The Chicago Collaborative: An Update

By Norman Frankel, Organizational Collaboration Committee Cochair—SSP, along with other important players in the STM world, participates 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 library associations. The name reflects the founding meeting location and emphasizes 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), publishers, librarians, editors and all members of the STM community. The member organizations are listed on the CC’s Web site at http://www.chicago-collaborative.org/members.htm.

CC Initiatives

Biomedical Publishing 101 (BMP 101) describes the STM journal publishing cycle with modules on the publishing process, business models, ethics, production and delivery, editorial development, and international publishing. Special emphasis is placed on describing the peer review process, including the roles of the author, editor, and reviewer.

BMP 101 was developed for the library community as well as others involved in the scholarly publishing process. A BMP 101 webinar was presented in December 2010 by John Tagler of the Association of American Publishers and moderated by Jean Shipman, director of the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library and the MidContinental Region director. The webinar was sponsored and hosted by the Four Corners Directors, and the MidContinental, Pacific Southwest, and the South Central Regions of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. More than 80 participants from libraries all over this region attended, and the feedback was very encouraging.

Libraries 101 (LIB 101), an initiative that is still under development, will explain the various facets of running a health sciences library. The first step in this development process was a presentation by a panel of distinguished biomedical library directors at the 2010 SSP annual meeting: Jean Shipman, Scott Plutchak, and MJ Tooey. Panelists discussed library funding, usage metrics, digitization, and space planning, and determined the level of interest in the publishing community. Feedback was very positive.

Previews of the BMP 101 course were presented at the 2009 Medical Library Association annual meeting, Charleston Conference 2009, International STM 2009 (Frankfurt), Highwire Press Publisher meeting (October 2009), and the NASIG 2009 annual meeting. The primary focus of LIB 101 is the publishing community, to help provide better insight into the complex issues facing biomedical libraries today. LIB 101 will be disseminated via webinars and at professional publishing meetings.

The Medical Library Association accepted the CC’s initial proposal for a 4-hour CE course at the 2012 MLA annual meeting. The complete proposal will be reviewed by the CE Committee during the 2011 MLA annual meeting, and a decision will be announced shortly thereafter. Special thanks to Jean Shipman for shepherding this through the process.

There is clearly interest in the library community in BMP 101. It is a great example of collaboration and cooperation among the various publishing and library professional associations to advance the common goals of scholarly publishing.

Other CC Endeavors

In addition to developing professional educational programs, the CC also conducts meetings with experts in the field to remain informed about crucial issues facing scholarly publishing. The CC’s fall 2010 meeting included a special meeting on archiving and preservation, which was facilitated by Clifford Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information. Please see: http://www.chicago-collaborative.org for a detailed summary of the discussions.

Special thanks to CC cochairs Gail Yokote, acting university librarian for sciences and technical services, University of California, Davis, and J. Michael Homan, director of libraries at the Mayo Clinic, for steering the CC since its inception.

The CC plans an exhibit booth at the SSP annual meeting in Boston on June 1–3. CC representatives will be available to answer questions. We encourage suggestions from attendees.

SSP is represented by Tom Richardson (NEJM), Norman Frankel (Licensing Consultant), and Betsy Solaro (AMA).