Prestige vs Purpose: Rethinking Scholarly Publishing facilitated by Dr Danny Kingsley

Why do we publish, cite, and evaluate research the way we do? Is scholarly publishing broken? If so, what do we do about it?

Prestige, citations, and journal rankings shape careers, funding, and reputations. They've long served as a proxy for quality and rigour. To be successful, we chase the "right" journal, the citation count, the metrics that get us funded or promoted. These norms are rarely questioned. But do they still serve the research they were built to support? And how is it evolving as AI changes the way research is produced, reviewed, and assessed?

Chaired by Dr Danny Kingsley, this panel discussion invites the Curtin research community into a candid conversation about where the system works well, what’s broken, and what the future of scholarly communication might look like.

Session schedule:

9:30-10:30 Panel discussion

10:30-11:00 Morning tea and networking

About the panel

Dr Danny Kingsley

Dr Danny Kingsley is Director of Library Services (Information) at Deakin University and an Ambassador for the OAPEN Library of open access books. She was previously Deputy Director of Cambridge University Libraries, where she led development of Cambridge's 2019 Position Statement on Open Research. Danny founded the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (now Open Access Australasia) and serves on international committees including SCOSS and the National Open Science Taskforce.

Professor Gretchen Benedix

Professor Gretchen Benedix is Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research Excellence at Curtin University, leading research excellence, training and engagement. With a background in Earth and Planetary Sciences, she built multidisciplinary teams using machine learning to explore planetary evolution, and was a founding member of the Space Science and Technology Centre, home to the largest planetary science research group in the southern hemisphere. She is passionate about translating complex research and championing women in STEM.

Professor Lucy Montgomery

Professor Lucy Montgomery is Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor, Faculty of Humanities, at Curtin University. From 2018–2025 she was Founder and Co-Lead of the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI), mapping global open access trends through big data. A pioneer of the open access movement, she chairs the Scientific Committee for the Directory of Open Access Books and co-authored Open Knowledge Institutions: Reinventing Universities (MIT Press, 2021).

Dr Jacqueline Boaks

Dr Jacqueline Boaks is Curriculum Lead with the Curtin Centre for Applied Ethics and Philosopher-in-Residence at the WA Data Science Innovation Hub. She is Vice President of the Australian Association of Professional and Applied Ethics and co-editor of Leadership and Ethics (Bloomsbury). Her recent research examines dirty hands in leadership and the impact of AI on CSR decision-making, and she is regularly featured in media on AI, leadership and business ethics.

Dr Ellie Sayyad Abdi

Dr Ellie Abdi is a Senior Lecturer at Curtin University, an information literacy researcher, and an educator in Information Studies. Her research explores the relationships between information, people, technology, and learning, with a particular interest in information literacy, and the ways emerging technologies are reshaping how people create, evaluate, and use information across education and research.