Webinar Preview: Evolving Engagement Strategies – are we getting sticky or stuck?

The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) will present its final webinar of the year, Evolving Engagement Strategies – are we getting sticky or stuck, next week on Tuesday, November 10, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Registration for the event remains open, with a discounted rate available to SSP members.

The event offers an opportunity to learn about evolving strategies and new models for engaging scholars and researchers. With an experienced and diverse panel, discover how to move beyond the constraints of the traditional PDF, benefit from scholar self-promotion platforms, and use machine-readable semantically enriched metadata for international discovery. Curators, CMOs, editors, marketers, business developers, and those interested in new business practices in publishing will have insightful takeaways from this session.

Peter Froehlich, Director of Purdue University Press and head of Scholarly Publishing Services, Purdue University Libraries, will be moderating the session. Joining him will be:

• Marlo Harris, Director, Digital Product Management at Wiley
  With extensive experience in marketing, web publishing, technology, and product management, Harris is currently involved in the development of several content delivery platforms and focused on driving the evolution of Wiley Online Library.

• Jonathan Agbenyega, Business Development Manager at International Union of Crystallography (IUCr)
  Agbenyega is responsible for driving new business practice in publishing at the IUCr. A book author and materials scientist, Agbenyega has over 15 years of experience in the publishing industry. He has worked at Wiley, the FT and more recently Elsevier as Editor-in-Chief and publisher of Materials Today magazine.

• Scott Beatty, Chief Content Officer/Co-Founder at Trajectory
  Beatty has over 27 years of experience working in electronic publishing and data companies focusing on product development, channel development, marketing, software engineering and sales. Prior to Trajectory, he was the Founder of Treedia Labs, partner and Vice-President in Information Please and co-founded ProCD.

We asked Froehlich to elaborate a little bit more about the session.

What can attendees expect from this seminar?
Participants will see case studies of new technology enhancing engagement with open and premium content and raising awareness of global scholarship. Specifically, publishers will discuss how they are helping scholars engage with more readers via the new Kudos platform and how others are helping readers move beyond the constraints of the traditional PDF and towards fruitful immersion in “connected” content by integrating ReadCube HTML capabilities. We will also learn about in-house technologies that are still in development and have a guided tour of new natural language processing being used to drive semantic discovery internationally by Trajectory.

Tell us a little about this group of panellists. How were they selected?
We have experienced professionals from top established companies and one new tech start up. We sought to have one leading not-for-profit scholarly publisher and at least one major commercial publisher represented. Since new technology is the focus, I also wanted a new tech company in the mix as well. So we will see things from all sides: new tools for readers, authors, and publishers. We wanted to be sure that the case studies presented would be useful to a variety of scholarly publishing professionals, from commercial houses to university presses and libraries.

Are there any topics in particular you hope the panellists will address during the seminar?
Yes, I’m hoping that we definitely address what comes after the PDF and how to position for AI, at least in the form of machine-readable metadata. Where we go from there, once Siri takes over, will be most interesting.

What would you like attendees to take away from this seminar?
I’d like attendees to have a confident view to at least two or three new approaches to engaging readers and delivering more value to authors.

With just a week to go, sign up for the webinar and do not miss this opportunity.

By Kuntan Dhanoya, Communications Committee