In Banff, Alberta, from May 27–29, 2025, we gathered a diverse group of researchers, infrastructure builders, funders, open-science advocates and change-makers to imagine a new future for scientific communication. The Continuous Science Foundation workshop wasn’t a typical meeting of minds—it was a collaborative design space aimed at rethinking how we share and evolve science.
At its core, the workshop confronted a fundamental disconnect: the way we conduct science has changed, but the way we communicate it has not. Research today is iterative, computational, and collaborative. Yet, our outputs are still largely static PDFs, siloed data, and disconnected repositories. The workshop invited participants to break away from these conventions and imagine a communication ecosystem that matches the pace and complexity of modern science.
Science has evolved. The ways we communicate it has not kept up.
It is time to shift the conversation towards continuous and connected processes in science—embracing iteration, automation, and deep integrations with data and computation. Set against the awe-inspiring backdrop of Banff, this intimate, high-impact workshop brings together select leaders of this transformation. Through immersive outdoor experiences, in-depth discussions, and strategic storytelling, we developed a collective vision and the communication tools needed to drive change beyond this meeting. The participants included twenty open-science champions, researchers, infrastructure leaders, and communicators—each with the influence and vision to shape the next era of scientific communication. Together we helped to ignite a movement toward a future where science is iterative, limitless, collaborative, and ever-evolving.
The mountains are calling, and I must go – for in their quiet, new ideas are born.
John Muir
Figure 1:The participants of the workshop outside of the Banff Center, Canada.
Scientific communication is under fire from multiple sides—challenged to do more, move faster, open up, and deliver impact, all while balancing on top of a legacy system. Together, we were invited to create space to align around something bigger—a shared vision for the future of scientific communication. Not a vague ideal, but a movement we can name, shape, and build.
On the first day of the workshop we set context, introduced each other, created personas, went through the pre-workshop survey results, used the iceberg model to go deep into the mindsets and systems behind events, ideated a preferable future and chose a movement together: composable science.
On Day 2, we translated the vision of composable science into shared values, plain-language poetry, clear value propositions, and future-focused stories—moving from abstract ideals to actionable narratives that grounded the movement in collaboration, reuse, and real-world impact.
Acknowledgments¶
We are very grateful to The Navigation Fund for supporting this workshop and for helping lay the foundations for the Continuous Science Foundation.
