For the 2015 Annual Meeting, in addition to offering pre-meeting seminars, concurrent sessions, and an exhibitors’ marketplace, SSP is teaming up with NASIG (formerly the North American Serials Interest Group) to deliver a full-day joint program, “Evolving Information Policies & Their Implications: A Conversation for Librarians & Publishers.”
Speakers will collectively cover open access, grant funder submission and publication requirements, management and preservation of data sets, access for the print disabled, intellectual property, and copyright law and fair use.
Communications Committee chair Katrina Swartz spoke with one of the event organizers, October Ivins, about what inspired the joint program and what attendees can expect. Ivins is Principal and Consultant at Ivins eContent Solutions and co-chair of the SSP Organizational Collaboration Committee. She has served as president of both NASIG (1994–1995) and SSP (2009–2010). She will moderate the copyright and intellectual property panel at the SSP/NASIG joint meeting.
Why a joint program—how did the idea come about?
The idea came from Bob Boissy (Springer) in February 2012. Bob was then the president-elect of NASIG. His idea was to address the implications of public policy for librarians, publishers, and the vendors who support their work. He realized SSP would be in Crystal City and with enough lead-time, NASIG could locate their annual conference nearby.
How do NASIG and SSP complement each other?
Bob and I saw it as an ideal fit, and the Organizational Collaboration Committee and the Board agreed and provisionally approved the venture in April 2012. Both organizations are 501(c)3’s, meaning that both are founded to promote dialogue, communication, and education. Neither takes positions on policy issues or supports lobbying efforts. Both were founded on an individual, personal membership model. In these respects, SSP has more in common with NASIG than with AAP-PSP, AAUP, ALPSP, or STM.
Over time, both have added organizational members, but those are more collections of individual members. Another strength of both organizations is that we welcome librarians, publishers, vendors, scholars, and anyone else interested in our work and community. NASIG originally stood for the North American Serials Interest Group. As of 2015, they are just NASIG and adopted a new vision statement: “NASIG is an independent organization working to advance and transform the management of information resources. Our ultimate goal is to facilitate and improve the distribution, acquisition, and long-term accessibility of information resources in all formats and business models.”
Similarly, SSP is the Society FOR Scholarly PublishING and not OF Scholarly PublishERS. While the majority of NASIG members are librarians and the majority of SSP members are publishers, both have diverse memberships and similar goals, as SSP’s vision statement shows: “to advance scholarly publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members through education, collaboration, and networking.”
Tell us a little about this group of speakers. How were they selected?
Our task force of SSP and NASIG representatives worked to identify speakers who could provide both a current and prospective view of the ways information policy affects their institutions and the broader community. I think my NASIG co-chair Steve Kelley and all of the members would agree in saying we are thrilled with how it has all come together.
Scott Plutchak, a former medical library director and frequent SSP speaker, who is now in charge of data policy for his university, was an obvious choice. Jayne Marks, now at Wolters Kluwer, has been an executive with a number of publishers and vendors and has deep and broad industry knowledge. Identifying a vendor keynote speaker was the greatest challenge since most vendors work in a more limited segment of the industry. We realized that Digital Science is an incubator of new companies that support digital scholarship and publishing. Task force member Rita Scheman did some research and determined that Caitlin Trasande as Head of Research Policy could offer the perspective we sought.
As our task force discussed the program we envisioned, one thing that concerned us was potential disagreements about copyright and intellectual property policies and law. We came up with a great solution, I think. We wanted to find two legal experts who could engage in a lively discussion about points of disagreement among librarians and publishers without being disagreeable. Our experts are Peter Jaszi, an American University law faculty member, and Michael J. Remington, a partner in a DC law firm who works with publishers in these areas.
Our session will conclude with a panel discussion with all five speakers moderated by Bob Boissy. Throughout the program, there will be opportunities for audience questions, and this closing panel will not only do that but allow the speakers to interact with each other.
What can attendees expect from the meeting?
We anticipate that attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the impact of public policy on the information industry and libraries, particularly how public policy shapes products and services. It will also be an excellent networking opportunity with two breaks and a lunch for attendees to meet each other, learn about their roles at work, and compare how they are affected by public policy.
We’ll use #SSPNASIG to report on the session.
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