Society for Scholarly Publishing

Society for Scholarly Publishing

The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) is a professional society, founded in 1978, dedicated to promoting and advancing communication and networking among all sectors of the scholarly communications community. It has approximately 1,100 members from 24 countries including publishers, vendors, librarians, researchers, and consultants.[1][2]

SSP is organized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational society.[3]

Scope

SSP openly encourages dialog on sometimes controversial issues, including Open Access to scholarly publishing, during its events and in its communications vehicles.[4] SSP is also unique among scholarly communications associations in that it does not take positions on political issues.[5] It is also one of the few scholarly communications societies and associations that allows members to join as individuals.

Activities

Annual Meeting

SSP has held an annual meeting since its formation, bringing together many participants in scholarly publishing including librarians, publishers, and scholarly societies. These annual meetings are held in rotating locations. The 35th annual meeting was held in San Francisco in June, 2013 and was attended by more than 800 individuals.[6] The 36th annual meeting will be held in Boston, MA in May 2014, and the 37th annual meeting will be held in Vancouver, BC.

Educational Programming

SSP also holds additional educational seminars, webinars, and a Librarian Focus Group during the year.

Social Media

SSP also maintains an active social media presence on LinkedIn, where its group has over 7000 members, Twitter, and Facebook.

Scholarly Kitchen

The Scholarly Kitchen is an independent blog supported by SSP with a variety of contributors from the scholarly communications community. Contributions to the Scholarly Kitchen represent the thoughts and opinions of the various authors, and not those of the Society, which does not take political positions.[7]

Learned Publishing

Learned Publishing is a journal published by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers[8] in collaboration with SSP. Learned Publishing's readers are "not-for-profit and commercial publishers worldwide and members of other professions involved with scholarly publishing – librarians, academic authors and teachers, and subscription agents – as well as printers and other suppliers of services to book and journal publishers."[9] SSP appoints the North American Editor of Learned Publishing.

Resources

SSP maintains a library[10] of presentations from past events from 2009 to the present.

Conference proceedings were published in book form during earlier years.[11]

SSP also makes an online directory of members and services directory available to its members.

Governance

SSP is a volunteer-led organization run by an unpaid board of directors and committees. All volunteers must be SSP members in good standing.

The organization contracts with a professional management association for accounting, meeting planning, and other services.[12]

Lawsuit threat

In March of 2013, Edwin Mellen Press threatened to sue SSP for material critical of the Press hosted on Scholarly Kitchen. The blog posts in question were temporarily removed and the threats published. As then-Editor-in-Chief Kent Anderson explained, "the feeling was that the best way to respond to the threats was to comply with them but also show people what the threats were." Later, the posts were reinstated by the SSP Board.[5][13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "About SSP". Society for Scholarly Publishing.
  2. ↑ "SSP Membership Statistics" (PDF). SSP website. SSP. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  3. ↑ "SSP 990 IRS Return" (PDF). SSP 2012 990. GuideStar. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  4. ↑ "Reflecting on the Society for Scholarly Publishing Conference". THL News Blog. Taubman Health Sciences Library. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Meyer, Carol Anne. "SSP Board Decides to Reinstate Removed Posts". The Scholarly Kitchen.
  6. ↑ "2013 SSP 35th Annual Meeting". SSP Website. SSP. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  7. ↑ "The Scholarly Kitchen". The Scholarly Kitchen. SSP. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  8. ↑ "Learned Publishing". The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  9. ↑ "About Learned Publishing". ALPSP web site. ALPSP. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  10. ↑ "SSP Library". SSP Website. SSP. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  11. ↑ Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of The Society for Scholarly Publishing, Volumes 6-11. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  12. ↑ "RC's Current Client List". Resource Center for Associations web site. Resource Center for Associations. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  13. ↑ New, Jake (March 29, 2013). "Edwin Mellen Press Threatens to Sue Society for Scholarly Publishing". The Chronicle of Higher Education.

External links