Researchers today find themselves faced with many demands on their time and career: Rising competition for tenure, grants, and positions, on the one side, and mushrooming quantities of articles and data on the other.

STM LogoAt the recent US conference of the STM Association in Washington, DC, representatives of the Future Lab committee unveiled Tech Trends 2021, an annual look into the future of scholarly publishing.

As they told CCC’s Chris Kenneally, researchers today find themselves faced with many demands on their time and career: Rising competition for tenure, grants, and positions, on the one side, and mushrooming quantities of articles and data on the other.

To illustrate these circumstances, STM chose a pinball machine as metaphor for the numerous buffeting forces, including risks and opportunities, that will shape research in the years to come.

Panelists included:

  • Sam Bruinsma has been with Brill since 1998, after a ten years’ publishing career at Wolters Kluwer. Currently he is Senior Vice-President Business Development.
  • Michael Forster is Managing Director for Publications at IEEE, a position he has held since late 2015, and has more than two decades of experience in educational, professional, and research publishing. His past roles have spanned nearly all aspects of the publishing industry and include expertise in strategic planning, M&A and portfolio analysis, product management, and content development.
  • Heather Ruland Staines, Ph.D., is Director of Partnerships at Hypothes.is, a non-profit in the annotation and collaboration space. She recently served as a Director for the ProQuest Global Content Alliance team where she managed content licensing for Discovery (Summon and Primo) and Course Materials (SIPX and Leganto) initiatives.
  • Deborah Sweet is a Publishing Director at Cell Press and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Cell Stem Cell. She has a strong interest in the application of new communication technologies to scientific publishing, including social media and other platforms. Before moving into an editorial career, Deborah was a PhD student and postdoctoral researcher in cell biology in Cambridge, UK, and La Jolla, USA, respectively.
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