After a successful second year of the Scholarly Communication Institute in the Research Triangle, we’re happy to announce the theme and dates for SCI 2016, and invite you to submit a proposal to participate!
The dates for SCI 2016 are October 9 to 13, and as in the last two years, it will be held at the Rizzo Center in Chapel Hill, NC.
This year’s theme is “Incentives, Economics, and Values: Changing the Political Economy of Scholarly Publishing”, which we describe on the theme page in this way:
“The scholarly publishing ecosystem is undergoing transformation, with new technologies creating both opportunities and challenges to traditional publication models. Underlying these models are economic and behavioral patterns developed over time in response to sets of incentives. What can scholars, universities, and funders do to help re-align the incentives and economics of scholarly publishing with the values of academia? How can we set conditions to enable the greatest benefit to be achieved at the lowest cost? How can we ensure that the system is not biased in favor of those who already have status, and does not inhibit a diversity of perspectives from being heard? What models could we put in place to help high quality publications to be financially sustainable, build stronger communities of stakeholders, surface the true costs, and fairly reward those who are doing the work?”
“This year’s Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute invites teams to explore these and other questions related to the political economy of scholarly publishing, to develop plans, to test processes, to come to agreements, and to launch initiatives. SCI is an ideal place to bring together perspectives and expertise that may not normally intersect, and to build understandings and new models based on them. We encourage pragmatic, proactive optimism, and hope stakeholders in the scholarly publishing ecosystem will use SCI as a platform to nurture positive change.”
Please see the theme page for ideas of who you might bring together to form a team – we’re looking for a broad and diverse set of perspectives, and teams that will address both specific and general problems and opportunities. This is a great opportunity to launch a new project, have some concentrated time to develop an existing project with a broader set of collaborators, or just to begin to explore and experiment with ideas that are difficult to pursue in your usual work context.
To participate, form a team of 3 to 8 people, and submit a proposal along the lines of what’s described in our RFP (submission deadline is March 14, 2016). If your proposal is selected, the Institute will cover costs for your team to attend.
To learn more about what it was like in past years, see the Storify threads from SCI 2014 and SCI 2015, which contain tweets and photos from participants, and the web pages for 2014 and 2015, which have links to information about the teams that participated in those years, their projects, and other notes.
There’s also a lot more information in our FAQ. If you have any questions, contact us at scholcomm-institute@duke.edu
[ Featured photo of SCI 2015 discussion by Eric Dye used under CC license: https://www.flickr.com/photos/137077175@N05/sets/72157659949691661/ ]
trianglesci.org 