Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Conference

Citation

Gelfand, J. (2001), "Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Conference", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 18 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2001.23918gac.005

Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Conference

The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) annual meeting was held in San Francisco, June 6-8, 2001. This annual conference brings together all segments of the scholarly publishing chain including, publishers, printers, dataminers, aggregators, vendors, information producers, librarians, indexers, occasionally editors and authors, and other technologists now involved in the production and distribution of scholarly publishing. The theme for this meeting was "Embracing the Present and the Future."

The planning committee tried to attract a blend of speakers new to this audience of nearly 350 and to build on established successful programming that defines this conference. There were a series of pre-meeting seminars on topics including:

• •

  totally digital workflow;

• •

  pre-publishing journal manuscripts;

• •

  building a digital archiving strategy;

• •

  knowledge environments.

The conference had a foundation of three plenary sessions. The opening plenary session was a very different approach as two venture capitalists and business developers examined how the finance community reviews the changes in the publishing industry and determines sufficient viability to support new directions. Keiron Hylton, Senior Vice-President of Berkery, Noyes & Co, investment bankers, established his principles based on the five forces, which Arthur Levine, President of Teachers' College at Columbia had defined. This comprised:

1. 1.

   just in time vs just in case education methodology;

2. 2.

   changing demographics;

3. 3.

   new technologies generate new methodologies;

4. 4.

   private sector views of high education as a troubled industry, related to the ills of the healthcare industry; and

5. 5.

   trend toward consolidation within the publishing industry.

Thus Hylton was able to address impacts on universities and the impact on scholarly publishing. He sees five distinct impacts:

1. 1.

   a migration from periodic publisher to knowledge mediators;

2. 2.

   less impact on the academic year as the calendar of choice, but instead sees a medley of time capsules working;

3. 3.

   a need for new editing, marketing products for academics ­ a popularization;

4. 4.

   greater price negotiators; and

5. 5.

   bigger royalties to academic stars and less to others.

This is contrasted with the greater impacts on universities including:

• •

  time to degree shortening;

• •

  shift from doctor/patient or professor/student to a more supplier/customer relationship;

• •

  shift from talking heads or product based to more of an environment concern ­ one will receive not a MIT education but be exposed to a MIT curriculum;

• •

  there will be new payment models; and

• •

  PhD programs will experience mergers and compression.

The conclusion is that there will be more joint ventures, increased strategic alliances and more mergers among both the higher education community and the scholarly publishing industry.

Lawrence Crutcher, a Managing Director at the merchant bank, Veronis Suhler, which specializes in media, communications and information industries, was an excellent substitute for a colleague. His message was simple and strong: Focus on the customer. He advocated that authors should be given an increased benefit from participation along with two other prescriptions ­ enhance value proposition to customers and evolve the nature of the publisher to meet new challenges. That emphasis on the future reinforces the definition he offered for publishing: "The art and science of providing professionals with the information/knowledge to do their job whenever and wherever required". He promoted four ways on how the industry should understand its customers:

1. 1.

   utilize in-depth market research;

2. 2.

   invest in maintaining a customer database;

3. 3.

   establishment of customer service capabilities; and

4. 4.

   frequent two-way communication with customers.

Although this was not a traditional opening session, it was indeed a provocative one and encouraged all attendees to consider the full spectrum of players that make scholarly and professional publishing active. Both speakers shared that the publishers and information industries that would survive must evolve to meet new realities with extensive information technology expertise, by creating a customer-oriented, service-oriented company, and to become open to alliances and innovative business combinations, many of which we have yet to consider.

The second plenary introduced Michael Mabe, Director of Academic Relations at Elsevier, David Pullinger, a consultant from the UK, Janet Fisher, Director of Periodicals at the MIT Press, and Zsuzsa Koltay, Manager of the Project Euclid Mathematics Database at the Cornell University Libraries. This session, "Scholarly Research in the Electronic World," featured very different speakers who contributed unique perspectives to this general theme. Mabe set the stage by defining the influences of growth and need for improved marketing in the publishing industry. This suggests knowing the customer base well. How do customers read and what kind of spin-off products are helpful to understand and respond to the behaviors of both authors and readers? He sees a very bright future for preprint servers and grey literature, as users depend increasingly on these resources, and he sees a tighter link between citation and reading habits.

David Pullinger focused on new economic models for new capabilities, based on emerging technologies. Perhaps there will be different models that differentiate between searching, verifying, and actual displaying and reading with the introduction of time-based access for shorter intense users. These options are more restrictive but offer end-users more flexibility and cheaper options, yet they probably don't have much of a future in a library, corporate or institutional setting.

Janet Fisher encouraged us to consider strengthening brand communities. Again, this is predicated on better knowing the habits and needs of readers. There will be easier collaboration and more customized support of the product for different readers' needs.

The nonprofit mathematics project that Zsuzsa Koltay described in her work on Project Euclid is such an example of increased collaboration with several partners. The Mellon sponsored program combines the work of the Cornell University Library with the Duke University Press. Project Euclid's mission is to advance scholarly communication in the field of theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics and to address the unique needs of low cost journals. One can follow the progress of this project by consulting http://projecteuclid.org/

The third plenary session, "Upstreaming: Changing Expectations in Libraries and Information Provision," evolved to explore relationships between publishers, information providers and libraries. Four speakers addressed issues about the electronic formats of both the monograph and journal. Dr Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Vice President for Research and Library Systems at netLibrary, shared the fast progress that company has made in establishing itself as the leader for eBooks. She was followed by Dr David Kohl, Dean of Libraries at the University of Cincinnati, who shared a wealth of data about pricing of scholarly materials, specifically journals and what the impact has been on the academic library market. Cynthia Hill, Manager of the Sun Library at Sun Microsystems, followed up with some interesting case studies of serving a library with nearly 50,000 worldwide users who expect instant access to everything from technical and engineering literature to timely business information. She indicated how different pricing models are not always appropriate for such a large constituency of remote users.

The final speaker was Alex Holzman, Manager for Consortia Sales and New Media Partnerships, and Senior Editor, Cambridge University Press, New York office. He addressed the complexities faced by publishers in meeting the needs of a diverse library market and how hard it is to characterize the differences between many kinds of existing consortia. The models for pricing are still difficult to shape and take a long while to prepare and the accompanying license agreements are equally complex. He shared the trials and tribulations of a major global publisher in working out details that make for a win-win situation for both publisher and library customer in a very thoughtful and insightful presentation. This session was extended for more discussion in the following concurrent session that allowed for greater interaction between the speakers and the audience. It was clear that the issues raised in this double session have no easy resolution, but together all parties hope to be increasingly successful in meeting each other's needs.

There were a total of 11 concurrent sessions on the following topics:

1. 1.

   database aggregators;

2. 2.

   new copyeditor;

3. 3.

   Internet booksellers;

4. 4.

   library consortia;

5. 5.

   Web-based peer review;

6. 6.

   launching new journals;

7. 7.

   book publishing traditions and transitions;

8. 8.

   CrossRef Linking;

9. 9.

   digital rights management;

10. 10.

    re-engineering the production process; and

11. 11.

    changes in the reference publishing marketplace.

I was unable to attend all of them but the three I attended on Internet booksellers, Library consortia, and Reference Publishing were very strong sessions. This conference more than many SSP meetings met the professional needs of librarians. A very high caliber of speakers was uniform. A particularly interesting paper was delivered by Robert Kieft, Librarian at Haverford College and the editor of the forthcoming 14th edition of Guide to Reference Books to be released by ALA in 2003. This "bible" of a selection aid will face many new challenges as format changes indicate not only new publishing medium but suggest new criteria for use and user expectations. Many of the papers and PowerPoint presentations are available on the SSP Web site at http://www.sspnet.org/public/articles/details.cfm?id=62

There were other festivities besides formal presentations at SSP. The exhibits attracted a very large number of exhibitors that demonstrated the changes in the information chain of scholarly publishing as well as new partners and providers. There were two lovely receptions and two delicious lunches that were part of the registration package.

Next year's SSP meeting will be held May 29-31, 2002 in Boston. One should consult the Web site at: http://www.sspnet.org/ as the date nears for more information. I can't imagine that the program will be any less substantive than the one offered this year. The library community was certainly planned for at this year's conference.

Julia Gelfand (jgelfand@uci.edu) is the Applied Sciences & Engineering Librarian at UC Irvine and was a member of the 2001 SSP Program Committee.