Dear SSP Members,
Spring has sprung. The kids are slacking at school. My New England neighborhood has exploded with blossoms…and pollen. My hybrid car is getting better gas mileage. The industry travel season is in full swing, and activity at SSP is at full throttle.
2013 SSP Election Results
I am delighted to announce the new officers and board for 2013-2014. Before I do, however, I have to mention how many people told me that it was incredibly difficult to pick from such a strong slate of candidates. It is a testament to Terry Van Schaik, who chaired the Nominating and Awards Committee and her team and to the deep bench SSP’s leadership has that so many excellent candidates agreed to run.
Howard Ratner, a former board member and Scholarly Kitchen blogger, and a well-known innovator in scholarly communications, is our next President-Elect. You may know Howard from his work with CrossRef, CLOCKSS and ORCID, or from his tenure at Springer or at Nature Publishing Group. If you don’t know him yet, you’re in for a treat, as he has technological depth, business smarts, and knows just how to cut to the heart of the matter.
Kent Anderson, CEO of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, who has served as President-Elect this year will take the reins as SSP President at our Annual Business Meeting on Friday morning June 7, and Howard will work with him on the board for a year as I transition to my advisory role as Past President. Terry Van Schaik, who has been a kind, knowledgeable and inspiring mentor to me, will be ending her term as Past President on the board in June.
Joining Howard at the board table for three-year terms will be our three new board members at large: Michelle Norell, Jennifer Pesanelli, and Jean Shipman. Jennifer has been involved as a speaker and active member of the Education Committee. Michelle is not only last year’s Emerging Leader award recipient, but past chair of the Marketing Committee. She also agreed to step in as one of the co-chairs of the Education Committee this year. Jean Shipman is a co-founder of the Chicago Collaborative, and contributes a librarian’s experience. These three women have all contributed greatly to SSP in their own ways and will provide fresh perspectives to the board.
Our thanks go to Alice Meadows, Will Wakeling, and Michael Clarke as they end their terms on the board. Though I must warn them, SSP is like the Hotel California: you can check out, but you can never leave. We look forward to your continued input and ideas.
Annual Meeting
Ann Mehan Crosse and her staff at the Resource Center are incredibly busy counting registrations and making plans for the upcoming Annual Meeting to be held June 5-7 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis. The program has been finalized, and the registrations at last count were over 800–a record, not only for a San Francisco meeting, but for ANY SSP meeting, anywhere! Attendees from 14 countries–as far away as China, India, Japan, and Turkey–have registered. Our Program Committee, headed by Emilie Delquie and Jocelyn Dawson, did an amazing job. A meeting app is available for download now–it will help you select and track the sessions you want to attend.
Ann tells me the venue is spectacular. It is not too late to get your registrations in. The meeting is a don’t-miss event in our community. From keynoter Tim O’Reilly to the last panelist of the last concurrent session on the last day, you are in for a whirlwind of ideas, debates, reports, and challenges. Get your sleep and exercise-you’ll need some stamina for the sessions, the networking, and the exhibits. And please stop by the SSP Membership Booth to volunteer and get involved.
Educational Programming
In other news the board has been reviewing SSP’s educational programming. To augment the popular pre-meeting seminars (I mean, seriously, who could resist a seminar called Tag me, Maybe?), the Education Committee is building a strong and varied webinar program to reach members that may not have the time or budget to travel to meetings but want to take advantage of the excellent programming SSP offers.
We have decided to suspend the IN meeting for this year while we do a complete review of our member needs and ways to meet those needs. The Fall Education Seminars will go on, but we will experiment with piggybacking them onto other well-attended events to minimize travel costs and maximize convenience for attendees. If you have suggestions for compelling educational programming that will meet the needs of our members, please feel free to contact me or the Chairs of the Education Committee: Marian Hollinsgworth, Evelyn Jabri, and Michelle Norrell.
Learned Publishing
One of the valuable benefits SSP members enjoy is free access to Learned Publishing,a journal collaboration between SSP and the Association of Learned and Professional Publishing Societies (ALPSP). Diane Scott-Lichter serves as SSP’s appointed North American Editor. Diane has been working hard, not only to acquire informative content, but also to increase the visibility of this resource. To access your membership, sign into the SSP website and use the link on this page. You can also sign up for an RSS feed or a Table of Contents alert email to make sure you know when a new issue has been published.
SSP Website
By now you’ve had an opportunity to see the redesigned SSP website. Anne Orens, Tony Alves, and Rebecca McLeod worked with Windmill Design and members of many committees to create the more accessible, flexible design. We now have the ability to highlight types of content that were previously all but invisible. In the migration, we have also preserved the wealth of information in the past presentations given at SSP events in the new SSP Library. Slides and recordings are all openly available so you can catch an event you may have missed or you can revisit a topic that has become more relevant to you.
The Communications Committee, led by Lois Smith and Mike Mozina has now put into place a sustainable process to regularly refresh the site’s content.
Scholarly Kitchen
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the sometimes controversial, but always interesting Scholarly Kitchen blog, which continues to generate lively discussion. Its unique blend of personal opinion, investigative reporting, and essays has attracted an increasing number of readers and attention from the scholarly publishing, library, and academic communities and the general media. The Kitchen has recently added a podcast, spearheaded by Stewart Wills of Science Magazine, who has generously donated his time and the expertise he gained in launching the Science Podcast. We thank the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for the use of their studios and recording equipment.
SSP: A Relevant Association
SSP is involved in so many exciting activities that it’s impossible for me to give them all their due in a letter that you are scanning quickly as you go through your email box. But I absolutely must share the work going on, undeservedly behind the scenes, in Professional Development. Our travel grants program has become extremely popular (and competitive) under the continued nurturing direction of Will Wakeling. The geographically dispersed cohort of 13 awardees will be attending the Annual Meeting this year. (Thanks to our sponsors, Crossref, Inera, Scholarly IQ, Copyright Clearance Center, Rockefeller University Press, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc., without which these travel grants would be impossible. And thanks to Jean Shipman and Ted Winslow and their Development Committee, for bringing them in and once again filling our exhibit hall and our sponsorship dance card).
Travel grant winners don’t just come to the meeting once and disappear. Many have become active participants in SSP’s committees. Under the guidance of Committee Chair Charles Watkinson, and moderated by past travel grant winner Korey Jackson a number of early career webinars held this year have reenergized travel award alumni. Their ideas and enthusiasm are already changing the nature of the organization and our profession.
Along similar lines, we thank all of the more, er, senior managers among our membership who recognize the importance of prioritizing time and money to send early career employees to the annual meeting and other events.
Industry Collaborations
SSP is important, yes, but we also share goals and missions with a number of other like-minded organizations. We have had or are working on ongoing collaborations for joint programming, support, and activities with publishing and library organizations like the Chicago Collaborative, ALPSP, the Beijing Book Fair, the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG), the Association of American University Presses (AAUP), and others, thanks in large part to past-President October Ivins and the Organizational Collaboration Committee. (Like I said, you can never leave SSP).
SSP may not advocate, but we do argue. We welcome all participants and their opinions, and we welcome those whose opinions are still forming.
It has been the opportunity of a lifetime serving as SSP’s President this year. I probably have asked more questions than I answered, but I am fully confident that this society is an integral part of the transformation of scholarly communication, whether geographical, technological, sociological or political.
With best regards,
Carol Anne Meyer, SSP President 2012-2013
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