporters only. Please contact us for more information about how to join Open Pharma.
- AI discussion forum | ISMPP Annual digest – 10:30 EDT / 14:30 BST / 15:30 CEST, May 2026 (date TBC)
- Patient involvement working group | Meaningful and compliant patient involvement – 11:30 EDT / 15:30 BST / 16:30 CEST on 7 May 2026 (NOTE: there is no patient involvement working group meeting in April)
- PLS and discoverability working group | Planning: external education material – 11:00 EDT / 15:00 BST / 16:00 CEST on 14 April 2026
- OA working group | Planning: working group deliverables – 10:00 EDT / 14:00 BST / 15:00 CEST on 13 April 2026
- Topic meeting | Novel plain language formats – May 2026 (date and time TBC)
- Members’ meeting – 10:00 EDT / 14:00 BST / 15:00 CEST on 29 May 2026 (NOTE: there is no Members’ meeting in April)
We hope you enjoyed, and found inspiration in, this month’s highlights. As always, we welcome your feedback and contributions – if you have an idea for a future monthly update, let us know! To keep up to date with what we’re doing between updates, make sure to follow us on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
