Live Sessions
|
Thank you to our live streaming sponsor:
|
All sessions listed in Eastern Daylight Time.
Wednesday, May 29
3:00 pm | Virtual Meet and Greet
Network with other virtual attendees of the SSP 46th Annual Meeting! Please join your speed networking session promptly as tables will have scheduled shuffle times. After joining the session, you will be assigned to a table with other participants. If you leave a table before it shuffles, you will have to wait until the next shuffle time to join another table.
4:00 pm | Opening Remarks by Randy Townsend, SSP President
4:15 pm | Opening Keynote by Deborah Blum: "Publishers in the Age of Mistrust"
Scholarly communication faces significant challenges, both in terms of its credibility as a process as well as questions about the value it delivers to society at large. Recent Pew Research Center polls show a continued decline in US public trust in scientists, fed by a steady stream of research misconduct, accusations of political bias, and deliberate misrepresentation of research. How can scholarly communication reconnect with society to rebuild trust, and what lessons can we learn from initiatives outside of our industry to bring understanding of research and its contributions to a broad, international audience. Our keynote speaker, Deborah Blum, has a long and distinguished career as an educator, scholar, and commentator on the intersection of scholarly research and society. We’ve asked her to share her views on how scholarly communication has changed over the last decade, what she’s learned, and her thoughts on how we can more effectively build trust and engagement.
6:00 pm | Exhibit Hall LIVE from #SSP2024
See what’s happening live in Boston during the opening reception as your host takes you on a live video tour of the Exhibitors Marketplace.
Thursday, May 30
9:00 am | Opening Plenary: Moderated Discussion: The Rise of the Machines
While Generative AI gets closer to peak expectations on the hype cycle, automation and machine learning have long been a feature of scholarly communications. However, the explosive growth in capabilities (and expectations) over the last year has started to reshape our visions of the future of our industry. Will automation inexorably take over every aspect of publishing, and what roles will humans continue to play in this tech-driven future? Join our panel of experts for a discussion about how AI may profoundly change what we do and how we do it, as we look up from current experimentation to debate where we're heading.
10:15–10:45 am | Roundtable Discussion Groups for Virtual Attendees
Grab a seat and join the discussion topics that are important to you! These discussions are an informal opportunity to meet others with like interests. You may change topics as often as you wish within the session time.
10:45 am | Session 1A: The Other AI: The Role of Actual Intelligence In the Future of Scholarly Publishing
With artificial intelligence hailed as the game-changer in modern workflows, where does that leave us lowly humans? This interactive session is dedicated to exploring the aspects of our work that are uniquely human. As we navigate through the latest digital transformation, we'll delve into the critical roles we play, from the art of curation to the power of community building and supporting DEI needs. We'll discuss the irreplaceable human touch that brings creativity, empathy, and a deeper understanding to our work, qualities that AI, despite its prowess, is yet to master. Join us as we take a refreshing break from AI discussions, and instead, focus on the human core of our industry. For ONE session, we promise to NOT talk about AI but celebrate the essential human attributes that continue to make us indispensable in an increasingly automated world.
12:00 pm | Awards Luncheon/Annual Business Meeting
Join us as SSP President Randy Townsend recognizes the many dedicated volunteers that contribute to the success of SSP and reports on the activities and progress of the society. Winners of the Appreciation Award, Emerging Leader Award, and Distinguished Service Award will be announced and celebrated for their service and leadership. Fellowship winners will be recognized and Generations Fund donors will be acknowledged for their support.
1:30 pm | Poster Session LIVE from #SSP2024
See what’s happening live in Boston during the Poster Session as your host takes you on a live video tour of the Poster Session during the break.
2:30 pm | Session 2F: Launching AI Products: From Idea to World-scale
Have you wondered how AI products get out into the world? Join four builders from Informa, American Medical Association (AMA), American Institute of Physics Publishing (AIPP), and Oxford University Press (OUP) as they share their real world experience of building and launching AI products. To help ground the exploration, we introduce a framework (AI Maturity Curve) for thinking through where an organization, or individual AI project/product is on its journey from idea to world-scale product:
1. Getting Oriented
2. Ideation and Idea Selection
3. Experimentation
4. Prototypes and Testing
5. Alpha/Beta Product
6. Scaled Production Product
*Case Studies*
Participants will discuss case studies from their organizations: a deeper dive into a specific use case and experiment, tackling how 1) the decision to focus here was arrived at, 2) data and technical work/decisions, 3) prototyping/ product, 4) results, and 5) lessons learned.
4:00 pm | Session 3B: Redefining Value Propositions in Scholarly Communications
Not so very long ago, we all had a pretty good idea of what constituted a value proposition for the organizations in our space. But today it’s not so simple… With the move to a digital, increasingly open access world with a widening range of research outputs, defining a clear value proposition for the work we do is more challenging. Many organizations and communities are now grappling with how to effectively communicate the value that they bring to the research life cycle. In this session, we will bring together representatives from across scholarly communications to discuss why it’s important to understand and articulate your value proposition(s), how to develop one, what tools and resources are available, and more. They’ll share their thoughts on what they see as the key value propositions for their community (discipline, publisher, society, scholarly infrastructure) and, by extension, for their own organizations.
Friday, May 31
9:00 am | Previews Session
11:00 am | Session 4B: More than Words? The unspoken experience of DEIA … and how we can create more inclusive work cultures
The lived experience of workplace culture can be an uncomfortable public conversation. In this UN-spoken word session, we share the authentic voices in scholarly publishing. We will feature anonymous testimonials from brave colleagues across 2018 to 2024. Data and themes from the 2023 Workplace Equity survey (WE Survey) sponsored by Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) will provide the framework.
Is our workplace culture more supportive today?
How are commitments to inclusion perceived by majority and historically excluded groups?
How can we remove barriers to and create support for career progression?
We will welcome audience voices and anonymous polling to encourage engagement and share agreement - and disagreement. Using ideas from the C4DISC toolkits, we will introduce actions that individuals can take to create workplace cultures of belonging. Our goal is to inspire further gains to be revealed in the next Workplace Equity Survey.
1:30 pm | Session 5C: Only you can prevent research integrity fires!: What practices contribute to improving research integrity and how can you help?
Research communications has a role to play in ensuring the integrity of the research ecosystem. Whether you work on editorial practices, production, or even post-production, there are numerous checks and processes that can be applied to ensure the validity of content. Importantly, this landscape is rapidly evolving and new tools for ensuring overall quality of the scholarly record. Integrity supporting tools, such as CrossRef’s Retractions Watch dataset, the STM Integrity Hub and NISO’s new Recommended Practice on Communications of Retractions and Expressions of Concern (CREC) can all help keep your corner of the research ecosystem safe. Learn more about these tools during this critically important session on the safety of your author’s research-content. Don’t let the spark of some bad practice cause a four-alarm fire in your organization. Remember: Only you can prevent research integrity fires!
3:00 pm | Closing Plenary: Oxford-style Debate: Has the Open Access Movement Failed?
Open Access was intended to solve the problems of accessibility, affordability, and equity in scholarly communication, and has fundamentally reshaped scholarly communications in the 20+ years since the Budapest Open Access Initiative. And yet, longtime and respected commentator on the open access movement, Richard Poynder, recently declared that the Open Access movement has failed, noting that it had failed to solve affordability and equity, and that improvements in accessibility were at risk from the deteriorating geopolitical situation. This Oxford-style debate will see two teams debating the resolution “The OA Movement has Failed,” with the winner based on audience votes before and after the debate. Don’t miss this exciting final session for the conference where your participation will decide the outcome!