Future of Publishing session at the Society’s Annual Conference

Posted on April 24, 2014   by Sally Hawkins

With so many changes affecting scholarly publishing, how can new and experienced authors ensure their research is captured by quality journals in a highly discoverable and accessible way? To explore these questions, the Publishing Team at the Society for General Microbiology organised the Future of Publishing session at the Society’s Annual Conference in Liverpool on Tuesday 15th April 2014.

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We have outlined the structure of the event and included some of the Twitter activity below to share some of the knowledge that was imparted and the debates that arose from the session. The full conversation can be found on our Storify page but we’ve included some of the tweets below. The slides for the session are available on Slideshare.

The current Chair of the Society’s Publishing Committee, Colin Harwood, chaired the session and opened by introducing the panel. Aharon Oren kicked off the presentations with an introduction to current practices in journal publishing. He described the role of the editor and what happens to your paper after it is submitted, suggested what authors should consider before submitting their paper and discussed different models of peer review, both old and new. He also advised authors on how to handle rejection and the best way to deal with negative reviews.

Paul Hoskisson then explored some of the new methods for communicating research, including social media, as well as new journal models including open access and mega journals. He also considered how altmetrics could be used to measure the impact of science over current methods. He finished by encouraging the audience to take opportunities to influence change in academic publishing.

Leighton Chipperfield then rounded off the presentations by providing a brief summary of innovation in publishing at the Society, including the recent addition of ORCID IDs (have you got yours?). He also explored how semantics are making material more dicoverable and how, as publishers, we’re moving away from traditional publishing models to truly managing knowledge.

The discussion was followed by a Q&A with the whole panel.

Session Co-ordinators: Parita Patel, Product Manager ([email protected]) and Sally Hawkins, Digital Projects Administrator ([email protected])

Session hashtag: #SGMFoP

Contributors:
Colin Harwood, Professor of Molecular Microbiology at Newcastle University and Chair of the Society’s Publishing Committee.
Aharon Oren, Professor of Microbial Ecology in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, The Institute of Life Sciences, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel and Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.
Paul Hoskisson, senior lecturer in Microbiology at the University of Strathclyde and Chair of the Society’s Communications Committee.
Leighton Chipperfield, Head of Publishing at the Society for General Microbiology.
Jodi Lindsay, Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis at St George’s, University of London and Editorial Board Member for Microbiology.
Gavin Thomas, senior lecturer in biology at the University of York and Senior Editor of Microbiology.

 

 

AO: 'journal Editors are there to help the author get it right' #SGMFoP #sgmliv

— SGM Publishing (@PublishingSGM) April 15, 2014

AO: 'authors have many issues to take into account when choosing where to publish – impact factor, open access etc' #SGMFoP #sgmliv

— SGM Publishing (@PublishingSGM) April 15, 2014

 

AO: 'Rejection is part of our fate'. Authors should be prepared but after revisions acceptance is often achieved #SGMFoP #sgmliv

— SGM Publishing (@PublishingSGM) April 15, 2014

Paul Hoskisson now begins by outlining the development of journal publishing from print to digital #SGMFoP #sgmliv

— SGM Publishing (@PublishingSGM) April 15, 2014

 

 

 

 

 

Now @leightonc begins: 'We don't know what the future will be but we have a sense of the direction of travel.' #SGMFoP

— SGM Publishing (@PublishingSGM) April 15, 2014

ORCID, a DOI for scientists to tag all our publications. Will make us all fully discoverable/seatchable. Exciting and scary #sgmliv #sgmFoP

— Derah Saward Arav (@DerahSA) April 15, 2014

Again, the value of social media is recognised as a tool to 'get your research out there' and raise awareness of your work #SGMFoP

— SGM Publishing (@PublishingSGM) April 15, 2014

On open access 'We should make science available to all as much as we possibly can' #SGMFoP

— SGM Publishing (@PublishingSGM) April 15, 2014

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