Knowledge Futures (KF) operates on the conviction that scholarly publishing, as currently structured, actively hinders scientific progress. Their culture prioritizes open access, community-driven development, and a deep skepticism of traditional academic gatekeepers. This manifests in a distributed team structure, a relentless pursuit of open-source technology solutions, and a philosophical commitment to empowering researchers to control the dissemination and evaluation of their work. KF's primary methodology is building the technological infrastructure to facilitate new modes of knowledge production and sharing.

KF fosters innovation by explicitly rejecting proprietary solutions and embracing radical collaboration. This is crucial to creating an open, transparent, and interoperable ecosystem for scholarly communication. Located in the MIT Media Lab ecosystem, and supported by grants from foundations concerned with research dissemination, KF's existence is a direct response to the perceived failures of commercial academic publishers to serve the needs of the scientific community. Their impact is most visible in the development of tools like PubPub, which enables researchers to publish, discuss, and collaboratively improve research outputs, fostering a community-driven approach to knowledge creation.