The ACSE has always been committed to other industry organizations and has tried to support their events by its participation and contribution. In lieu of this, The ACSE once again participated in the CSE Annual Meeting 2017 in San Diego, USA from May 20-23. This was the 60th anniversary meeting of the Council of Science Editors and was hosted at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina under the theme “Setting Sail: Navigating the Future of Science Publishing”. Representatives from The ACSE included Prof. Gazi Mahabubal Alam (President ACSE) and Nida Mohsin (Industry Relationship Manager- The ACSE) who attended the three days meeting and gained meaningful opportunities to network with new individuals and organizations and learn about the emerging scholarly publishing trends through different learning sessions in the meeting.
The CSE Annual meeting this year included many new features to enhance learning and boost networking for its attendees. The meeting was comprised of two roundtable discussion sessions geared towards the spectrum of its membership (one for students and young professionals, and the other for Editors-in-Chief) and a variety of interesting learning sessions. The meeting had two very interesting keynote sessions, including one by Professor Mary-Claire King, Professor of Genome Sciences and Medicine at the University of Washington as the keynote speaker and the other by Dr. McNutt, a geophysicist, who was the director of the U.S. Geological Survey during the Deepwater Horizon spill and served as the editor-in-chief of Science from 2013-2016. During the meeting, attendees also had the option to join for Dinner Conversation and the Awards Lunch. The pain points for international authors and the gender gap, examples of peer review innovation, the challenges inherent in non-medical publishing, and ethical concerns were some of the key issues addressed in this meeting. Other than this CSE also introduced its Mentor-ship program for its individual members. Moreover Patty Baskin, the Past President – CSE also introduced President ACSE- Prof. Gazi M. Alam with the attendees and appreciated his presence in the meeting during her speech.
While attending the diverse important sessions and visiting different exhibitors, The ACSE representatives got an opportunity to meet with the key persons from other leading organizations of the scholarly publishing industry and discussed with them the future possibilities of collaborations and strategic partnerships. These organizations include Newgen Knowledge Works, Enago (Crimson Interactive, Inc.), Aries System Corporation, ISMTE, Science Alert, Technica Editorial Services, CONVEY, Korean Council of Science Editors and Web of Science. Along with these , many small corner meetings were done by editors coming from different parts of the world including editors from Africa and Brazil.
The ACSE President Prof. Gazi is of the view that attending events like these promote and support the mission of The ACSE, which is to help its members meet the challenges that occur during periods of change. He also said, “Through such events, The ACSE seeks world class level strategies to educate its members and look for different resources for their career development.” Moreover, he is also of the suggestion for organizations like CSE to expand their Mentor-ship Program for the smaller and newly developed societies of editors so that they can work in a better way for their members.
Overall, this CSE meeting provided an important opportunity for the ACSE to widen its network in the rapidly growing scholarly publishing industry. In short, attending the CSE 2017 proved to be a time well spent that resulted in new rich professional relationships and enhanced learning about the new scholarly publishing trends.
We congratulate CSE for its 60th Anniversary and wish them good luck for their future annual meetings.
COMMENTS