The scholarly publishing industry has several ongoing burning conversations on the emergence and responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI), ensuring scientific integrity in evolving landscapes of increasing scientific misconduct, unclear new business models with few reported use cases to guide decision making, and most importantly, inclusive engagement. Undeniably, underpinning all such conversations are the themes of equity, inclusion, accessibility, and participation in the research, peer review, and publication processes for all. The 2024 CSE Virtual Fall Symposium will serve both as a primer on these topics and a forum for discussions surrounding recommended, as well as tested, practical steps and tangible implementation strategies to benefit various journals and societies, irrespective of the size, partnership models, and geographical locations. The attendees of this meeting—with clearly defined actionable items, focus on successful use cases, globally applicable recommendations, and facilitated discussions by industry experts—will certainly be empowered to steer their journals or organizations forward safely in these turbulent times.

The Virtual Symposium will focus on 4 key sessions, each featuring moderated panel discussions by global industry leaders and moderated by seasoned professionals, focusing beyond theory, on experience and practice, followed by an audience-led question and answer session. Each session will also have provision to share key insights, success (or failure) stories, resources, discuss potential next steps, and develop practical takeaways collaboratively. This symposium promises to strip back the complexity surrounding current challenges that our industry faces, ensure a firm grounding, relate the conversation to journals of all types, and provide guidance to power an attendee’s own policy development or have an informed conversation with editors, a society journal owner, or staff at a publishing house.

Critically, we look forward to impressing you with a diverse (in every sense of the word) cadre of speakers/panelists and academic voices in live discussions, blending some familiar names with global experts or practitioners who may be less familiar to CSE members and prospective meeting attendees. Leveraging the virtual nature of this symposium, we hope you enjoy the global flavors of insights as we tap into short, yet extremely powerful, video presentations blended in with the live discussions.

To serve the greater community, and to make this virtual experience better for all attendees, we encourage scholarly publishing professionals to proactively engage in discussion ahead of time, as well as help us collate resources via shared documents that would be released in September, prior to the actual symposium, for everyone’s benefit.

The 4 main sessions at a glance are as follows:

1. Are Ethics Geographically Equitable? Maintaining the Sanctity of the Published Scholarly Record.   A globally dispersed eclectic panel of experts will discuss differences in how ethical issues are taught to researchers, variances in how ethics are perceived, how journals can better manage and communicate policies regarding ethical issues with authors from various geographies, as well as discuss potential struggles researchers may face to protect themselves, especially based on their location.
2. AI Apocalypse: From Doom to Boom (in Equity) for Researchers, Editorial Offices, Publishers, and Readers.   Societies and publishers are beginning to institute forward-looking internal and external policies. Tech-savvy researchers are adopting AI in innovative ways that push boundaries in both a positive and negative sense. How might editors and journal staff improve workflows for these new high stakes challenges in their own unique settings? Furthermore, might these AI tools lack sensitivity to the very issues of equity and inclusion scholarly publishing has so recently tried to correct? In the race toward AI, are we forgetting the human component, particularly when it comes to communication? Attendees, we hope, will use this session to explore their pain points and how AI might help overcome them equitably.   
3. About Time We Diversify the Reviewer Pools: Current Scenarios and Practical Solutions from Stakeholders in the Value-Chain.   Diversifying the reviewer pool potentially solves concerns regarding finding reviewers, represents a step toward addressing issues of reviewer bias, and most certainly tackles issues surrounding a lack of inclusion. From an author perspective, perhaps diversifying reviewer pools potentially improves the quality of reviews received. This session will explore both evidence and practice to suggest several viable solutions.
4. Transformative Agreements: An Emerging Twist in the Battle for Equitable Access to Scholarly Content.   Transformative agreements represent an emerging business model that may shift how content is accessed and where it is published, but will they create an equity divide for researchers as both readers and authors? What are the potential implications for society journals published under license with a publisher executing such agreements? What are the implications for self-published journals or journals at the multitude of smaller publishers without resources to offer such deals? If authors are increasingly seen as customers, do these deals represent a boon or, conversely, might such deals limit their options? This session aims to explore the underlying fine print in the “promise” of free publication for researchers, proposed incentives and support, perceived benefiters (and losers!), and shifting priorities for readers, journals, societies, and publishers alike.

We hope to make the 2024 CSE Fall Symposium the virtual event of the year, over and above the many online meetings and webinars you may have attended! With a commitment to ensuring attendees gain a firm understanding on each topic and tangible practical resources, we hope you will invest your time in supporting this year’s meeting.

2024 CSE Fall Symposium
November 19 and 20, 2024
Registration is now open: https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/fall-virtual-symposium 

Jason Roberts, PhD, is Senior Partner, Origin Editorial. Chhavi Chauhan, PhD, is Director of Scientific Outreach, American Society for Investigative Pathology.