SSP - The Neolithic Era by Fred Spilhaus

SSP has many roots, which are deeply buried, as with any strong tree. Two that are reasonably visible include the IEEE meetings on scientific journals and the NSF-supported "Innovation" project. My contribution to the "history" takes off from these, and highlights the role of four key players, whom I would characterize as the Spark Plug, the Idea Man, the Planner, and the Executor.

The Spark Plug

The idea of forming a society for scholarly publishing popped into my head as a result of a comment by Jack Goellner (Director, Johns Hopkins University Press) at a meeting of the advisory committee to an NSF-funded project on innovation in scientific communication. Jack suggested that the scholarly publishing community needed a lobbying organization of its own to represent its particular interests before Congress. A priority issue of the time was the implementation of major revision of the U.S. copyright law. But other legislation and regulation were bound to affect our sector. Thus, the Spark had ignited an idea.

The Idea Man

Being prone to expansiveness, I immediately saw that the need was not just for lobbying. To be effective in supporting the scholarly enterprise, we who traditionally dealt with the organization of information needed to broaden our constituency to include all of those involved in the process. I followed Jack's comment with a suggestion that we might consider a broad-based society. It was the end of a long day, and after some idle chat the advisory committee members went their separate ways.

The Planner

Still excited about the "idea," I mentioned it to Judy Holoviak (even then Director of Publications at AGU), who had been taking a course in association management. As the final exam for the course, she had written a paper on founding a new association. Now, we had another piece of the puzzle: the plan.

The Executor

The final piece fell into place when John Strawhorn called and said that his boss was giving John some time to develop this idea with me. John was a manager on the innovation project at Aspen Systems, which had the NSF contract. Over the next several months, John, Judy, and I developed the prospectus for SSP and a plan to gain community support.

The first step was an informal IEEE-sponsored session at the 1997 Conference on scientific journals in Reston, Virginia. With the encouragement of the participants in that session we had our marketing order.

Everything was ready to go: bylaws written, initial officers selected, and a well-balanced board representing all segments identified but not confirmed. A kick-off meeting was called to roll out the concept. We had not reckoned on the effect of a little wine and a lot of enthusiasm on our plans. We left that gathering with the proposed officers duly anointed, but a very different board -- one more heavily weighted to the sciences and to journals than planned or desired. (The society struggled to broaden the base for many years.)

Much of the rest of the development of SSP can be traced through the minutes of the Executive Committee and Board. During the first years the day-to-day administration of the society was done by me on a voluntary basis with Judy Holoviak's support as Assistant Secretary-Treasurer. My administrative assistant at AGU was really the lynch-pin. We also handled the logistics of meetings.

When the first board was elected by the membership, the society had about 1,000 members and $50,000 in the bank - with dues of only $20. SSP was an instant success.