Videos of all of the talks from the 2016 Society for Scholarly Publishing Meeting are now available online (select “2016” under “Annual Meeting” to see the whole list). I recommend anyone pondering the next steps (or questioning whether steps are necessary) toward better security and authentication to view the session on Cybersecurity and the Scholarly World.

This was but one of many superb sessions, and given the onerous task of choosing one to present here, I’m going with the one session that strongly resonated with nearly everyone in attendance at the meeting, Margaret Ann Armour’s keynote on diversity in academia and publishing. Armour is the Associate Dean, Diversity, in the Faculty of Science at the University of Alberta. Her talk looks at at the reasons why we have such a lack of diversity, particularly as one goes up the ladder into leadership positions. She talks about the subtle, ingrained biases we share, and how these unconsciously affect our decisions. Armour shows convincing data on why diversity is beneficial and concludes with practical suggestions on what we can do to make things better.

David Crotty

David Crotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

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