SCI 2018 is starting soon (October 7) and this year’s theme is “Overcoming Risk”. As I write this, Hurricane Florence is bearing down on North Carolina, so risk is certainly on our minds here in the Research Triangle region of NC.

SCI is not about that kind of risk, of course. The six teams that will be gathering in Chapel Hill will be exploring risk as it applies to different aspects of scholarly communication, and using SCI as a launch pad for projects that aim to overcome some of these risks. They’ll be addressing legal risk, risks to equity, diversity, and inclusiveness, risks related to new forms of digital publishing and emerging methods of public engagement, risks inhibiting quicker moves toward open scholarship and risks open scholarship can help overcome, and challenges facing scholarly societies as they try to move toward open access publishing models. You can read more about all the teams and their projects and this year’s theme in these earlier posts.

SCI isn’t like a traditional academic conference – it’s more like an informal planning retreat, with a diverse set of participants working on their own projects and cross-pollinating between them. The best way to learn about it is to read what participants in previous years have written and done – as in the description and links from this page from after SCI 2017 concluded, and these archived Storify threads from 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. This post from SCI 2015 outlines the structure of the program, and how it all works.

You can join in the conversation too. Each year many SCI participants have been active on Twitter during the program, using the #TriangleSCI hashtag. Follow along there or in this list gathering the SCI 2018 cohort, send us questions, give us your suggestions, and engage with us as we develop and implement ideas and projects, and contribute to all of it. If you’re interested in participating in person in SCI 2019, look for the next theme and request for proposals on this site in January. See you all online and in person in a few weeks!