Society Street London 2019

Jonathan will be providing a case study from the British Ecologcal Society, where science conferences and events are right up at the top of what members value most. The flagship event is the annual meeting which has become a physical embodiment of all the Society is about: a welcoming gathering of a global community of ecologists, the latest science, and lots of social and networking events. It leaves people fired up about their research and the new contacts they've made. The event's success is down to the dedication of our in-house events team, working through the year with an academic committee and volunteers, and listening to feedback from the research community.

Ian will give a brief introduction to blockchain, explain how the core components work at a high level. He will explain why it might be the case that the needs blockchain is trying to meet may be better met though other approaches within the domain of scholarly publishing.

Hear how Wiley is delivering new value to its society customers via online community, working in partnership with community software providers Zapnito. In this case-study of the Zapnito-hosted FEBS (Federation of European Biochemical Societies) Network, learn how and why Zapnito, Wiley and FEBS launched an online community for FEBS members - and the wider biochemical research community - and what we learnt along the way.

Learned societies publish journals primarily to serve their scholarly communities, more recently some of them have also managed to make a surplus which they also use to support their other mission activity. These two aspects of journal publishing are both mission related, of course, and the balance between them varies considerably depending on the society. The Royal Society only started making appreciable surplus from the journals in the 21st century; for over 300 years the journals were heavily loss making. Open access is clearly the future and the Royal Society is very supportive of open science in general. Last year, over 45% of all our articles were immediate OA. Clearly institutional and funder support for OA is a crucial driver and while we welcome the greatly increased impetus Plan S has provided, we have concerns about the way the policy will be implemented. As the national academy of science, our primary concerns will always be the good of science and the interests of scientists. We are therefore concerned that Plan S is likely to have negative consequences for early career scientists, for collaboration and for the level of support for OA in the research community.

What does the future hold for subscriptions? Does Plan S mean the death of your publishing business? Can quality publications survive in today’s information environment? Or only science ones? And what did the latest implementation guidelines of Plan S add to the conversation? Sam has ALL the answers (and a crystal ball).