SciELO 20 Years Conference – an innovative and participative forum on the future of scholarly communication

By Abel L. Packer, Alex Mendonça, Solange Santos, Luís Gomes e Denise Peres Sales

The celebration of the 20 years of SciELO in 2018 will culminate in the week of September 24^th-28^th with meetings of the SciELO Network on the 24^th and 25^th and the SciELO 20 Years International Conference on days 26^th-28^th. The website <www.scielo20.org/en/> will document the evolution of the organization of the SciELO 20 Years week.

Among the main preparatory activities of the SciELO Network Meeting are the self-evaluation of the 15 Coordination of national collections, the updating of the priority lines of action for the coming years and the preparation of a series of guidelines, products and services updating the SciELO Publishing Model that will be disclosed until September. These activities will feed into the program of the Network meeting that will be defined together with the coordination of national collections by the end of July.

The SciELO 20 Years Conference will discuss 12 main themes organized into four programmatic lines that will address the trends, innovations, methodologies and technologies that are shaping the future of research communication and the key functions of journals. Together, the programmatic lines will address the essential functions of scientific communication and their alignment with good communication practices of open science. Prior to the conference, the 12 topics will be analyzed in their different facets through articles, posts and interviews and will be debated by a panel of experts and stakeholders. Thus, the conference program will be debate-oriented in order to broaden and deepen the knowledge about the current and future status of scholarly communication; particularly the impacts, risks, and opportunities that open up to journals in different contexts and for the SciELO Program, generally speaking.

The four programmatic lines that will structure the construction of the thematic panels of the conference program are the following: (i) key and structuring themes of the advancement of research communication; (ii) globalization and advancement of open access; (iii) publication of journals and their alignment with open science; and (iv) assessment of journals and the research they communicate.

Each programmatic line will be developed through three thematic panels. The following table summarizes the structure of the conference program, the preliminary definition of each thematic panel, and the respective days and times.

Thematic panels will be formulated and developed with the support of an initial document detailing their scope and a scientific committee. Most thematic committees are expected to operate regularly from April. The committees will coordinate the preparation of the themes prior to the conference by means of selected bibliographies, interviews, posts and articles and will define, together with the general committee, the panelists who will participate in the conference panels. The posts will be published in the SciELO in Perspective blog and the articles in the SciELO Preprints server.

As it is a policy of SciELO, the composition of the committees and the discussants panel should be balanced in terms of gender, geographical, and thematic representation.

Collaboration with the program of the SciELO 20 Years Conference

If you are interested in collaborating with the formulation, analysis and discussion of any topic on the SciELO 20 Years Conference agenda, please write to: scielo20@scielo.org.

Registration to participate at the Meeting of the SciELO Network and/or at the SciELO 20 Years Conference

Registrations are open. Visit the website of the SciELO 20 Years week and enjoy early bird discount up to June 30, 2018.

Sponsors

Institutions and companies who wish to sponsor the SciELO 20 Years Conference are welcome. Please contact us via the e-mail: scielo20@scielo.org.

External link

SciELO 20 Years <www.scielo20.org/en/>

Translated from the original in portuguese by Lilian Nassi-Calò.