Philadelphia, PA: Enago attended the International Society of Managing & Technical Editors’ (ISMTE) 9th Annual North American Conference, held this year in Philadelphia. The event brought together professionals engaged in publishing peer-reviewed research to discuss the industry’s challenges and opportunities, as well as its best practices.
Founded nearly ten years ago to “connect the community of professionals committed to the peer review and publication of academic and scholarly journals,” today ISMTE comprises nearly 600 members who drive the editorial process for scholarly publications in the fields of science, technology, medicine, business, finance, economics, law and criminology, and the humanities. Since its inception, the organization has hosted annual conferences in North America and Europe, and earlier this year ISMTE hosted its first ever Asian-Pacific conference in Singapore.
This year’s annual meeting, focused on the myriad changes facing scholarly publishing in today’s digital age, a theme introduced by keynote speaker John Bohannon, PhD, a biologist and journalist based at Harvard University. Dr. Bohannon, who serves as a contributing correspondent for Science magazine, entitled his address, “Journals in the Post-Sci-Hub World,” and posed thought-provoking questions such as whether scientific publishing would adapt alongside other content industries such as music in providing academic research on low-cost platforms akin to iTunes and Spotify.
The plenary session explored another hot-button topic, “Research Integrity and Our Industry Responsibility,” moderated by Margot Puerta, manager of the Laboratory of Biomedical Science at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. Breakout sessions covered practical concerns—everything from conducting effective staffing transitions and employing in-house reporting measures that ensure sound editorial decisions to improving your journal’s instructions to authors, detecting misconduct in images, and reputation management.
“ISMTE’s annual conferences, which now truly span the globe, are worthwhile opportunities to connect with our peers in scholarly publishing and discuss the current and future state of academic publishing in this new digital environment,” said Kuntan Dhanoya, Vice President of Business Development at Enago’s parent company, Crimson Interactive, who represented the company at the event. “As Dr. Bohannon pointed out so eloquently in his keynote address, science publishing is at a crossroads; a situation made even more unique by the fact that the industry’s consumers are also its producers. We look forward to continuing such dialogues at ISMTE’s future conferences as well.”
