SSP President’s e-Letter – Summer 2016

Dear SSP Members,

What a fantastic conference we had in Vancouver two months ago. (Can it really have been that long? I still feel like I just got home.) There were so many memorable and inspiring moments, some of which have generated lots of post-conference discussion. The session that may have had the greatest impact was the keynote presentation by Dr. Margaret Ann Armour–now viewable online!–which itself significantly informed a subsequent posting in the Scholarly Kitchen by Chef Alice Meadows. The issues surrounding gender disparities and inequities in the world of scholarly publishing are now being discussed and debated more vigorously and creatively than ever–the question before each of us now is: what will we begin to do differently? Expect more challenging and inspiring conversations on this topic in the future.

Another highlight of the conference, for me, was a panel presentation on the results of a study of early-career professionals in scholarly publishing. Led by Emma Brink and Matt Cooper, both of Wiley, this presentation offered a wide array of interesting findings and stimulated great discussion.

Looking forward to this coming year, there are lots of exciting things on the horizon for SSP. At the Board of Directors meeting in Vancouver, the formation of four new task forces was approved: a Peer Group Task Force (reporting to the Community Engagement Committee), a Certification & Training Task Force, a Publications Task Force, and an Industry Initiatives Task Force. Meanwhile, the Early Career Professionals Task Force has now been turned into a permanent subcommittee of the Professional Development Committee, enhancing our ability to continue meeting the needs of SSP members in the earlier stages of their careers. All of these changes will help give our organization more actionable intelligence about the changing world of scholarly communication and the evolving needs of our members and help us to develop new programs in response.

In other exciting organizational news, in Vancouver we welcomed our new Program Director, Helen Szigeti! Helen has a long history of participation and stellar service in SSP, and we’re very excited to have her onboard in this very important capacity, even as we bid a fond farewell to the also-amazing Margaret Reich.

As the year continues to unfold, I invite you to be on the lookout for a number of other interesting events and developments, including:

• The upcoming renovation of the The Scholarly Kitchen site
• Fall seminars coming up on October 4-5 in Washington, DC
• A half-day preconference workshop dealing with issues of predators, pirates, and privacy in connection with the Charleston Conference (November 2)
• Webinars on product development and online content delivery coming up in September and October

I’m both excited and a little bit intimidated at being your new president, and over the coming months I hope that all SSP members will feel free to contact me at any time with questions, concerns, criticisms, praise for our wonderful committees and Board, or anything else that I need to hear or can help with.

Thanks to all of you for your contributions, small and great, to SSP. Every one of our members helps to make this organization a productive, diverse, and stimulating community of information professionals.

Rick Anderson

SSP President, 2016-17