Fellowship Program

Our Fellowship program offers a wide range of career development, training, and networking opportunities in the scholarly publishing industry, including matching Fellows with a mentor and working in small groups to create a poster presentation for our Annual Meeting. The award also includes complimentary SSP membership and registrations for selected SSP events. Fellows are asked to report on their experiences and learning outcomes, join and actively participate in an SSP committee, contribute to a Fellowship project, provide feedback about SSP programs, and work with volunteers to promote and highlight the Fellowship program.

Congratulations to our 2023 Fellowship winners!


Andrea Blatz ^{University of Texas Press}	Anna Maltbie ^Wiley	Cassandra Larose ^{Royal Roads University}	Chen He ^{Wuhan University}

Chenyue Jiao ^{University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign}	Francesca Soldati ^{University of Aberdeen}	Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari ^{Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti}	Jamaica Jones ^{University of Pittsburgh}

Janaynne Carvalho do Amaral ^{University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign}	Mario Pallua ^{Libertas International University}	Mary Alice Keller ^{HCA Healthcare}	Nataliia Kaliuzhna ^{Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts}

Oyedele Abimbola Ojeniyi ^{University of Ibadan}	Rebecca Michaels-Walker ^{Toronto Metropolitan University}	Sarah Frances Gordon ^{Universidad Iberoamericana}	Shriyaa Mittal ^{AIP Publishing}

We will begin taking applications for the 2024 Fellows in late 2023. Read more about Application Requirements, Benefits, and Responsibilities, or learn more about our 2023 Fellows.

Supporting the SSP Fellowship Program

The Fellowship Program is made possible by the Generations Fund. Generous donations from members and industry endow the Generations Fund to allow SSP the resources, in perpetuity, to continue this program. The Career Development Committee, on behalf of SSP, sincerely thanks the donors who make this innovative and supportive program possible. Click here to learn more, or make a gift to help us reach our $500,000 goal.

If you have questions about the fellowship program, please contact us at info@sspnet.org.

Application Requirements

Early-Career Fellowship applicant requirements: must be in their first four years of work in the publishing and information profession.

Student Fellowship applicant requirements: must be current students in a dedicated publishing or library and information science program, or in another program in which they take publishing, librarianship, or information science courses.

Fellows will be selected on the strength of their responses to the three questions listed below. Please include your résumé with your application.

Please describe why you merit this Fellowship. Which of your work/educational experiences and qualifications are especially relevant?
In addition to communicating what you’ve learned by attending SSP’s Annual Meeting to your colleagues/fellow students, how will you practically incorporate this new knowledge into your work/educational life?
The scholarly communications field is in a state of flux. Discuss how this industry could or should evolve over the next five years to meet the changing needs of scholars and researchers.

Fellowship Benefits

SSP Fellows will receive the following:

Complimentary SSP membership;
Discounted SSP membership for two additional years;
Assignment of an industry expert Mentor, with opportunities to communicate via e-mail and Zoom throughout the year, and at the Annual Meeting;
Facilitated quarterly teleconferences with other Fellowship recipients with current and past SSP presidents and board members on developing leadership skills, and path for career growth;
Free registration to the Annual Meeting;
Free registration to a pre-conference seminar;
Fellowship meet-up and networking event at the Annual Meeting for current and former Fellows;
Reimbursement of up to US $1,300 for travel and lodging expenses incurred to attend the meeting. Applications from beyond North America are especially encouraged; funding of up to US $2,000 for travel is available to support overseas Fellows;
Free registration to SSP webinars organized throughout the year;
Free registration to one regional networking event organized throughout the year;
Opportunity to participate in an SSP committee.

Fellowship Responsibilities

All SSP Fellows will be ambassadors of the Society and are expected to undertake the following as part of their Fellowship:

Submit a written report after attending the SSP Annual Meeting describing experiences and learning outcomes. Note: this report may be used as the basis for an article on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Submit a poster to the Annual Meeting for benefit of other early-career professionals and students studying publishing and library and information science;
Contribute to SSP’s Member Exchange as a community ambassador;
Participate in an annual Fellowship survey to provide feedback on the program;
Complete any feedback surveys for seminars, webinars, and networking events attended throughout the year;
Communicate and engage with their assigned Mentor throughout the year;
Give back to SSP by joining a committee at the end of the Fellowship.

As an SSP ambassador, Fellows will work with committees to promote and highlight the program, signing a release that will allow SSP to use their images and text in publicity material.

About Our 2023 Fellows

Andrea Blatz is an editorial fellow at the University of Texas Press. While earning her Ph.D. in French studies at the University of Texas at Austin, she served as managing editor for the interdisciplinary journal Nineteenth-Century Contexts and currently volunteers as associate editor for the open access journal SFRA Review, which focuses on speculative fiction. In scholarly publishing, she is interested in different aspects of accessibility, including wider availability to accessible versions of works, as well as translations and open access publications.

As a Journals Publishing Assistant at Wiley based in New Jersey, Anna Maltbie supports the US/UK editorial team to publish a portfolio of society-owned and proprietary journals ranging from civil and mechanical engineering to materials science and human factors and ergonomics. In 2021, she graduated with a Master of Science in Business Management from Miami University and attended the Columbia Publishing Course. She is excited to become more involved in the scholarly publishing community as an SSP Fellow by learning from established mentors and other early career professionals.

Cassandra Larose (she/her) is the Scholarly Communication and Learning Support Librarian at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, located on the traditional Lands of the Xwsepsum and Lekwungen ancestors and families. She is a first in family university graduate and received her Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University in 2021. Cassandra is interested in social justice and equity in how we access and disseminate information and amplifying traditionally marginalized voices in academia.

Chen He began her publishing study as an undergraduate and has now been studying for over eight years at Wuhan University. It’s the third year of her Ph.D. candidate career. She is very keen on scholarly communication and has participated in many academic conferences. And she went on a semester exchange study at the Department of Publishing at Pace University in New York in 2019. Her current research interests focus on the ethics of academic publishing.

Chenyue Jiao is a fourth-year PhD student in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Her research interest lies in research data practices in scholarly communication. Her current research focuses on the role of the data paper in facilitating data sharing and reuse. She is excited to be selected as a fellowship recipient because of the connections and collaborations with the SSP community.

Francesca Soldati is the Scholarly Communications Advisor at the University of Aberdeen (UK). Her role focuses on the responsible use of research metrics and supporting researchers with open research practices to increase the visibility and transparency of their outputs throughout the research lifecycle. Before joining the Open Research Team at the University of Aberdeen in 2021, Francesca gained a PhD and worked in different roles at the University of Lincoln (UK). She is particularly interested in the impact research metrics have on research culture and the potential of open science to positively change the research community.

Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari is the Science/Scholarly Communications Librarian of Afe Babalola University (ABUAD), Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. Idowu is the first known Scholarly Communications Librarian in Nigeria. Idowu serves as Journal Manager for ABUAD institution-based journals, particularly ABUAD Journal of Natural and Applied Science, where he coordinates editorial workflow, platform configuration, and other publishing enrichment services such as generation and registration of digital object identifier (DOI) to published contents. He has won prestigious fellowships, grants, and scholarships to attend international forums and institutions in the United States and South Africa as either a fellow, student, or tutor.

Jamaica Jones is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh, where she is pursuing research into research assessment and open science. She is currently the Executive Secretary of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy Subgroup on the Year of Open Science 2023, coordinating federal interagency efforts to advance, inform and celebrate open science initiatives. In what few moments she can wrest from her work, she can be found in attics and basements across Western Pennsylvania, hunting for lost treasures at estate sales.

Janaynne do Amaral is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In 2022, she earned her Ph.D. in Information Science at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro/Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology. Her research focuses on open peer review models with public participation and on public engagement in science through scientific journals.

Mario Pallua completed a BA in Political Science at the University of Zagreb (Croatia) and an MPhil in Development Studies financed by a OSI-FCO Chevening scholarship at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). He worked for three years at the Institute for Development and International Relations (Zagreb, Croatia) as the Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief of the Institute’s scholarly journal. He currently works for the Publishing Department of Libertas International University (Zagreb, Croatia), where he is responsible for the University’s three academic journals. He enjoys hiking, running, amateur astronomy, chess, and reading about global statistics and trends.

Mary Alice Keller is a Research Publications Coordinator for HCA Healthcare in Nashville, Tennessee. Her main role is supporting the HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine, an open access, bi-monthly medical journal. She is also a licensed speech-language pathologist and holds her Ph.D. in Hearing and Speech Sciences from Vanderbilt University. She is passionate about improving scientific communication in order to most effectively share evidenced based medicine with clinicians and patients.

Nataliia Kaliuzhna is a second year PhD student in Library and Information Science at Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. She also holds a part-time position as a Research Librarian at the State Scientific and Technical Library of Ukraine, where she contributes to open science projects and assists with the open access efforts of the Library. Outside of work and research, she reviews applications for the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Currently, Nataliia is a visiting scholar at TIB Open Science Lab.

Oyedele Abimbola Ojeniyi is a Scholarly Communications Expert and Researcher, skilled in digital information services delivery and learning resources management. Certified and experienced multidisciplinary library and information professional with hands-on experience in Scholarly Communication and Librarianship. He has demonstrated proficiencies in research related to the Humanities, Health Sciences, and Technologies. Endowed with natural leadership skills and an information manager of excellence. Member of the Nigeria Library Association (NLA) and Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T). Current research interest includes the utilization of 4IR in the information profession. He is also doctoral student in the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

Rebecca Michaels-Walker is a publishing student at Toronto Metropolitan University, in Ontario, Canada. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Science in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from the University of Toronto and an RCIScience Certificate in Science Communication from Toronto Metropolitan University. She is especially passionate about STEM publishing and hopes to help make STEM research easy to discover, use, and share.

Sarah Frances Gordon is the managing editor of the journal, Psicología Iberoamericana at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, Mexico. She has a doctorate in psychology from the University of Cape Town in South Africa with a specialization in trauma and violence against women, as well as degrees in psychology and industrial psychology. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in political science at Stellenbosch University before moving to Mexico. She speaks Spanish and English and currently works in the field of scholarly publishing and technology.

Shriyaa Mittal is a Journal Manager at AIP Publishing, working on open access journals where she partners with academic editors and other stakeholders on content development strategy. Prior to joining AIP Publishing in May 2023, Shriyaa was a postdoctoral researcher at Mass. General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston. She holds a PhD in Biophysics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.