Call for Participation for the SSP 40th Annual Meeting

The SSP 40th Annual Meeting will be held May 30-June 1, 2018 in Chicago. We invite you to submit a proposal for a session by completing the Call for Participation, open now through November 10.

The 2018 conference will focus on the theme and tracks below. We invite content that fits into these tracks, but also welcome creative, non-thematic submissions. We are especially interested in sessions that benefit attendees by providing case studies, tips on best practices, and thought-provoking ideas.  

We encourage proposals from and for all types of stakeholders in scholarly communications, whether your institution is large or small, nonprofit or commercial, focused on books or journals, or specializing in STEM or the Humanities and Social Sciences. NOTE: The submissions process has changed for 2018. Please see below for details.

Scholarly Publishing at the Crossroads: What’s working, what’s holding us back, where do we go from here?

As the Society for Scholarly Publishing celebrates its 40^th anniversary, the theme for the conference highlights the many crossroads within scholarly publishing, including past and future practices, changing revenue models, funding challenges, regulation changes, technological innovations, and reaching new markets while maintaining established ones.  These crossroads introduce new challenges as well as new opportunities for scholarly publishing and for the communities it serves and push us to keep up with the changing needs of researchers and academics who both generate and use the content.  As we look back, could we have predicted forty years ago where scholarly publishing would be today? How can we anticipate the needs for the future? What questions do we need to be asking—and answering—to move forward?

The annual meeting will be held in Chicago, a crossroad city itself, and we will explore which strengths to draw on from our past, what might be holding us back, and where to go to meet the needs of researchers and other important stakeholders. As publishers, librarians, vendors, and academics, we will discuss the challenges and opportunities that face us as an industry and how we can best continue to serve our mission of publishing and distributing quality scholarly content.

Proposed tracks:

• Funding and Revenue Sources (perspectives from funding sources/agencies, alternative revenue streams, monetization, funding challenges, open access models, sustainability)
• Practical Skills/Publishing 101 (skills-based instruction, management and leadership; topics can include advice on career development or content geared toward early-career professionals)
• Marketing and Sales (ways to increase visibility and usage, internationalization, product differentiation/enhancement, market expansion, analytics)
• Tools and Technology (breakthroughs and innovations, add-ons to content platforms for researchers and/or publishers, content management / workflow tools, data, development methodologies)
• Research and Scholarship (changing needs/practices for researchers, roundtables or panels of academics, collaboration, government mandates)
• Innovations and Challenges (new content models/delivery, end user customization, security, metrics, design, product development)

Submission Process for 2018

This year SSP is using the ScholarOne abstract submission system to manage the submission process. All proposals must be submitted through this system. Thank you to Clarivate Analytics for their sponsorship of the submission system.

Note that there are four possible types of session proposal. Submitters must select their session type at the beginning of the submission process for each proposal. You are permitted to submit more than one proposal or proposal type:

• Concurrent session: 60 or 90 minutes in length, held on May 31 and June 1. Concurrent sessions are designed for multiple speakers to present a specific topic or learning objective. We encourage concurrent sessions that are interactive, represent diverse perspectives, and provoke new ideas for attendees from across the industry.
• Pre-meeting seminar: These three-hour educational sessions are held prior to the main conference on May 30, and provide an opportunity for attendees to learn more about a topic for an additional fee. These sessions should be instructive and interactive, and designed to provide a deep dive into a topic.
• 5-minute preview session: Brief, back-to-back presentations showcasing new products, platforms, and/or content from publishers and vendors. Preview session submissions will be accepted starting in January.
• Sponsored session: 45 minutes in length, held on Wednesday, May 30 in the afternoon. These sessions offer value by means of education, information, or professional development to attendees. Organizers may share information about a product or service, but sessions will be most effective if they present case studies/use cases, customer testimonials, timely information about industry issues, best practices, innovative solutions to everyday challenges, roundtable discussions, etc. Sponsors may choose whether attendance is free to all comers or by invitation only.

Tips for submitting a compelling session proposal:

• Your session should appeal to a broad base of attendees in an engaging way. Attendees at the SSP Annual Meeting are there to meet colleagues, learn about new trends, and gain practical skills that help them in their careers. They are executives, editors, salespersons, marketing and product managers, librarians, and technologists.
• We encourage interactive sessions and seminars that promote audience engagement.
• We will not consider concurrent session or pre-meeting seminar submissions that are focused on a single solution or are commercial in nature. Such content is more appropriate for the 5-minute previews session or for sponsored sessions.
• Multi-speaker proposals will be given precedence over proposals with only one speaker. SSP is interested in providing a variety of viewpoints from a diverse pool of speakers.
• 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.
• Your submission must be in by the November 10 deadline for concurrent sessions! Our committee will begin reviewing proposals immediately after this deadline, so we regret that we cannot accept late submissions this year. Please see the submission guidelines for all the important deadlines.
• Please be sure to reach out to us at info@sspnet.org if you have any questions while submitting a session proposal.

For a more detailed set of submission guidelines, please click here.

After reviewing these guidelines, please proceed to the SSP abstract submission site to submit your proposal. The organizers of the sessions selected for concurrents in the final program will be contacted in December to confirm their participation.   Please see the submission guidelines for important deadlines.

Thank you very much for your interest in participating in the 2018 SSP Annual Meeting, and again, if you have any questions, please email info@sspnet.org.

Sincerely,

Laura Ricci – Annual Meeting Program Committee Co-chair
Cason Lynley –  Annual Meeting Program Committee Co-chair
Ben Mudrak – Annual Meeting Program Committee, Pre-meeting Seminars Co-Chair