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Gems from the SSP 30th Annual Meeting

9 June 2008

Introduction by Lois Smith, SSP News Managing Editor

The 30th Annual Meeting drew nearly 780 attendees, probably a new record - and no surprise, considering the richness and diversity of both the session content and the networking opportunities. In this long (but worth it!) article, we present a number of session reports from "miners" who briefly report and provide their own perspectives on the gems they took away from the presentations. We are grateful to all the contributors.

Attendees: If you haven't already, please complete the meeting evaluation! This will help the 2009 Annual Meeting Program Committee ensure that topics of interest to you are covered next year.

Got an idea for a speaker or session for next year's meeting? Submit your suggestions online at the SSP Web site. Better yet, volunteer yourself as a speaker.

This is not the only place you can read about the meeting; EContent magazine featured a nice summary by Heather Hedden (Viziant Corp.) in the June 6 issue of EContent xtra.

If there are still a few of you SSP members out there who haven't made it to an annual meeting yet, we hope these reports will enrich your knowledge, expose you to scholarly publishing professionals on whom you can rely for information, and encourage you to take advantage of future SSP events to broaden your horizons.

Enriching Online Journal Articles with Supplementary Materials: Opportunities and Challenges

Miner: Michael Muscat, Publishing Manager, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses

Who knew a half-day seminar on supplementary materials could be so compelling? This session featured a dizzying array of panelists with diverse backgrounds and contrasting themes and points of view. I’m truly glad I attended.

I was particularly struck by Andrew Vickers’s presentation. A research methodologist with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Vickers made the case that data sets ought to be published in their entirety so researchers can build on the information, replicate important studies, and the like. He humorously called attention to a troubling pattern of avoidance and dissembling among researchers he’d approached for access to raw data in the past, even when there was no legitimate reason for their data to be withheld. Sometimes he’d been turned down flat; other times he’d had researchers blame their methodologist for their unwillingness to comply with his request.

Publication of raw data is routine in protein chemistry, genomic research, and astronomy, he pointed out, so why not in clinical trials? Attendees seemed as dumbfounded as Vickers.

Earlier in the session, during discussion of what he called "key questions," Evan Owens, chief technology officer with Portico, contextualized our historic moment by using a metaphor (attributed to Bob Kelly) about early filmmaking. Movies started out as filmed stage plays before the introduction of the moving camera, said Owens, but from that point on, things began to change. We can trace current advances in cinematography to that simple innovation. Similarly, with Web 2.0, the virtual camera is now moving freely in publishing. New technologies enable us to go beyond "stage plays" and truly interact with users.

But therein lies the rub. We have access to an abundance of information in the digital age, but is more necessarily better? Is publication of reams of raw data worth the investment of time from publishing staff? Do all those supplemental data ultimately service readers? "Answers vary," said Owens.

Julie Harrington, director of online journal publishing with the American Medical Association, struck a similar note during her presentation when she poignantly interjected that we should "expect expectations" around the publication of supplemental materials "to increase." During the discussion period, Harrington bravely dissented on the question of whether more was better, arguing that we’re overloaded with data now.

On the other side of this question was Gary King, professor of government at Harvard, who advocates for data sharing in his capacity as principal investigator for the Dataverse Network Project, which is designed to increase scholarly recognition and distributed control for authors, archives, and others who produce or organize data; facilitate access to those data; and ensure their long-term preservation, even if they are not in the public domain. I found the idea of the Dataverse project intriguing, because it raises serious questions about the future of human knowledge, who ought to "own" that knowledge, and where it ought to be "housed." Deep stuff.

Judith Winters, editor of the exclusively online Internet Archaeology, shared her experiences from the honest-to-goodness trenches of digital publishing. Those of us who complain about our skeleton crews ought to take note: Judith handles just about everything related to production of this online journal, which is published roughly twice a year . . . or whenever an issue’s ready.

Her authors feel more "connected" to their data, Winters observed, and the publication of their supplemental data has forced them "to come off the fence" and say what their research means in a larger sense. "We’re creating a new dialectic that blurs the boundary between text and data," she concluded.

Hear, hear.

Green Publishing: What Publishers Can Do for Environmental Sustainability

Miner: Jennifer Henry, Ph.D., Publishing Manager, Academic Journals, Nature Publishing Group

I have never been to a session where I found myself wanting to sit through it all over again, 5 minutes later. The SSP session on Green Publishing was incredibly inspiring on a national, companywide, and personal level.

Kurt Olson from the Massachusetts School of Law and a member of the Carbon Coalition Speakers’ Bureau started out with a rapid-fire delivery of dozens of actions points for everyone in the room. We were equipped with plenty of practical tips to take away and put into action the minute we left the room. No stone was left unturned. Conference organizers: Insist on ceramic cups for the coffee breaks! Copyeditors: Turn off your power strip each night before leaving the office! Citizens all: Change to a green electricity supplier at home! I couldn’t keep up, so exciting and possible were the tips Kurt offered.

Rick Matilla from Genzyme then spoke about what corporations such as his do. I applaud them for the stand they are making, voluntarily incurring higher power bills in a switch to green power, encouraging staff to travel by train rather than plane where practicable (and paying for carbon offsets where not), providing staff with bike parking and showers, and enabling staff to work form home.

Guy Dresser from Allen Press echoed Rick's comments, first on behalf of Sue Silver from the Ecological Society of America, then with his own anecdotes.

This was a totally inspiring session that gives me hope that the US will soon join other countries in their efforts to live and work greener.

New Content and Business Models in the New Publishing World Order

Miner: Lois Smith, Communications Director, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

This session recapped what we've been hearing for a couple of years now: in the "new world order" it can be difficult to figure out how to get paid for adding value to content and getting it before people's eyes. But some solid suggestions were made by the four speakers.

Sharon Mombru (BlueInsights) described how peer recommendations have become the most common way for people who are connected online to discover information they find ineresting. Publishers shouldn't see these communities as a threat or overlook the opportunity to capitalize (literally) on them. You can wait for them to "grow organically, or be proactive and create groups on these platforms," she said. Once you have those eyes, consider article-based pricing, and allow visitors to buy content across all your journals. Offer sharing rights at different price points (for instance, managed through the Copyright Clearance Center), and introduce credit systems like iTunes. Most important, be very very clear up front what your access rights policies are, and work with and support community platforms.

Michael Beveridge (American Association for Cancer Research) presented a case study of virtual journal portals, which capitalize on nonjournal content through the addition of things like introductions and commentaries. Cancer Reviews Online, which launched in 2007, provides access to reviews published in AACR's six journals, plus some original and some repurposed content. Subscribers to the journals get CRO free, which is the only way to get access.

The CPJ Portal, launched in April 2008, aggregates prevention-related articles across all AACR journals. It's free on a trial basis to meeting attendees. The CPJ Portal aims to raise awareness of the organization's new prevention-focused journal, make search easier, and bring in new audiences.

Beveridge noted that it takes a year to determine if these efforts bring in results, and "the jury is still out on the business models." But portals position the publisher for the article economy and give them the opportunity to experiment with access models.

Geoffrey Bilder (CrossRef), always fun to watch and hear, raised an intriguing possibility: iPub. This takes the iTunes model and applies it to scholarly content. What if someone built such a system? This could be "scary," he said, "especially if someone else [not a scholarly publisher] built it."

After cracking us up with comments like "Publishers and librarians are conspiring to annoy researchers" with some of the "worst interfaces on the planet," that "library silos aren't much better than publisher silos," and that "no one organizes content by publisher except the Frankfurt Book Fair," Bilder noted that there are opportunities in providing content that is relevant to groups within society. If we knew who made up that 90% of site traffic that is unknown, we could all make a lot of money. Hence an organized, searchable, central source like iPub.

Many of the features that distinguish iTunes - its critical mass, simple interface, and disaggregated content - seem to lend themselves well to a model like iPub. Unfortunately, simple, cheap pricing likely would not work very well, partly because of laws against price fixing, and there is no scholarly publishing equivalent of the iPod. But Bilder concluded that publishers could "make people happy if we built something like this."

David Durand (Tizra) closed the session with the exhortation, "It's all about merchandising." Publishers should focus on books because these are not online and are harder to find than journals. "Books are not sausages" (not good for you), he said; "they're more like power bars because they're good for you. . . . It makes sense to disaggregate even to the table on a page." He urged us to give readers what they need "based on what they do, who they are, and what they want to pay."

Durand suggested that publishers license their book content to aggregators and use those providers to find customers.

Second Life and Beyond: Should Publishers Care About Virtual Worlds?

Miner: Lettie Conrad, Online Publishing Manager, SAGE Publications

Responding to recent "2.0" hype around the online virtual reality applications, John Lester, Second Life’s Boston Operations Director, set the stage in this session with a bird’s-eye view of Linden Lab’s avatar-populated world. Lester focused on factors that were meaningful to SSP attendees, including the fact that intellectual property rights are retained by publishers and other content providers when material is distributed in Second Life, whose audience is 70% international.

He explained that, while at times the landscape is surreal, visitors to Second Live should keep in mind that there is a real person behind each avatar. The freedom of communication made possible via virtually represented personas, Lester claimed, opens up new prospects for creative expression and human connection. Although nothing can replace the potency of face-to-face interactions, virtual reality offers new options to publishers and information disseminators for providing non-text-based resources to societies, editors, researchers, and authors.

Joanna Scott of Nature Publishing demonstrated the ways in which her organization has tested the viability of conferences, experiments, lectures, and other activities for scientists and researchers in the Second Life environment. Scott, a marketing associate devoted full-time to the implementation of these virtual events, explained the process by which Nature devoted a significant amount of money to buy land, develop "Second Nature," and work with a consultant to landscape the organization's molecule-shaped virtual island. After launching Second Nature's initial endeavors, such as M4 (Magical Molecular Model Maker, where visitors can create 3-D models of the basic structure of various elements via VRML [Virtual Reality Markup Language]), Nature solicited its community of scientists, authors, and researchers to contribute ideas and launch ventures on their island. Many intriguing projects were born of this proposal, the most profitable and popular of which have been lectures and conferences.

Scott agrees that nothing in virtual reality can replace person-to-person exchanges. She said that the visualization and role-playing offered by SL is fun and interesting, but the opportunities for communication and interaction are the key benefit. The greatest promise of virtual reality is the prospect for connection with people in ways that would be otherwise prohibitively expensive, difficult, or downright impossible. She acknowledged that Nature is still testing the uptake of virtual audiences, and, although traditional marketing tools are proving effective, a good deal of outreach and education is still required. Nature successfully delivers information on www.nature.com/secondnature and its related blog, but the group is still toying with ways to streamline and enhance the sophistication of its marketing tools for this feature.

As a consultant with Digitalmill, which provides problem solving for clients in gaming and virtual realities, Ben Sawyer provided a fresh, insightful perspective on the playful possibilities for publishers in online virtual worlds. He advised attendees that it was not a good idea to launch a presence in the virtual world because it’s the "hot" new thing to do in order to "keep up with the Jones’s" in the publishing industry. Sawyer urges clients to experiment with virtual worlds as a way to provide spaces for beneficial interaction and collaboration. Publishers should launch projects in virtual worlds that have the potential to be persistent environments where people can visit and return, with new avenues to educational communications and to reach different audiences than those of traditional venues or products.

Although Second Life provides many intriguing options, Sawyer provided lists of other virtual world systems, both 2-D and 3-D. Some have simplistic graphics and can be seen as glorified chat rooms. Sites such as RuneScape, Protosphere, and there.com can offer many of the same benefits as SL without the high costs. There are also nonvirtual reality spaces, such as wikis and blogs, which can provide similar alternative spaces for communication and collaboration; these should be considered when weighing investment in such undertakings.

The "killer app" of virtual online realities is not yet clear. Many virtual applications are not ultimately successful; in fact, Sawyer predicted, most from his list would not be around in 2 to 5 years. Before organizations sink significant funds into virtual online venues, they should investigate where their customers hold accounts and what they are doing on those sites. Sawyer encouraged the audience to weigh the benefits of buying land in Second Life against collaborating with those who already inhabit such environments to explore what these applications have to offer. Online virtual worlds can be viable "third spaces" for events, meetings, etc., especially if one’s core readers are already engaged there.

Publishing professionals should consider their core objectives, whether it be social interaction, innovation and invention, playful simulation within a particular narrative, or persistent spaces to encourage community and communication. In sum, Sawyer advised the audience to experiment widely, examine the entire spectrum of online activity, set aside common organizational structures and utilities, rethink and redefine one’s audience, and be open to adopting a multitiered strategy.

Ultimately, we must consider the right tool for the job at hand.

Building a Better Blog: Value-Added or Just Another Distraction?

Miner #1: Barbara Ann Shlapak, Production Editor Supervisor, SAGE Publications

I found this session to be most valuable. Blogging has become such a popular thing in our personal lives, and now that it’s making its way into the professional world, it sounds like a wonderful opportunity to expand upon traditional online article posting.

That being said, the speakers in this session discussed the many questions about what is involved in a journal blog, what the guidelines should be, who should contribute, and who maintains the blog. One of the most significant points I took away from this session was "a journal is not just about articles." The thought that blogs can be supplemental to what you publish and serve as a vehicle for frequent or current news items would seem to be a necessity for some journals’ growth and stability. Based on some of the speakers’ experiences, blogging has increased traffic to journals, attracted more authors, and promoted current debates.

Staffing needs was a large portion of this blogging lecture, and it was stated that one should plan to devote 30% of a writer’s time to a blog. One of the speakers’ organizations is even planning to hire someone on a full-time basis to maintain its journal’s blog. At first this sounded like an excessive cost, but as mentioned, publishing isn’t just about print articles anymore - it’s about delivering current and relevant information as quickly and efficiently as possible while building a strong readership community.

Miner #2: Kathleen Furlong-Norman, Managing Editor, Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal

This session successfully highlighted the pros and cons of implementing a blog to enhance access to journal content. The positive aspects of blogging were discussed among the presenters and include the opportunity to participate in current debates, expand the author pool, and create the possibility of linking to both new and older journal content.

The negative aspects of blogging were also reviewed, and the presenters unanimously agreed that a blog takes significant staff time as well as journal leadership and support. The presenters recommended that a strategy is needed to cover the costs of a blog as well as a clear rationale as to why and how blogging can help your journal and your mission.

Lastly, the group discussed the importance of continuously updating and refreshing information on a blog along with the need to market the blog to create a flow of ongoing traffic.

Overall, the presenters were well prepared and covered the topic of journal blogging from varied perspectives. I found the session informative and practical and would create a definitive "plan of action" if I were to consider implementing a blog as a marketing and dissemination tool.

Accessibility: It's Real - and It's Realistic

Miner #1: Chris J. Rawlins

For me, one of the highlights of this year's SSP meeting was the Friday morning session on accessibility. It was so different and inspirational that I hope our industry will assimilate changes promptly that now require postsecondary materials to be accessible to people with visual, auditory, or learning disabilities.

Former president of SSP, Rick Bowes, gave us an overview of the current focus on those in K-12 education with learning disabilities but rapidly changing to a future that will require differences at the higher education level. These have been brought about by changes in legislative and social demands at the national and state levels, as well as by user expectations, fast-changing technologies, and pressure on institutions to offer higher-education programs to students.

Although publishers of course textbooks and other materials are increasingly facing some new challenges, journal publishers will need to respond similarly. One of the first to do so is the American Physical Society. Bob Kelly, APS director of Journal Information Systems, spoke next about the creation of the entire online archive of all APS journals and the organization's recent decision to introduce dynamic formatting of all data and multimedia components for visually impaired and dyslexic viewers. They now have a prototype for Physical Review Letters that is accessible to blind people.

APS has worked closely with John Gardner, founder and president of ViewPlus Technologies, Inc. John, who lost his vision some time ago, was the third speaker; he showed examples of the IVEO® hands-on-learning system developed by ViewPlus. Examples were shown of how current APS XML documents can be converted to the DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) form. In addition to helping blind people to read the text portions of APS journals, this new system allows these DAISY figures to be accessible by "audio/touch." [Read more about this technology in Bill Kasdorf's article, "ViewPlus Makes Images Accessible to the Sight-Impaired (Including Computers)." - Ed.]

John's presentation was made even more amazing when he gave each attendee a tactile copy of a visual figure from a journal article using "swell" paper. Once this copy is placed on a touch-sensitive pad, a blind person can touch the tactile figure and hear text labels spoken! The technology is being expanded to other disciplines, such as geography, geology, and biology, through sight, sound, and touch systems.

These are certainly exciting times for those with disabilities as well as the scholarly publishing community. If Winston S. Churchill was the inspiration of this year's 30th conference ("Empires of the Future are the Empires of the Mind"), then certainly he was also the inspiration of this session: "Difficulties Mastered are Opportunities Won."

Chris Rawlins, a freelance academic publishing consultant, primarily involved in journal acquisitions with MIT Press, has previously held senior management positions with a number of publishers in both the UK and USA.

Miner #2: Martha Whittaker, Head, Technical Services Department, The Gelman Library System, George Washington University

I enjoyed this session because beyond the title words "Accessibility: It’s Real -- and It’s Realistic," one could easily add "and it’s really cool!"

Gelman Library at George Washington University, where I work, recently received a substantial donor gift to establish the Julius Fleischman and Christine Waldvogel Assistive Technology Suite. The suite is specifically designed to incorporate software and hardware to address the needs of students with print disabilities, in particular those who are blind or have low vision. The Assistive Technology Suite is an outstanding addition to the library and has raised my awareness of the needs of many underserved library users. The technology that is being developed for these services is often highly creative, ingenious, and, well, cool.

We have recognized that people with disabilities have accessibility requirements beyond the classroom only. Disabled people are also scholars and researchers and designers. They need the same access to online and Web resources that everyone else has. And disabilities may extend beyond those defined by the ADA. John Gardner’s ViewPlus technology is inspiring, and it’s easy to see applications for it that serve a variety of alternative learning styles. As one of the attendees said, "Making things more accessible, makes them more accessible for everyone."

As we in libraries attempt to broaden our appeal to many different generations with a limitless number of learning preferences, we would do well to look to the creators of these types of non-text-based information products for inspiration and guidance.

Roundtable Report: How Changing Your Editorial Structure Affects Your Bottom Line

Miner #1: Jason Roberts, Managing Editor, Headache

Two tables gathered to discuss ongoing matters in journal editorial offices. Most participants were either office staff or directors of peer review at society publishers. In this article, I report on the discussion at one of the tables; below is an article from Virginia Bourgeois about the second table participants' discussion.

Debate focused predominantly on three areas: performance indicators, what authors are looking for (specifically the impact of reputation) and handling reviewers.

Performance indicators. In order to better comprehend the performance of an editorial office, it is imperative to first consider what performance indicators to use, potential limitations with these indicators, and how to collect performance data.

One table concluded after debate that among several potential indicators, three stood out: processing speed, readership surveys and responsiveness.

Processing speed is increasingly seen as a measure by which authors consider their selection of journals in which to publish. Efficiently run editorial offices will monitor for late-running manuscripts and will frequently look at the "big picture" to see where peer review processes are failing. Perhaps time to initial decision is the most common measurement of office performance, but other factors that don't necessarily mean the editorial office is failing can influence the time to decision:

Staff at some editorial offices prefer to take longer to secure either an additional review or simply to give their reviewers longer to complete a more in-depth evaluation of a manuscript.
Time to first decision must consider the stature of the journal. Small, less renowned titles may struggle to secure a mandatory minimum number of reviewers. Reviewers may chose not to volunteer time on a low-ranking title, or the commensurate quality of the papers simply does interest the potential review to commit his or her time.
Sudden variations in the level of submissions and revisions can create short-term bottlenecks until submission levels stabilize or resources are adjusted accordingly.

Most participants reported dramatic increases in the level of submissions they handled. Some said they now attempt to avoid submission inundation by prescreening manuscripts and rejecting unsuitable/undesirable manuscripts without sending them out for full peer review.

Regarding authorship/readership surveys, roundtable participants related several examples of surveying readers and authors to better judge how they are doing and what their constituents are looking for. Critical for author surveys is to establish what factors would persuade an author to return.

Participants also discussed the growth of submissions from select countries and the growing demand for English-language editing. Some reported that they simply refer manuscripts to language-editing service providers, and others noted that they take some of this work on themselves. One idea that was floated is that it's not uncommon for emeritus professors to undertake editing of accepted manuscripts.

Responsiveness. All participants reported cases of how good customer service - namely, responding to authors quickly and thoroughly - engendered goodwill. A potential performance indicator could track response times.

What are authors looking for when they submit? A short discussion ensued about what authors look for from their submission and peer review experience. Participants returned to looking at issues of language and technical editing. There seems to be growing concern that editorial offices are getting bogged down in editing issues, reflecting the sheer volume of manuscripts that require work, especially from authors from non-English-speaking countries, and, to less extent, a reluctance to totally trust the copyeditor to make the necessary/appropriate corrections.

Handling reviewers. Most participants reported battling reviewer reticence to take on more work. To address this issue, editorial offices are looking at strategies to increase reviewer participation or to prevent reviewers' slipping into cursory evaluations as a way to tackle increasing workloads.

Participants heard how a recent study by one journal found that despite various incentives, the biggest reason reviewers agreed to perform a review was to see research early (i.e., before publication). Clearly this creates a problem for titles that receive few "first-to-market" papers.

Discussion finally focused on incentives and how they differ between journals, clearly an area for more research. One participant working in the economic and social science field reported that reviewers were paid $50 per review. Most others reported no payments for reviews, with the exception of payments to statistical consultants.

The discussion concluded that handling reviewers is becoming one of the biggest, if not the biggest, challenge editorial offices are facing.

Miner #2: Virginia Bourgeois, Vice President, eJournalPress

This table discussed the need for clear communication between editorial offices, considering especially situations in which the journal management office might be located far from the editor-in-chief’s office. We particularly wanted to share ideas on how the journal staff could communicate with a new editor in a remote office. Also discussed was the possibility that journal staff might be working from home.

At the table were some managing editors, commercial publishers, vendors, and consultants. The main points stressed regarding communication were as follows:

For remote locations, communication can be via telephone/teleconferences; Web-based technology such as Webex, GoToMeeting, etc.; or in-person visits on both sides (especially when there is a change of editorship).
Regular meetings are important, and it was suggested these take place every 2 weeks.
Communication of guidelines is important, such as guidelines on ethics and copyright transfer (e.g., via a link on Web site and downloadable PDF).
A newsletter is another means for communicating information to the Editorial Board, especially after major decisions are made by the management and/or editors.
When studying the content of a Request for Proposal (RFP), sharing this document with editors allows them to view details that may be omitted in other forms of communication.

A short discussion also ensued regarding the selection of reviewers, which was seen as being a common problem.