We are delighted to announce that HighWire will be the Gold Sponsor for the 2019 Researcher to Reader Conference.  This is a unique position, as we only invite one organisation to be the Gold Sponsor for each Conference.

HighWire helps publishers and their customers continuously improve online access and discoverability, enhance engagement and usability, and develop and grow new revenue streams.

We are grateful for HighWires’s continuing support – they were also a generous sponsor of the 2018 Conference – as this helps to make the Conference affordable for all members of the scholarly communications community.

Early-bird discounted pricing for the 2019 Conference, on 25-26 February in London, is available until the end of November.

Mark Carden
29 November 2018

We are delighted to announce that Atypon is reaffirming its long-standing support for Researcher to Reader by continuing to be a Silver Sponsor of the Conference for 2019.

Atypon develops publishing technologies for getting mission-critical content into the hands of the practitioners and researchers who need it most. Literatum, Atypon’s online publishing and website development platform, gives content providers easy-to-use and automated tools to manage, market, and monetize every type of content that they distribute.

We are grateful for Atypon’s continuing support – they were our first ever Silver Sponsor back in 2016 – as this helps to make the Conference affordable for all members of the scholarly communications community.

Early-bird discounted pricing for the 2019 Conference, on 25-26 February in London, is available until the end of November.

Mark Carden
28 November 2018

We are delighted to announce that Ingenta is continuing its past support for Researcher to Reader by becoming a Silver Sponsor of the 2019 Conference.

Ingenta is one of the leading providers of content solutions to publishers. Drawing on over 40 years of industry experience, Ingenta helps to simplify, manage, promote and deliver content.

We are grateful for Ingenta’s continuing support, which helps to make the Conference affordable for all members of the scholarly communications community.

Early-bird discounted pricing for the 2019 Conference is available until the end of November.

Mark Carden
26 November 2018

The 2019 Researcher to Reader Conference Programme includes an innovative debate about the status of Sci-Hub in helping or harming the scholarly communications community.  Unfortunately one of our debaters, Andrew Pitts, Managing Director at Publisher Solutions International, has dropped out of this session, but the debate will still take place and we will be announcing a suitable replacement shortly.

Mark Carden
26 November 2018

We are very excited to announce the return of Professor James Evans as a speaker at the 2019 Researcher to Reader Conference.  Professor Evans got rave reviews at R2R 2016 when he showed how a statistical analysis of research papers can reveal profound insights into researcher behaviours and motivations. For 2019 he is proposing to focus on how we can use information from thousands of scholarly articles to forecast the robustness and replicability of findings. It should be a wild ride of startling and data-driven insights.

Mark Carden
5 November 2018

We are delighted to announce that Dr Marc Schiltz, President of Science Europe and Secretary General & Executive Head of the Luxembourg  National Research Fund (FNR), will be a Keynote Speaker at the 2019 Researcher to Reader Conference. He joins a roster of distinguished speakers already listed in our Programme, and will bring particular insights from a research funding organisation into our scholarly communications discussions.

Mark Carden
2 November 2018

Normally, we run the Researcher to Reader Conference Super Early-Bird rate just in October, switching to the regular Early-Bird rate during November. But this year we have decided to extend the Super Early-Bird registration period to 9 November, recognising that we are a little later than usual in opening up our registration site and finalising our Programme. 

So people still have some time left to secure a massive discount on early registration for the 2019 Conference.  You can book one of our limited number of Super Early-Bird 2-day tickets before midnight (UK time) on 9 November to secure an amazing discount of about 33%.  Early booking is entirely without risk, as you can cancel for a full refund at any point up to the end of January.  Our normal Early-Bird discounts will be available from 10 November onward.

Mark Carden
31 October 2019

(edited 1 Nov 2018 to correct a broken link)

The programme highlights for the Researcher to Reader Conference on 25-26 February 2019 are now available, and registration is now open.  There are Super Early-Bird rates available only in October, with free cancellation until February – so there is no risk in booking right away.

The programme highlights include:

First class international speakers, panellists & moderators, including:

• The Rt Hon. the Lord Willetts, former UK Minister of State for Universities
• Professor James Evans, University of Chicago
• Dr Haseeb Irfanullah, Programme Coordinator, IUCN, Bangladesh
• Rick Anderson, Associate Dean, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah
• Isabel Thompson, Senior Strategy Analyst, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
• Phill Jones, Chief Technology Officer, Emerald Group Publishing

Thought- provoking content including:

• A formal debate aiming to convince delegates of the benefit or harm of Sci-Hub
• A panel of distinguished experts discussing the latest advances in AI
• Presentations delivering insights into research and publishing in Asia and Africa
• An update on furthering the Diversity and Inclusion agenda
• A workshop on improving Research Data Management workflows

Mark Carden
25 October 2018

We are delighted to announce that Mark Allin has joined the Researcher to Reader Conference 2019 Advisory Board.

Mark is a former CEO at Wiley, and was a Keynote speaker at the 2017 R2R Conference. He is now an entrepreneur, advisor and mentor in the publishing sector. He is Chair of William Reed Business Media, a strategic advisor to Zapnito, and on the Board of Edinburgh University Press.  He has over 30 years of experience in scientific, educational, professional and trade publishing from start-ups to multinationals, who has worked in Asia, Europe and the USA.

We welcome Mark to the R2R 2019 Advisory Board, where he will be a significant asset to the strategy, programme and visibility of the Conference.

Mark Carden
21 August 2018

The first review (that we are ware of) from the 2018 Researcher to Reader Conference has been published, on the National Library of Sweden’s Open Access blog.  It is in Swedish, but there is a slightly enhanced automated translation posted below.

http://openaccess.blogg.kb.se/2018/03/06/researcher-to-reader-london-26-27-februari-2018/

Please let us know at info~~~på~~~R2RConf.com of any other reviews out there.

Mark Carden
6 March 2018

The February weather offered a lot of sunshine, and also snow, while the annual Researcher to Reader Conference took place February 26-27 in London. The Conference gathered more than 160 participants from publishers, libraries, agents and service providers. This year, nine participants came from Sweden. Britt-Marie Wideberg and Annica Wentzel attended for the Royal Library.

During the two days of the Conference, three workshop sessions were held on five topics: Open Science Responsibilities, Resilience Through Diversity, Open Data Sharing, Metadata Lifecycles, and Open Access Communications. Annica Wentzel attended the workshop on “Open Access Communications”, which looked at what communication happens when a researcher submits an article when it is reviewed, published and paid. Then you looked at where in the process most problems arose and how they can be solved. The result will be an action plan to improve communication in these steps.

Britt-Marie participated in the workshop on “Open Science Responsibilities”. Opportunities and challenges for the different groups of publishers, libraries and researchers were discussed during the three sessions and the organizers will return with a summary of the group’s results.

The program featured several interesting presentations. A few examples:

Alison Mudditt, PLOS, talked about Changing the Culture of Research – It’s Everyone’s Problem. In order to change the research culture, first and foremost, new, easy-to-use infrastructure must be built.

Ros Pyne from Springer Nature presented the publisher’s report The OA effect. How does Open Access affect the use of scholarly books? The report’s results show that an Open Access book is downloaded more than an average “non-OA” book during the first four years of the book, and seven times more during the first year of the book. The OA book is also cited 50% more than the non-OA book in the first four years. Why that’s so is unclear – is it due to better accessibility, or to a certain type of author or books being read more, is open access published?

Dr. Maria Bonn told us about the University of Illinois project Publishing Without Walls . It has been investigated what authors have for their publishing goals and how they managed to achieve their goals through different ways of publishing their research.

Lucy Lambe talked about the library as a platform for publishing, and her work to enable this at the London School of Economics.

Dr Catherine Cotton, Sally Hardy and Dr Caroline Sutton participated in a panel as representatives of learned societies. They discussed, among other things, how Learned Societies need to work together to meet the challenges of Open Access. They saw some Open Access issues, such as authors in parts of the world who can not afford to pay APCs. Open Access allows research articles to be accessible to everyone – but can everyone understand? Will it cause authors to write two variants of articles, one traditional and one that is easier to understand? The representatives did not see that they could make all their journals Open Access in the near future.

Susan Gibbons of Yale University Library completed the Conference with an interesting presentation, Aligning Library Services with Researcher Needs that involved understanding the needs of users today and adapting the library accordingly.

In summary, there were two contentious days with a lot of focus on open access and curiosity about new ways to publish research articles.