Editor’s note: Today’s post is by SSP Advocacy Task Force Co-chairs, Tim Lloyd and Beth Craanen. Tim is the founder and CEO of LibLynx, a company providing Identity, Access & Analytics solutions for online resources. Beth is the Director of Editorial Operations for the American Physical Society.

Scholarly research is a vital component of a healthy society. Research drives the innovation that fosters economic growth and supports investment at home and abroad. Research provides governments with the data needed to evaluate policies, improve public services, and solve complex social challenges such as health crises and climate change. And research builds our society’s knowledge capital, fostering intellectual growth within the population.

Our industry’s role in scholarly research facilitates the communication of the scholarly record. However, scholarly communications face a complex landscape as policy, technology, and public expectations reshape how research is created, disseminated, and trusted. The latest SSP Pulse Check Survey, which runs from April 1-20, aims to better understand how organizations across the scholarly communications ecosystem view advocacy, shared industry priorities, and the challenges involved in engaging with policymakers and the public.

Your responses will help identify areas where collective action, shared messaging, and practical resources may strengthen the community’s ability to communicate the value and impact of scholarly publishing. Take the survey today!

SSP’s Emerging Role in Advocacy

This poll is somewhat self-serving for the SSP Board of Directors, which is keenly interested in understanding the advocacy efforts and priorities of our community in order to develop a framework for the society’s future advocacy efforts. However, we know we’re not alone in our interest in where our community stands.

In July of last year, SSP took the unprecedented step of co-signing a public statement titled Trust and Integrity: A Research Imperative, along with four other high-profile organizations in the scholarly ecosystem [Association of Research Libraries; International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers; Association of College and Research Libraries; Association of University Presses (AUPresses)].

The statement was prompted by the extraordinary challenges facing the U.S. research enterprise in the first half of 2025: “sweeping federal funding cuts, capricious reductions in the federal workforce, and destabilizing attacks on universities, laboratories, and federal research agencies.” More importantly, it flagged a deeper crisis impacting our community — the loss of public trust in the essential role of American research and scholarship in driving economic growth, innovation, and the public good.

What made it unprecedented was that SSP has traditionally focused on our members and the diverse organizations that comprise our scholarly communications community. Our strategic goals reflected this inward-looking focus on serving and empowering members. Advocacy was something our members might choose to do, but not something SSP did.

Once You See It, You Can’t Unsee It

SSP’s May 2025 annual meeting in Baltimore marked a turning point. In the words of the author and activist Arundhati Roy:

“The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”

If you were in attendance at the Awards Luncheon and Business Meeting, our incoming President, Rebecca McLeod, used her speech as a call to action for our community. A couple of months later, the joint statement referred to above was published. Since then, the Board of Directors determined that SSP should play a more active role in advocating on behalf of our members. They created an Advocacy Task Force charged with defining a strategic goal for SSP’s advocacy and creating an implementation plan with objectives, actions, and success metrics.

In December 2025, the SSP board approved a new strategic advocacy goal: Advocate on behalf of our members to advance scholarly publishing and communications. The intent is to create and nurture a network of allies, experts, and influential individuals, and educate the public and key collaborators to build a broader understanding of the value of scholarly publishing and communication.

This goal is also global in scope. Scholarly research is a global public good whose credibility is under threat across many jurisdictions, so it is important that we engage with and advocate on behalf of the global scholarly communications community.

What is Advocacy?

The definition of advocacy that SSP has adopted is the one proposed by the Alliance for Justice, a nonprofit dedicated to training and educating nonprofit organizations in advocacy: “any action that speaks in favor of, recommends, argues for a cause, supports or defends, or pleads on behalf of others.”

Advocacy covers a broad range of activities, including public education, regulatory work, litigation, work before administrative bodies, lobbying, voter registration, voter education, and more. These activities can be grouped into four paths:

• Administrative advocacy — shaping the specific rules and regulations that agencies create and enforce. For example, submitting written feedback on proposed legislation.
• Litigation advocacy — creating or changing policy through judicial rulings. For example, filing lawsuits and challenging existing laws or policies through legal means.
• Legislative advocacy — passing new laws, amending existing ones, or preventing unfavorable legislation from being enacted. For example, lobbying legislators and providing testimony to legislative committees.
• Electoral advocacy — electing officials who will support your cause and hold those in office accountable. For example, endorsing candidates or “score-carding.”

Advocacy with a Small ‘a’

As a US nonprofit operating for public benefit, SSP is exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Advocacy by 501(c)(3) organizations is supported by the federal government through the 1976 Lobby Law and 1990 IRS regulations. However, a 501(c)(3) must adhere strictly to IRS rules that govern and limit lobbying and prohibit any political campaign intervention.

Accordingly, we’ll focus on advocacy with a small ‘a,’ such as working with partners in the scholarly community to influence public opinion (Legislative advocacy) and educate policymakers about the benefits of research and scholarship (Administrative advocacy). We’ll also provide clear guidance for the SSP community to ensure we stay within the limits of our 501 (c)(3) classification.

Our Strategic Objectives

The Advocacy Task Force developed two strategic objectives for SSP, designed to be sequentially addressed over a 3-year timeframe. We will only move on to objective #2 once we feel that objective #1 has been achieved. Both objectives represent a natural extension of our existing educational and community-building activities, and fall comfortably within the scope of 501(c)(3) rules.

#1 Coalition Building and Relationship Management: This objective is building and nurturing a network of allies, experts, and influential individuals. A strong coalition can amplify our message, lend credibility, and increase impact by bringing diverse communities together.

#2 Public Awareness and Education: The objective is to educate the public and key collaborators to build a broader understanding of the value of scholarly publishing and communication. This involves communicating a compelling narrative and making sure the public is informed.

The next step for the Advocacy Task Force is to turn these objectives into concrete implementation plans.

How Can I Help?

Understanding what our collective community is advocating for, how they are advocating, and where they see the most alignment for a broader initiative is critical to developing the most effective strategy for advancing scholarly publishing and communication.

We encourage you to participate in the April Pulse Check survey to help us shape our advocacy efforts to reflect your needs and priorities. The poll will be open through April 20. Pulse Check polls are just  5-6 questions (plus a few demographic questions for segmenting) and should take about 5 minutes to complete. A summary of key takeaways will be published in The Scholarly Kitchen with a more extensive report available on the SSP website (login or account creation required).

Pulse Check reports provide access to actionable data to help shape organizational strategies by monitoring trends, policy impacts, and the overall priorities of scholarly communications organizations. Be sure to check out the past poll reports.

You are also welcome to send any feedback to us directly by emailing info@sspnet.org.

Authors’ note: The members of the SSP Advocacy Task Force are: Beth Craanen (co-chair), Melanie Dolechek, Yael Fitzpatrick, Darla Henderson, Simon Holt, Tim Lloyd (co-chair), Jennifer Regala, Mia Ricci, David Sampson, Damita Snow, and Emma Wilson.