2022 Conference Programme 

The current programme for the hybrid Researcher to Reader Conference, on 22-23 February 2022, is shown below, and is also downloadable as a PDF. The programme is subject to change.

Tuesday 22 February

9.00 Orientation & Networking

10.00 Welcome, Introduction & Icebreaker

10.45 Panel: Early Career Researchers

Early Career Researcher Insights

Research-based insights into the experiences of ECRs in a time of change

An understanding of the practices, experiences and attitudes of Early Career Researchers (ECRs) can be a harbinger of the future and an insight into the likely expectations of the research community. The results of this international qualitative and quantitative multi-year survey will reveal important insights into ECRs in around the globe. There is also a workshop that will be explore the results in more detail.

Mark Allin (moderator)
– Principal at ContentAll and former CEO at Wiley
Professor Abrizah Abdullah
– Professor at the University of Malaya
Professor Xu Jie
– Professor at Wuhan University
Dr David Sims
– Research Analyst at the University of Tennessee
Anthony Watkinson (convener)
– Principal Consultant at CIBER Research

11.30 Workshops: First Gathering

A: Implementing OA Standards
B: Early Career Researcher Insights
C: Influence Positive Change for Open Data
D: A Disability Toolkit for Scholarly Publishing
E: New Models for Open Books
F: Global Access to Publication

Laura Cox (moderator)
– Chief Financial and Operating Officer at Ringgold
Dr Phill Jones (moderator)
– Co-founder at MoreBrains Cooperative

Delegates are invited at registration to select one workshop in which to participate during the Conference. Each workshop group convenes three times during the two-day Conference, typically scoping the topic in the first session, exploring options in the second session, and formulating solutions in the third session. 

Workshop A: Implementing OA Standards

How best to support agreements between libraries, consortia and smaller independent publishers?

Dr Alicia Wise (facilitator)
– Executive Director at CLOCKSS
Judith Russell (facilitator)
– Dean of University Libraries at the University of Florida

The transition to OA requires change on the part of all stakeholders, and it is particularly crucial that there is active cross-stakeholder alignment focused on enabling smaller independent publishers to transition successfully. In recognition of this, cOAlition S and ALPSP have commissioned the development of shared principles and new standards. These have been developed by cross-stakeholder task and finish groups, and have international support but now need to be implemented by intermediaries and platforms. This workshop will produce recommendations for how these changes can best be aligned, implemented and communicated.

Workshop B: Early Career Researcher Insights

How can we put our understanding of ECR behaviours and needs to good use?

Jason Mitchell (facilitator)
– Senior Acquisition Editor at Elsevier
Dr Anna Sharman (facilitator)
– Director at Cofactor
Anthony Watkinson (facilitator)
– Principal Consultant at CIBER Research

Research into the practices, experiences and attitudes of Early Career Researchers has provided an insight into the likely expectations of the research community. This workshop will discuss how the findings from this research can be used to improve practices for research institutions, publishing organisations and suppliers.

Workshop C: Influence Positive Change for Open Data

What adjustments can we make to improve open data transparency and quality?

Louise Adams (facilitator)
– Director at Petals Training
Dr Kirsty Merrett (facilitator)
– Research Support Librarian at the University of Bristol
Lou Peck (facilitator)
– CEO at The International Bunch
Megan Taylor (facilitator)
– Head of Content at The International Bunch

Only by bringing multiple stakeholders together can we affect change. Research data management (RDM) is starting to see important progression, but how ready are we? What adjustments can we make in the publishing and research ecosystem to improve open data transparency and quality? This workshop will bring together researchers, funders, information professionals, publishers and intermediaries to discuss and share best practice examples to improve data transparency and quality. We will publish the results of the workshop to continue community progression and process improvement.

Workshop D: A Disability Toolkit for Scholarly Publishing

How can we enable greater access for disabled people within the scholarly publishing community?

Katy Alexander (facilitator)
– Global Director of Marketing at Digital Science
Sylvia Izzo Hunter (facilitator)
– Marketing Manager at Inera, an Atypon company
Simon Holt (facilitator)
– Disability Confidence Manager and Senior Publisher at Elsevier
Erin Osborne-Martin (facilitator)
– Executive Society Partnership Manager and Analytics Manager at Wiley

According to the UN, more than 1 billion people have a disability or long-term health condition. Disabled people are under-represented in the scholarly publishing industry, with 8% of people working in publishing identifying as disabled. This workshop seeks to gather people from within the scholarly communications industry to explore barriers, and what individuals and organizations can do to become more disability inclusive. We would like to use this session as a starting point for a Toolkit for Disability Inclusion for Scholarly Publishing, so please come along, engage, and share your thoughts! No previous expertise or knowledge required.

Workshop E: New Models for Open Books

What is needed to make open publishing of scholarly monographs practical and sustainable?

Martin Paul Eve (facilitator)
– Professor of Literature, Technology, and Publishing at Birkbeck University
Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei (facilitator)
– Co-Director at Punctum Books
Dr Heather Staines (facilitator)
– Director of Community Engagement at Delta Think
Stephanie Paalvast (facilitator)
– Head of Open Research at Brill
Emily Poznanski (facilitator)
– Director at the Central European University Press
Dr Heather Staines (facilitator)
– Director of Community Engagement at Delta Thinks

There have been numerous initiatives in the past few years to explore effective new ways to fund academic book publication that delivers open access, with significant challenges to be overcome. In this workshop, the participants will examine existing and new ways to approach this challenge, and will evaluate the current solutions, and aim to develop some ideas and initiatives for the future.

Workshop F: Global Access to Publication

What structural changes could be made so that researchers in LMICs are not being economically disadvantaged?

Roheena Anand (facilitator)
– Director, Global Publishing Development at Public Library of Science 
Haseeb Irfanullah (facilitator)
– Visiting Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development 
Arend Kuester (facilitator)
– Director Academic Affairs at Springer Nature   
Prof Jaron Porciello (facilitator)
– Professor at Cornell University   
Andrea Powell (facilitator)
– Outreach Director at STM

The transition in many academic disciplines away from library subscriptions, and toward an author-pays model, poses particular challenges for researchers in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs).  Many funders, institutions and researchers find it hard to afford publication fees such as APCs. Discounts or waivers offered by some publishers may come with additional issues, such as a risk of preferring full-fee authors, and ‘lead author’ attribution being driven by who has funding.  How can we make author-pays publishing equitable and inclusive across a range of geographies and economies? 

12.30 Break with Networking and Lightning Talks

1.15 Presentation: Transformative Agreements

Transformative Agreements and Reader Access

Paywalled content is being exposed to more readers than ever

Lisa Hinchliffe
– Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The discussion around transformative agreements primarily focuses on supporting publishing. Less attention has been given to transformative agreements expanding reading access to paywalled content as libraries contract for reading access to extensive packages of titles in order to open pathways for publishing in those hybrid journals.  In some ways, transformative agreements are the “Bigger Big Deal!” and have reached global adoption in recent years. This approach is particularly notable in contrast to unbundling. These big transformative agreements are enabling publishers to leverage their paywalled content in order to capitalize their transition to open access.

2.00 Workshops: Second Gathering

A: Implementing OA Standards
B: Early Career Researcher Insights
C: Influencing Positive Change for Open Data
D: A Disability Toolkit for Scholarly Publishing
E: New Models for Open Books
F: Global Access to Publication

The workshop groups reconvene to continue their discussions.

3.00 Break with Networking and Lightning Talks

3.45 Debate (part 1 of 2): Business Models

Resolved:

The world would be a better place if research funders, rather than readers and libraries, bore the cost of scholarly publishing

Two teams of two debaters will argue for and against the proposition set out in the programme. They will explore whether the world benefits more from a system where the funding organisations that support Researchers pay for the costs of scholarly publishing, or whether it is better that Readers should be paying these costs (by way of library subscriptions or other payment methods). Is it more effective to fund the start of the supply chain, where the content is produced, or the end of the supply chain, where the content is consumed?

This will be a formal debate, with the result decided by the impact of the arguments on all the Conference participants. On Day 1 of the Conference, an initial ‘baseline’ vote is taken, and then the first two debaters begin each side of the argument. Conference participants will have the opportunity ask questions. The remaining two team-members conclude the debate on Day 2, followed by another vote.

Rick Anderson (moderator)
– University Librarian at Brigham Young University
Dr Sven Fund
– General Manager Publisher Solutions at ResearchGate
Sybille Geisenheyner
– Director of Open Science Strategy & Licensing at American Chemical Society
Professor Lynn Kamerlin
– Professor of Biochemistry at Uppsala University
David Worlock
– Digital Strategy Advisor

4.30 Panel: The Workplace

The Next Disruption

Welcome to the Hybrid Workplace

Alison Mudditt (moderator)
– Chief Executive Officer at PLOS Chief Executive Officer at PLOS
Kofo Balogun
– Head of Human Resources at the Biochemical Society / Portland Press
Jane Harvell
– Director of Library Services at the University of Sussex
Dr Ayanda Lebele
– Director Library Services at Botswana International University of Science & Technology
Jasmine Wallace
– Peer Review Manager at The American Society for Microbiology

5.15 Break with Networking and Lightning Talks

6.00 End of Day One

Wednesday 23 February

9.00 Orientation & Networking

10.00 Presentation: Business Models

APC-free Open Access

Making sense of collective funding approaches

Dr Kamran Naim
– Head of Open Science at CERN

As the adoption of Open Access advances, valid critiques have been made of models relying on expensive and exclusionary Author Processing Charges (APCs), which have the potential to exacerbate existing inequities in scholarly publishing. In response, an increasing number of publishers have been exploring APC-free approaches to supporting Open Access publishing.  This session will aim to demystify these approaches, enabling publishers to explore their application on their own portfolios and to support greater clarity so that librarians can make informed financial investments.

10.45 Panel: Preprint Review

Peer Review Beyond the Journal

Can preprint review come of age to rival (or replace) journal review?

Iratxe Puebla (moderator)
– Director of Strategic Initiatives & Community at ASAPbio
Dr Gowri Gopalakrishna
– Researcher at Vrije University Amsterdam
Dr Bodo Stern
– Chief of Strategic Initiatives at HHMI
Additional panellist to be advised

We have seen unprecedented attention to preprints in recent years, as well as animated discussions about the process of peer review across the scholarly ecosystem. Preprint review may provide opportunities for innovation and greater diversity in peer review, but without the coordination and gatekeeping provided by journal workflows, whether preprint review can grow to rival journal review in participation and recognition remains an open question. This panel discussion will explore whether the future may bring a shift to more peer review outside of journals, and the factors that will influence whether public preprint feedback will develop to complement or even replace journal peer review.

11.30 Workshops: Third Gathering

A: Implementing OA Standards
B: Early Career Researcher Insights
C: Influencing Positive Change for Open Data
D: A Disability Toolkit for Scholarly Publishing
E: New Models for Open Books
F: Global Access to Publication

The workshop groups reconvene to conclude their discussions.

12.30 Break with Networking and Lightning Talks

1.15 Panel: Mergers & Acquisitions

Digital Strategy and Consolidation

The M&A landscape for platforms, services and tools – and what comes next

Roger Schonfeld (moderator)
– Director, Libraries & Scholarly Communication at Ithaka S+R
Andrew Preston 
– Co-founder at Cassyni; former co-founder at Publons 
Martha Sedgwick  
– VP, Product Innovation at SAGE Publishing  
Todd Toler  
– VP Product Strategy and Partnerships at WileyS+R
Consolidation is an expected feature of a developing digital platforms sector, as providers establish coherent user workflows, aggregate data sources to build scale for analytics and buy out competitors. We have seen all of these dynamics in the scholarly ecosystem in recent years, both by born-digital companies as well as primary publishers expanding into platforms and analytics. Consolidation mostly takes the form of acquisitions, but we have also seen investment portfolio models, as well as several notable strategic partnerships. This panel features executives and strategists who have played major roles in digital platform consolidation in recent years.

2.00 Debate (part 2 of 2): Business Models

Resolved:

The world would be a better place if research funders, rather than readers and libraries, bore the cost of scholarly publishing

The remaining two team-members conclude the debate, followed by a vote.

2.30 Workshop Feedback

A: Implementing OA Standards
B: Early Career Researcher Insights
C: Influencing Positive Change for Open Data
D: A Disability Toolkit for Scholarly Publishing
E: New Models for Open Books
F: Global Access to Publication

Laura Cox (moderator)
Dr Phill Jones (moderator)

Each workshop will provide a very brief overview of their discussions, describing any resolutions achieved and the action points to be taken forward.

3.00 Break with Networking and Lightning Talks

3.45 Panel: Research Data

Research Data Discoverability

The role of libraries in making research data discoverable and accessible

Dr Alicia Wise (moderator)
– Executive Director at CLOCKSS
Michael Levine-Clark
– Dean of Libraries at the University of Denver
Joaquín Giménez Héau
– Research Data Coordinator at UNAM (Mexico)
Judith Russell
– Dean of University Libraries at the University of Florida

Funders increasingly require that data resulting from funded research be deposited for public access, but until now there have been no standard models for preserving, accessing, or even describing these data sets. In this session, academic librarians will discuss some of the challenges faced by research institutions of different sizes in managing data, explore the differing roles of libraries in this process at these universities, consider how these institutions might more effectively manage data & link it to related publications, and seek input and potential partnerships from the R2R participants.

4.30 Presentation: Intermediation

Intermediation in the Outside World

How organisations outside scholarly communications create and survive changes in intermediary technologies, processes and business models

Brian Bishop
– Vice President for Digital Transformation at De Gruyter

Drawing on his senior executive experience at JustEat and Secret Escapes, the speaker will explore changes in intermediation in the food and travel industries, and discuss both how initiators of change have behaved and how the affected organisations have responded. Having also worked at Springer and de Gruyter, he will be able to show how these changes have useful parallels in the scholarly communications ecosystem, and how funders, publishers, libraries and other intermediaries between researchers and readers might seek out and implement new approaches.

5.15 Summary and Closing

5.30 Post-Conference Networking

6.30 End of Conference

Lightning Talks

LT-01       Institutional Metadata – Diane Cogan, Ringgold

LT-02       Hybrid Journal Articles – Christopher Pym, Springer Nature

LT-03       Open Access Book Funding – Prof Martin Paul Eve, Birkbeck

LT-04       Predatory Practices – Simon Linacre, Digital Science

LT-05       Preprint Withdrawals – Dr Jennifer Wright, CUP

LT-06       Supporting Academic Authors – Christine Tulley, University of Findlay

LT-07       Scholarly Communication – Prof Stephen Pinfield, University of Sheffield

LT-08       Moving to OA – Ruth Wilson, Springer Nature

LT-09       Peer-Review Training – Thomas Sharp, IOP Publishing

LT-10       Journals Preserved Forever – Dr Alicia Wise, CLOCKSS

LT-11        Publication Access in LMICs – Saumya Khanna, Harvard Medical School

LT-12        Peer Review Innovation – Dr Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Leiden University

LT-13        Open Access Infrastructure – Martin Jagerhorn, ChronosHub

LT-14        Defining Censorship – George Cooper, University College London

LT-15        Video Abstracts – Jon White, Makematic

LT-16        Image Integrity – Catriona Fennell, Elsevier

LT-17        Ready for Change? – Stephanie Hull, Emerald Publishing

LT-18       Open Research – Anna Clarkson, Taylor & Francis

LT-19        Authorship Diversity – Jamie Carmichael, CCC & Haseeb Irfanullah, CSD
Related video

LT-20       Special Issues – Florin Craciun, MDPI

LT-21        Changing the Web – Jacob Wilcock, Atypon

LT-22       Early-Stage Research – Lena Stoll, Group Product Manager at Morressier

Sponsors of the 2022 Researcher to Reader Conference

Our sponsors provide much-needed financial support for the Researcher to Reader Conference, and for the scholarly communications community, while also increasing awareness of their brands, products and services. Without the generous support of our sponsors, registration cost would be around 50% higher for our delegates.

The Royal Society of Chemistry is an international organisation connecting chemical scientists with each other, with other scientists, and with society as a whole. Founded in 1841 and based in London, the RSC has an international membership of over 50,000. The RSC uses the surplus from their global publishing and knowledge business to give thousands of chemical scientists the support and resources required to make vital advances in chemical knowledge. The RSC is a catalyst for the chemistry that enriches our world.

Atypon develops publishing technologies for getting mission-critical content into the hands of the practitioners and researchers who need it most. Atypon’s online publishing and website development tools let publishers manage, deliver, and monetize all of the content they distribute—from standards and scholarly articles to online courses and videos. Atypon’s tools for researchers let them easily author, discover, and access the content they need. Founded in 1996, Atypon is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with over 470 staff in 9 offices around the world.

A pioneer in voluntary collective licensing, Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) helps organizations integrate, access, and share information through licensing, content, software, and professional services. With expertise in copyright and information management, CCC and its subsidiary RightsDirect collaborate with stakeholders to design and deliver innovative information solutions that power decision-making by helping people integrate and navigate data sources and content assets.

MDPI is pioneer in scholarly, open access publishing, that has supported academic communities since 1996. Based in Basel, Switzerland, MDPI has the mission to foster open scientific exchange in all forms, across all disciplines. MDPI’s 379 diverse, peer-reviewed, open access journals are supported by more than 115,000 academic experts who support MDPI’s mission, values, and commitment to providing high-quality service for our authors. MDPI’s articles are freely available and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

Morressier is the leading platform for conferences designed for enduring value. Since 2014, more than 200 of the world’s leading professional and scientific organizations trust Morressier to support their virtual and hybrid meetings, engage their users, and amplify their content.

Mosaic Search & Selection has been providing international executive recruitment services for publishers and related organisations for over 20 years.  The Mosaic team uses their many years of sector and recruitment experience, and their professional executive search skills, to enable organisations to hire exceptional new talent cost-effectively and with minimal risk.

Defend&Publish is a boutique coaching firm staffed by PhD-trained writing specialists. They support all aspects of researching and writing academic scholarship, including project management, editing and hosting workshops by the publishing community. Christine Tulley PhD, a past speaker at Researcher to Reader, is the owner of Defend&Publish and a Professor of English at The University of Findlay.

Ringgold maintains a global, multi-sector database of organizations complete with relationship hierarchies, multiple standard identifiers, and deep metadata that allows anyone with a need for trustworthy information to simplify, understand, and navigate the complex world of research and scholarly publishing.

Aries Systems Corporation, the developer of Editorial Manager and ProduXion Manager, is committed to enhancing how publishers and scholars disseminate knowledge on a global scale. Aries’ cloud-based workflow solutions enable the submission, peer review, and content management of high-value documents, and are used by thousands of journals and hundreds of publishers worldwide. Publish faster, publish smarter, with Aries Systems.

Research Information is a bimonthly full-colour magazine, sent six times a year at no cost to publishing and information professionals.