At IMMUNOLOGY2026™, then-AAI President Ulrich von Andrian, MD, presented data from many years of his lab’s publication experience showing a dramatic increase over time in the amount of data required by leading scientific journals. The response in the room was immediate and supportive; Dr. von Andrian was describing a problem familiar to many immunologists.
To address the issue of excessive data demands and the resulting impact to the scientific endeavor, Dr. von Adrian proposed the creation of a Sustainable Scientific Enterprise Task Force within AAI. The task force is charged with studying the impact and establishing metrics; defining actionable intervention points; and eventually build the case for collective action. Past AAI President Stephen Jameson, PhD, will chair the task force, which is made up of investigators from public and private universities and research institutions.
Impact on the Scientific Endeavor
Dr. von Andrian says he has noticed a “growing unease that kept building over the years” among his trainees facing the ever-growing data demands of top-tier journals. One trigger that spurred him to take action came when he realized that most of his graduate students “were no longer interested in pursuing academic postdocs after obtaining their degrees.”
Task Force Focus Areas
Publishing in high-impact journals has become necessary to access competitive postdoctoral training, secure a first faculty position, be promoted, and obtain grant funding. The primary goal of sharing and disseminating research findings can now feel overshadowed by the demands of career advancement. The current system, intentionally or otherwise, incentivizes publication in high-impact journals at all costs, without regard to research dollars, researcher time, or institutional resources.
A first-time NIH R01 grant recipient in 1980 was about 36 years old. Now, the average first-time recipient is at least 42. Even the introduction of the NIH Early Stage Investigator track in 2008 has not significantly changed this trend. Although what drives this has not been objectively established, the pressure to publish in high-impact journals is a possible contributor.
The broader public will always have questions about how well scientific funding and resources are used. While the research community has incentivized outcomes, particularly funding and publications, the current system does not incentivize efficiency. It is also not uncommon for immunologists to spend over a year revising papers prior to publication, particularly when publishing in high-impact journals.
Categories of data
To non-scientists, the problem of excessive data requirements may be confusing: doesn’t more data mean better science? Dr. von Andrian explains that there are categories of data in original research paper that differ in weight and value. “Scientific stories typically rely on a finite set of core data that are essential to prove or disprove a hypothesis and to draw scientifically valid conclusions. Additional data are needed to establish scientific rigor, rule out alternative conclusions and/or establish new mechanistic insights.”
“Beyond that are a diversity of data that are good to have, but not essential for the main conclusion,” continues Dr. von Andrian. “Finally, there are peripheral findings that decades ago used to be mentioned as “data not shown”, but modern editorial policies require that any statement must be illustrated, even if trivial.”
“In general, papers get stronger as more data get added, but there are rapidly diminishing returns when it comes to the latter two data categories. Reviewers and editors often demand that such non-essential data be added at a disproportionate cost in time and funding. This escalating process has reached a point where producing papers has become increasingly unaffordable and painfully slow.”
Task force chair Dr. Jameson agrees. “No scientific publication has ever been the ‘last word’ on a particular aspect of research—especially in fields as complicated as immunology—yet there’s a sense that editors and reviewers are seeking ‘perfection’ in a manuscript before acceptance. Such demands exhaust the budget of the investigator, burn out the energy of trainees and lead to long delays in dissemination of data – all of which poorly serves the research community and the public.”
Next steps
Three operating principles inform the task force’s actions. The task force operates on a principle of data before advocacy. It will seek to develop enterprise-wide solutions not limited to one component of the scientific endeavor. And it asks the scientific community to be introspective and examine its own practices even when it is uncomfortable to do so.
The task force will present the initial outcomes of its investigations to the AAI Council in December. In the coming year, it will develop a shortlist of intervention points in collaboration with advisory groups that include representation from multiple stakeholders within the scientific enterprise. Those points will be evaluated at a Stakeholder Summit bringing together participants from scientific societies, publishers, funders, and research institutions, with the goal to make recommendations to the scientific community at large in 2028.
