With our Annual Meeting Call for Proposals closing November 19, many scholarly communication and publishing professionals and organizational stakeholders are submitting ideas for Educational Sessions. In prior years, the Annual Meeting Program Committee has typically received over 100 proposals for the 25 allotted 60 and 90-minute sessions, which may lead you to wonder how to possibly stand out and make it into the program. Fortunately, we have some established best practices for successful proposals that session organizers should keep in mind.
The theme for the meeting is Building a More Connected Scholarly Community, and the meeting is being planned as an in-person event at the Sheraton Grand Chicago Riverwalk, June 1-3, 2022. There are tracks and topic areas to consider when developing an inclusive and interactive session that demonstrates clear learning objectives. Additionally, we’ve established the following tips to ensure your proposal is as competitive as it can be.
Tips for Submitting a Compelling Proposal
- Your submission should appeal to a broad range of attendees in an engaging way.
- SSP Annual Meeting attendees value networking opportunities, insight into new developments, and practical applications they can use to advance their careers.
- Attendees include executives, editors, salespeople, marketing and product managers, librarians, technologists, vendors, academics, and more.
- We will NOT consider educational session submissions that are focused on a single solution, a single organization, or material that is commercial in nature.
- Such content is more appropriate for the 5-minute Previews session or for Industry Breakout sessions.
- SSP deeply values diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the provision of a variety of viewpoints from an inclusive pool of speakers.
- Session panels should reflect diverse genders, geography, race, and cultural backgrounds as much as possible.
- Single-speaker educational sessions will NOT be accepted.
- The strongest proposals will include the voices of key stakeholders (researchers/academics, librarians, students), will cross formats (books, journals, etc.), and will include perspectives across STEM, social sciences, and humanities.
Our community is eagerly looking forward to finally gathering again next June in Chicago to reconnect, reflect, learn, adapt, and evolve with a diverse program of impactful and informative discussions. We encourage you to share your industry knowledge and wish you the best for submitting a winning proposal.
Our committee will begin reviewing proposals immediately after the November 19 deadline, so we cannot accept late submissions. Please see the submission guidelines for additional important deadlines. Reach out to us at tracy.mitchell@conferencedirect.com if you have any questions while submitting a session proposal.
News contribution by SSP member, Michael Groth. Mike is Director of Marketing at KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
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