Founded 1978 | ||
 | ||
Headquarters Wheat Ridge, Colorado, United States Similar Council of Science Editors, NASIG, National Federation of Advanc, National Information Standard, American Medical Writers A Profiles | ||
The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) is a professional society, founded in 1978, dedicated to promoting and advancing communication and networking among all sectors of the scholarly communications community. It has approximately 1,100 members from 24 countries including publishers, vendors, librarians, researchers, and consultants.
Contents
SSP is organized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational society.
Scope
SSP openly encourages dialog on sometimes controversial issues, including Open Access to scholarly publishing, during its events and in its communications vehicles. SSP is also unique among scholarly communications associations in that it does not take positions on political issues. It is also one of the few scholarly communications societies and associations that allows members to join as individuals.
Meetings
SSP has held an annual meeting since its formation, bringing together many participants in scholarly publishing including librarians, publishers, and scholarly societies. It also holds additional educational seminars, webinars, and a Librarian Focus Group during the year.
Social media
SSP maintains an active social media presence on LinkedIn, where its group has over 7000 members, Twitter, and Facebook.
Scholarly Kitchen
The Scholarly Kitchen is an independent blog supported by SSP with a variety of contributors from the scholarly communications community. Contributions to the Scholarly Kitchen represent the thoughts and opinions of the various authors, and not those of the Society, which does not take political positions.
Learned Publishing
Learned Publishing is a journal published by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers in collaboration with SSP. Learned Publishing's readers are "not-for-profit and commercial publishers worldwide and members of other professions involved with scholarly publishing – librarians, academic authors and teachers, and subscription agents – as well as printers and other suppliers of services to book and journal publishers." SSP appoints the North American Editor of Learned Publishing.
Governance
SSP is a volunteer-led organization run by an unpaid board of directors and committees. All volunteers must be SSP members in good standing.
The organization contracts with a professional management association for accounting, meeting planning, and other services.
Lawsuit threat
In March of 2013, Edwin Mellen Press threatened to sue SSP for material critical of the Press hosted on Scholarly Kitchen. The blog posts in question were temporarily removed and the threats published. As then-Editor-in-Chief Kent Anderson explained, "the feeling was that the best way to respond to the threats was to comply with them but also show people what the threats were." Later, the posts were reinstated by the SSP Board.