8:00

Registration & coffee

9:00

Welcome & Opening
David Sampson, Vice President and Publisher, American Society of Clinical Oncology

Keynote Address: Your data is telling your members’ story. Are you listening?
Teri Carden, Founder, ReviewMyAMS

9:40

Aggregating society content for member retention and growth

Mike Cannon, Director of Serial Publications and Editorial Services, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

10:10

Refreshment break & networking 

10:40

Societies, Scholarly Research, and the Public

The Role of Societies in Growing Research Literacy in a Time of Misinformation
The ability to effectively communicate scholarly research—engaging with the public in a relatable way—is critical. It impacts everything from career goals to research funding and global policy, but without an academic background, the public can be confused rather than empowered by scholarly research communication. For example, scientific literacy is key to people making both more informed personal decisions and participating in civic and cultural affairs. Think evolution, GMO foods, vaccines, climate change, and revisionist history. So how can societies improve research literacy?

Unpack the role of societies in facilitating research literacy with a diverse panel of experts ready to discuss key aspects of communication from the researcher, society, and publisher perspectives. Learn about developing trends in research literacy and science communication, including the growing popularity of plain language abstracts, digital platforms, and the importance of self-promotion by researchers. Walk away with new ideas for how societies can promote and shape the popularization of scholarly research information.

Moderated by: Lucy Frisch, Marketing Manager, Springer Nature

Seth Denbo, Director of Scholarly Communication, American Historical Association -"It's not even past": The Relevance of History for Public Culture

Proponents of historical education, within and outside the classroom, argue that knowing our history is vital for civic culture and informed democratic decision making. Politicians and pundits often invoke the past in promoting their visions and policies. Historians are particularly equipped to critique such claims, but doing so in ways that are productive and appeal to a broad audience presents significant challenges. Scholars primarily write for and speak to other scholars and students. They rarely publish in places that have audiences beyond the academy and training in such writing and speaking is not a routine part of graduate education. Along side this tendency, social pressures to study subjects that have direct economic benefits are undervaluing the importance of the humanities. Scholarly societies can encourage scholars to communicate with general audiences, build channels for careers in policy oriented organizations, work toward new professional credit protocols, and challenge attacks on knowledge, and thus play a key part in changing this landscape. 

Josh Fischman, Senior Editor, Scientific American - Pulling Back the Curtain on Writing for Scientific American

Scientific American is one of the most popular and oldest published monthly science magazines in the United States. With new content shared online every day, publishing with Scientific American is an ideal opportunity for researchers to reach the public with important new research critical to understanding ourselves, our  world, and our universe. Now more than ever, researchers should be seeking ways to share what they do know and engage with people beyond their circle. Societies can play a key role in encouraging and supporting researcher contributions to consumer publications that do not mirror journal papers, but highlight the reasons that a particular discovery is important to the world.

Erica Goldman, Director of Policy Engagement, COMPASS - Toward Dialogue: Roles for Scientific Societies in Building Research Literacy for Policymakers

Despite the current political climate, decision makers still have substantive information needs from science. But for science to be part of the policy process requires efforts to move cutting edge-research beyond academic journals. From COMPASS’ experience as science communication practitioners, we find that effective boundary-spanning requires targeted skills and support for scientists to understand relevant policy decision points and to build relationships. Societies can play key roles, for example, by providing communication training for membership and innovating in design of annual conferences and publications to bring science and policy communities together. 

Lou Woodley, Community Engagement Director, Trellis/AAAS

In late 2014, AAAS launched Trellis, a new communication and collaboration platform for the scientific community. While Trellis is intended for anyone involved in the scientific enterprise, it also provides a new way to engage AAAS members – and to enable them to interact with one another. As well as welcoming AAAS members to their subject-specific section groups, we’ve recently launched a AAAS Force for Science group as a place to share resources about science advocacy in the run up to the March for Science and beyond. This has resulted in the sharing of advocacy toolkit materials, live Q&As and the facilitation of in-person connections between members.  These activities are further complemented by other groups on the platform focusing on Public Engagement with Science and Engaging Scientists and Engineers with Policy, to create a new online ecosystem of scientific conversations.

11:55

Lunch & networking

12:55

Operational Excellence

An often ignored and poorly understood competitive advantage – Shrinking margins often go hand-in-hand with declining revenue. How can a “Six Sigma” continuous improvement culture revitalize and grow your publishing program?

Hear firsthand how one organization applied Lean Manufacturing and Total Quality Management (TQM) practices and realized a difference —from employee retention to improved efficiencies and greater financial returns. Learn how some of the most powerful lean tools starting with 5S and continuing with value stream mapping, kaizen events, and process improvement teams have been applied to create closer collaboration among staff and a more effective company.

Paul Bozuwa, Chief Sales Officer, Sheridan
Kelly Thorburn, LMAC, Six Sigma Greenbelt, Continuous Improvement Manager, Sheridan

 14:10

Societies and vendors: building effective partnerships beyond the RFP

More than ever before, societies are turning to vendors to help fulfill their missions. Commercial and university presses, online and mobile platforms, manuscript management systems, global institutional sales representation, content licensors, and software providers of various and increasingly important member, reader, and author services are some of the more commonly used vendors. While some business relationships begin with just a few bumps in the road and ones that are easily smoothed out, other relationships are fraught with problems. Sometimes the reasons are more obvious, but sometimes they are not.  Even when both parties have approached the new partnership in good faith and plenty of plans have been laid, both societies and their vendors often face time-trashing, budget bashing complications. Why do these happen and how can these be avoided?

This session not only will review current best practices on how to identify and evaluate the best prospects for consideration but also—critically—will address how to ensure a smooth transition and end up with the services that you initially sought within the planned timeframe and the budget.

To accomplish the session’s objective, the moderator will share key takeaways and highly relevant lessons from the literature. Then, the lion’s share of the session will be a series of case studies where three sets of society and vendor partners will generously share their stories and suggestions with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight.

Moderated by: Cara Rivera, Managing Partner, KWF Consulting

Elizabeth K. Keyes, Chief Operating Officer, American Pharmacists Association (APhA) and Interim Executive Director, APhA Foundation,
Michael Markey, Vice President, Project Management, Atypon
Edward Liebow, Executive Director, American Anthropological Association
Mike O’Riordan, Editor, Wiley
Richard Wynne, Vice President Sales and Marketing, Aries Systems
Ken Kornfield, Director of Editorial, Journals, American Society of Clinical Oncology

15:25

Meeting wrap-up & closing comments
David Sampson, Vice President and Publisher, Journals, American Society of Clinical Oncology