The Chicago Collaborative

Reported by Norman Frankel

The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), along with other important players in the STM world, is participating in the Chicago Collaborative (CC). The CC, established in May 2008, is a Working Group of representatives from key science, technology, and medicine (STM) publisher organizations, editorial associations, and an academic health sciences library organization. The name reflects the founding meeting location and emphasizes the spirit of the initial meeting: the importance of collaboration in addressing the major challenges and opportunities associated with scholarly scientific communication. The CC’s constituency includes academic health center personnel (administrators, faculty, researchers, clinicians, and students).

The CC believes that collaboration is essential to successful scholarly scientific communication. Goals include:

1. Develop a shared understanding of scholarly scientific communication issues;

2. Create effective strategies to address common understandings; and,

3. Enhance trust and dialog among CC members.

CC strategies include the following:.

1. Focus CC membership on professional organizations/associations rather than individual publishers, librarians, or editors. CC representatives are selected by the participating professional organization/association and these representatives serve as the primary communications liaison between the CC and his/her organization.
2. Conduct open dialogues among members regarding broad higher level scholarly scientific communication issues. CC members will share ideas and issues representing their organization’s interests. Members develop consensus-driven statements/position papers when appropriate. CC drafted resolutions or recommendations will be reviewed and approved by member organizations.
3. Educate the CC’s constituency regarding broader scholarly scientific communication topics (e.g., effective authorship, effective editorship, and the role of the scholarly journal) rather than specific initiatives.
4. Develop and provide a clearinghouse for educational materials about the scholarly publishing process, the key roles of stakeholders, and external factors affecting scientific communication.
5. Sponsor educational sessions that focus on factors affecting scholarly scientific communication (e.g. the scholarly publishing process, the peer review process, and academic health center funding).

Initially discussed by the CC were issues such as:

1. Responsibilities and roles of authors, editors, publishers, and librarians regarding scholarly scientific communication;
2. Preservation of scholarly scientific content;
3. Scientific misconduct/conflict of interest and its effect on scholarly communication;
4. Journal article peer review process;
5. Content discovery options;and,
6. Experiences with journal branding.

Expected outcomes include a sustainable mechanism for ongoing conversations and actions among publisher, editor, and librarian communities which does not follow the traditional buyer/seller model found in other forums and a trusted venue to discuss broad scholarly scientific communication opportunities and challenges.

SSP is represented by Tom Richardson (NEJM) and Norman Frankel (Consultant).