Our 2021 webinar series continues with “The New 3 Rs: Response, Responsibility, and Relevance,” happening Thursday, October 14, 2021 at 11am ET. Registration for the event remains open with a discount available for SSP members.
Webinar moderator Jason Pointe, Publishing Director at the International Anesthesia Research Society, took the time to answer a few questions about the upcoming webinar:
Who is the intended audience for this webinar and why should they attend?
Everyone in the SSP community could benefit from this discussion. It will focus on scholarly communications’ place in the greater community, what are our responsibilities as the disseminators of research content, beyond accessibility? How do we and the content we offer remain relevant in the public eye? Are the lessons presented by our panelists scalable to our audience members for their own efforts? This will be a lively moderated discussion on these points.
Why is this topic important and timely? Is there a particular aspect of this topic that is noteworthy?
The need for and profligate supply of research in response to the pandemic was the initial catalyst for this topic, but the 3 Rs to be discussed are just as applicable to other prominent issues – DEI, disparities in healthcare, and economics, climate science, and more.
As moderator, I really want to press the panelists on our collective responsibility as producers and distributors of knowledge. Does our responsibility end after publication, or is it our responsibility, along with the researchers and authors with whom we regularly work, to proactively respond to and address intentional misuse or uninformed misunderstanding of the content in the general population?
What do the selected speakers bring to the discussion?
Wow, a lot! PLOS’ newest journals are a direct response to address topics of critical need in the world today, and Niamh O’Connor (Chief Publishing Officer, PLOS) has been at the center of their inception and launch. Kent Anderson (Founder, Caldera Publishing Solutions) has experience as a publishing leader at the American Academy of Pediatrics, NEJM, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, and AAAS, among other achievements, and is well placed to discuss the roles and responsibilities of societies and others in the scholarly publishing ecosystem. Katelyn Jetelina (MPH, PhD, Assistant Professor at UTHealth and Author of “Your Local Epidemiologist”) is a researcher and clinician who took initiative to create her own response to the needs of the moment, establishing Your Local Epidemiologist on Facebook to distill and explain complex research in discussions accessible to the lay public. Last but not least, Laura Helmuth (PhD, Editor in Chief, Scientific American) brings an extensive background in science communication from her time as editor for The Washington Post, National Geographic, Slate, Smithsonian, and Science’s news section. She is also a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication, and you may remember her from SSP’s 43rd Annual Meeting where she was a keynote speaker.
What do you hope attendees will take away from the webinar?
Each panelist will share a brief presentation on the topic, to be followed by a moderated discussion between the panelists and answering questions from the audience.
I want attendees to leave thinking about what they and their organizations could do, or do better, to increase the response, responsibility, and relevance of scholarly publishing to the world around us. And I expect that there will be examples from our panelists that attendees might find scalable to their organizations.
News contribution by SSP member, Heather Kotula. Heather is the Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Access Innovations, Inc.
Join the Conversation
You must be logged in to post a comment.