Society for Scholarly Publishing

Society for Scholarly Publishing
source
Name	Society for Scholarly Publishing
Formation	1978
Type	Professional association
Headquarters	North America
Language	English
Leader title	President

Society for Scholarly Publishing is a professional association dedicated to the advancement of scholarly communication among publishers, librarians, technologists, and researchers. It fosters dialogue across stakeholders including Elsevier, Springer Nature, John Wiley & Sons, Taylor & Francis, and Oxford University Press while engaging institutions such as Harvard University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, and University of Oxford. The organization addresses issues intersecting with entities like CrossRef, DOAJ, ORCID, PubMed Central, and Project MUSE.

History

Founded in 1978 during a period of transformation affecting American Association for the Advancement of Science, Council on Library and Information Resources, Association of Research Libraries, National Information Standards Organization, and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the organization emerged amid debates involving Journal Citation Reports, Institute for Scientific Information, Scopus, Web of Science, MEDLINE, and Chemical Abstracts Service. Early leaders included professionals who had affiliations with University of Chicago Press, Cambridge University Press, Gale Group, SAGE Publications, and McGraw-Hill Education. Over decades the group navigated developments tied to the rise of arXiv, PubMed, HighWire Press, BioRxiv, and the growth of Open Access movements influenced by advocates such as those behind PLOS, SPARC, Wellcome Trust, European Commission, and HINARI. The history intersects with policy debates at National Institutes of Health, UK Research and Innovation, European Research Council, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and initiatives like Plan S.

Mission and Activities

The society’s mission aligns with organizations such as American Library Association, Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE, Modern Language Association, and American Historical Association in promoting best practices for publishing, metadata, preservation, and discoverability. Activities address interoperability with standards bodies including NISO, ISO, Dublin Core, COUNTER, and Schema.org while coordinating with service providers like EBSCO, ProQuest, Clarivate, Kudos, and Altmetric. The group organizes working groups on topics relevant to academic libraries at Bibliothèque nationale de France, Library of Congress, and Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, and collaborates with advocacy networks such as Creative Commons, Directory of Open Access Journals, LOCKSS, and PORTICO.

Membership and Governance

Membership comprises representatives from commercial publishers (for example Macmillan Publishers, Wiley-Blackwell, Holtzbrinck), university presses (such as Yale University Press, Princeton University Press, University of California Press), scholarly societies (including American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, Royal Society), libraries from institutions like Yale University, University of Cambridge, University of Toronto, and vendors from Digital Science, Clarivate Analytics, and Ex Libris. Governance is overseen by a board drawn from professionals with careers at National Endowment for the Humanities, Smithsonian Institution, Brookings Institution, The British Library, and The New York Public Library, with advisory input from representatives linked to NIH, CDC, UNESCO, OECD, and World Bank.

Conferences and Events

The society hosts annual meetings and symposia that attract speakers and attendees affiliated with National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Royal Society of London, European University Association, Association of European Research Libraries, Society for Neuroscience, and American Mathematical Society. Events feature panels on scholarly metrics drawing experts from Google Scholar, Altmetric.com, Scimago Lab, Institute for Scientific Information, and ResearchGate, and sessions on policy including participants from UK Parliament, United States Congress, European Parliament, National Science Foundation, and Horizon Europe. Regional workshops have been held in cities such as New York City, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., London, Berlin, Paris, Toronto, Singapore, and Sydney.

Publications and Communications

The organization publishes newsletters, white papers, and guidelines distributed among stakeholders including Nature Publishing Group, Cell Press, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The Lancet, and Science. Communication channels engage with repositories and indexing services like Scopus, CrossRef, Google Scholar, ERIC, and JSTOR, and collaborate on resources with ORCID, DataCite, CHORUS, and Figshare. Its outputs influence practices at institutions such as Wellcome Trust, Max Planck Society, German Research Foundation, National Research Council (U.S.), and Australian Research Council.

Awards and Recognition

The society recognizes contributions to scholarly communication with awards and honors presented to individuals and organizations affiliated with PLOS, SPARC, Wellcome Trust, Johns Hopkins University Press, MIT Press, and University of Chicago Press. Recipients have included leaders who advanced initiatives parallel to work at CrossRef, ORCID, DataCite, LOCKSS, and Portico, and whose innovations interacted with publishers like Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature, Wiley, and Oxford University Press. Awards ceremonies have been held in venues associated with Harvard University, Stanford University, Yale University, and Columbia University and timed to coincide with conferences such as those organized by Association of American Publishers and ALPSP.

Category:Publishing organizations