Making an effort to connect various segments of the Scholarly-Communication Ecosystem, The 6th Annual Conference of The ACSE was hosted in Carlton Palace Hotel, Deira Dubai during 13-14thFebruary, 2019.This year the conference was organized and made efficacious with the support and effective collaboration of Science Alert, ISMTE, ISMPP, SSP, ANSInet, Science International, and Medwell Publications. The conference was attended by more than 200 participants including ACSE members, journal editors, reviewers, academic editors, researchers, and publishing professionals especially from Asian region.
Day 1: In the enthusiastic Opening Address, Prof. Kaiser Jamil, Vice President of The ACSE, acknowledged and highlighted that in the recent years, The Asian Council of Science Editors has started transforming the ways through which the council operate to continuously promote the best practices in scholarly publications and disseminate innovative information and solutions to the publication problems, mainly through connecting the Asian scholarly community with their international sister organizations.
Following this, Mr. Rick Anderson, Former President of Society of Scholarly Publishing (SSP), delivered a comprehensive keynote lecture emphasizing the Role of SSP to promote and advance communication among all sectors of the scholarly publication community through networking, information dissemination, and facilitation of new developments in the field.
Next, Ms. Julie Nash, President of International Society of Managing & Technical Editors (ISMTE) & Senior Partner, J&J Editorial, LLC, explained about the Best Practices in Journal Editorial Offices, focusing on Journal Workflow, Author & Reviewer Guideliness, Customer Services, Ethical Considerations and Publishing Education.
After this Mr. Azhar Mateen, CEO MasterEyes, delivered an interesting talk on “Explore the Generations Driving Elements for Education” covering the Generations to Generation Gaps, Human Mechanism and Educational Trends and Transformation.
Next to these three interesting talks a Panel Discussion was initiated with a hot topic “Guest Authorship: A Big Ethical Challenge” with Panel Experts Dr. Kaiser Jamil, Dr. Shakil Akhtar and Dr. Sam T. Mathew and all the industry experts, editors, reviewers, authors, even the early career researchers, participated in this active discussion and highlighted their own experiences and different cases that they had faced till now as well as explored the possible solutions or ways to handle these ethical challenges. All the Panel Experts contributed and facilitated the discussion with their best expertise level. Like every year this was the most interesting and interactive session of ACSE Annual Conference.
Day 2: Ms. Julie Nash, President ISMTE, introduced “International Society of Managing and Technical Editors (ISMTE) as A Resource for Journal Editors for networking and training infrastructure, establishing best practices, and studying and reporting on editorial office practices.
The talk was followed by another Lecture on “How Not to Look Like a Predator: Strategies for Communicating the Legitimacy of Your Journals” delivered by Mr. Rick Anderson, Former President of SSP. The talk mainly concreted on “What can you do to ensure that no one gets the mistaken impression that your new journal is a predator?” and the strategies for clearly signaling your journal’s scholarly bona fides.
Moving towards the next talk, Mr. Azhar Mateen shared the best possible ways of Effective Journals Marketing covering the Use & Impact of New Technology, Business Model Canvas and Marketing Channels.
Following this an interesting Chronological order of Developmental Milestones of The ACSE was presented by Ms. Maryam Sayab, Professional Developmental Manager at The ACSE. This presentation was of deep interest for the existing ACSE Members, Ambassadors, Board of Directors as well as new faces at 6th Annual Conference of the ACSE; where she explained the growth of This Asian Council and introduced all the initiatives and Programs of The ACSE, for the betterment of Scholarly Publishing Community of Asia.
Next to her Ms. Nayab Ali, presented another Brand New Initiative of The ACSE, “Emerging Scientist”, which aims to outset the venture by concentrating precisely on the next generation of scientists, specially focusing and providing opportunities to the Early Career Research Scientist while organizing regional events as seasons of Emerging Scientists all across Asia.
Following to the next session, a short course on “Ethics in research publishing – What do you need to know?” was conducted by Dr. Sam T. Mathew, from GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines, India. This extensive session covered the discussion on what ethics is in general and why do ethical issues arise and briefly touch upon changing the landscape of research publications, responsibilities of authors, ethics and reporting guidelines and professional associations including a couple of videos on relevant topics.
This year the conference engaged a variety of nationalities including mainly USA, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Bosnia, Singapore, Mauritius, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Sudan, Guyana, Nigeria and South Africa. The meeting was officially concluded with closing remarks and acknowledgment of Dr. Kaiser Jamil, Vice President of The ACSE, followed by the Certificate Distribution Ceremony and Group photo.
Undoubtedly, this worthy & productive platform discovered plentiful prospects for the editors, reviewers, scholars and experts to share their real problems and cases in the form of diverse demonstrations and council like always is ready to find out the best possible solution to the problems or cases discussed this year for raising the level of academic publishing in Asia.
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