Guiding Personas for Continuous Science
Understanding the needs, challenges, and motivations of six key groups shaping scientific communication and collaboration.
To imagine a future of continuous, inclusive, and collaborative science, we need more than technical fixes—we need empathy for the people who inhabit the system. That’s why we developed six core personas representing the key groups who produce, support, fund, publish, and ultimately consume scientific knowledge. These personas—Researchers, Institutions, Tools & Infrastructure, Journals, Societies & Preprint Servers, Funders, and the Public—help us understand the goals they’re working toward, the frustrations they face, and the contexts they operate in. By designing with these real-world needs in mind, we can ensure that solutions aren’t just visionary—they’re usable, adoptable, and rooted in how science actually gets done.
To deepen our understanding of these six groups, in the Banff 2025 workshop we created named, narrative-based personas that reflect the complexity, motivations, and needs of real people in the system. These aren’t generic archetypes—they’re grounded composites that help us empathize, challenge assumptions, and design with specificity. By giving each persona a name and backstory, we move from abstract categories to lived experience, helping us see not just the roles people play, but what drives them, frustrates them, and gives their work meaning.
Individual researchers are at the forefront of scientific discovery. Researchers commonly work towards scientific discoveries together. They share funding to research and publish their work as a collective. They often need streamlined tools to publish and share their findings effectively.
Institutions, including universities and research centers, are keen for researchers to publish and disseminate their work effectively. They want to understand the volume and quality of output along with ways to reproduce work easily. The level of support offered to researchers varies by institution.
Tools and infrastructure developers design and maintain the underlying systems that power modern science — from data repositories and publishing platforms to analysis pipelines and identity services. Their work enables reproducibility, collaboration, and the long-term preservation of research. Often invisible to end-users, these teams form the backbone of the research ecosystem.
Journals, preprint servers, and scientific societies play a central role in how research is vetted, shared, and rewarded. These actors uphold publication standards, shape peer review processes, and facilitate scholarly discourse. As expectations around openness and interactivity grow, they face the challenge of evolving legacy systems without compromising trust.
Scientific funders, such as government agencies or foundations, play a crucial role in advancing scientific research by providing financial support to researchers and institutions. This funding enables scientists to explore new ideas, develop cutting-edge technologies, and address global challenges, leading to advancements in various fields and improved quality of life.
The general public receives, interprets and reshapes scientific information as they share it with their communities and digital networks. Their engagement, questions, and feedback also influence how researchers frame, and communicate their work.
