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03.28.2022 | SSP News & Releases

President’s Letter | March 2022

Happy spring—or autumn, depending on where you are located! It’s been a busy few months at SSP, so there’s lots of news to share with you all.

As you may remember, one of the Board’s goals for this year was to revisit our strategic objectives, and I’m happy to say that this work has now been completed. At the same time, we realized that, although SSP is very much a values-led organization, we had never actually articulated what those goals are. Values and objectives very much go hand in hand, so we also put together a Core Values Task Force, led by Randy Townsend and President-Elect, Miranda Walker, which has also completed its work.

So … drum roll please … we are now ready to share all of this good work with you! 

First, our values. Through a collaborative process involving the SSP Board, Committee Co-Chairs, and staff, we identified four core values. Miranda and Randy led us through a collaborative decision-making process, and there was an astonishing—and very gratifying—degree of consensus. You can read more about that process and about how we plan to embed our values in all aspects of SSP’s work in The Scholarly Kitchen tomorrow (March 29). In the coming days and weeks, we’ll also be rolling out some fun ways for you to help us celebrate people in our community who are really living these values, which are, without further ado:

  • Community: Bringing diverse stakeholders together to harness their collective knowledge and unique perspectives; creating connections that result in authentic relationships
  • Inclusivity: Providing equitable opportunities for individuals from diverse backgrounds to feel welcome to contribute their thoughts and ideas to the scholarly publishing community
  • Adaptability: Challenging the status quo, embracing new ideas, and maintaining effectiveness in an evolving environment; learning from mistakes to improve all aspects of scholarly communications
  • Integrity: Building trust through responsible actions, transparency, respect, and honest relationships

Next, our strategic objectives. While we didn’t either want or need to make any dramatic changes to SSP’s overall direction, we did want to simplify and refocus our goals. So we’ve whittled them down from seven to five, made them SMART, and are working with our committees and the SSP staff to ensure that our values are embedded in everything we do to implement them. 

Our goals for 2022-25 are: 

  1. Embed diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in all that we do
  2. Make SSP a home for scholarly communications professionals at every career stage
  3. Engage with the global scholarly communications community
  4. Develop new content and services
  5. Ensure SSP’s continued  financial sustainability

I am hugely grateful to everyone who had a hand in developing both our core values and our strategic objectives. It was truly a community effort and I’m confident that both will stand SSP in good stead in the coming years. 

I can’t close without a reminder that registration is now open for the SSP Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL on June 1-3! It’s our first in-person conference since 2019 and, for many of us (including me) it will be our first in-person conference since early 2020—definitely something to look forward to, as you can tell from these recent Scholarly Kitchen posts, which asked the community and the chefs why they’re looking forward to the conference. For those of you who are unable to travel there is a virtual (though not fully hybrid) option, so we very much hope to see you there, whether in person or online. Early bird registration is open for another couple of weeks, closing April 22, so make sure you sign up now to take advantage of that!

I look forward to seeing many of you in Chicago!

PS: If you want to support the Generations Fund and have fun/get fit at the same time, don’t forget to sign up for our Virtual 5k Run, Walk, and Roll event, which will take place during May!

Alice Meadows
2021-2022 SSP President

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