Future of Publishing session at SGM’s Annual Conference | SGM Publishing

"With so many changes affecting scholarly publishing, how can new and experienced authors ensure their research is captured by quality journals in a highly discoverable and accessible way? To explore these questions, the Publishing Team at the Society for General Microbiology organised the Future of Publishing session at the Society’s Annual Conference in Liverpool on Tuesday 15th April 2014. We have outlined the structure of the event and included some of the Twitter activity below to share some of the knowledge that was imparted and the debates that arose from the session. The full conversation can be found on our Storify page but we’ve included some of the tweets below. The slides for the session are available on Slideshare. The current Chair of SGM’s Publishing Committee, Colin Harwood, chaired the session and opened by introducing the panel. Aharon Oren kicked off the presentations with an introduction to current practices in journal publishing. He described the role of the editor and what happens to your paper after it is submitted, suggested what authors should consider before submitting their paper and discussed different models of peer review, both old and new. He also advised authors on how to handle rejection and the best way to deal with negative reviews. Paul Hoskisson then explored some of the new methods for communicating research, including social media, as well as new journal models including open access and mega journals. He also considered how altmetrics could be used to measure the impact of science over current methods. He finished by encouraging the audience to take opportunities to influence change in academic publishing. Leighton Chipperfield then rounded off the presentations by providing a brief summary of innovation in publishing at SGM, including the recent addition of ORCID IDs (have you got yours?). He also explored how semantics are making material more dicoverable and how, as publishers, we’re moving away from traditional publishing models to truly managing knowledge. The discussion was followed by a Q&A with the whole panel ..."