Events

Are you ready for the Researcher of the Future? Understanding the researcher experience

BOOKING FOR THIS EVENT HAS NOW CLOSED

Chair: Lettie Y Conrad, Executive Program Manager, Online Products, SAGE Publishing

 Venue: Arundel House, 13-15 Arundel Street, Temple Place, London, WC2R 3DX (map)

Overview

Authors and readers are changing and often there is a mismatch between what we think they are doing and reality. Staying one step ahead and anticipating the needs of the researcher of the future is the optimal position but often publishers are playing catch up.  This full day seminar will provide an update on the landscape and equip publishers with strategies for staying one step ahead; focussing on two key questions. What will the researcher of the future demand from publishers? How is the industry responding? Hear first hand from our panel of researchers and engage in the debate during the Q/A session. The seminar will also provide a practical focus on tools for success in understanding your audience including market research, user testing and persona development alongside case studies from key stakeholders detailing how the industry is responding. 

The Professional Development Committee is responsible for the ALPSP seminar programme. The PDC programme director for this seminar is Louise Russell, Director, Tutton Russell Consulting Ltd

 #alpspresearch.  Read the storify tweets for this event here (general), here (ECR panel) and here (rest of the day).

Who should attend

Maintaining a solid, operational understanding of academic consumers is now a requirement of professional and scholarly publishing staff, vendors and service providers at all levels. This seminar is particularly recommended for marketing and editorial staff involved in content curation, product design and publishing policy. 

Programme

To view speaker biographies please click here.  Podcasts and presentations where available are indicated by links from the programme below. Please note the terms and conditions of use as stated in our Privacy Policy.

09:00	Registration and coffee
09:30	Introduction and welome from Chair (presentation)
09:45	Researcher Panel:
	Moderator - Anthony Watkinson, Principal Consultant, CIBER Research
	Alecia Carter, Churchill College Research Fellow, Zoology, University of Cambridge
	Aimee Eckert, PhD Student, Genome Centre, Sussex University
	Sarah Foxen, Postgraduate Researcher, Department of Modern Languages, University of Exeter Read Sarah's blog about this event entitled 'What Academic Publishers Wish We Knew'
	Billy Graeff, Doctoral Student, Sociology of Sports, Loughborough University and Lecturer, Federal University of Rio Grande, Brazil
	Samuel Ibenne, Doctoral Researcher, School of Business, Loughborough University
	Nikoleta Kiapidou, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Politics, University of Sussex
	Suzi Muchmore, Doctoral Researcher, School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University
11:00	Coffee break
11:15	Making sense of the researcher experience - Andy Priestner, Futurelib Programme Manager, University of Cambridge Libraries Cambridge University Library has invested in an embedded user experience research programme managed by UX in Libraries conference originator Andy Priestner and supported by design consultancy Modern Human. Entitled 'Futurelib' the programme comprises a number of ongoing simultaneous projects each of which employs ethnographic and human-centred design principles to explore the library and information needs and behaviours of different user groups. It is the results of one of these projects, North Star, which focused on the needs of academics and researchers in respect of the research and publication cycle that Andy will share in this session.  (presentation)
11:45	How researchers and the world are moving on: trying to track the changes at Loughborough University Library - Dr Graham Walton, Assistant Director: (Academic & User Services), University Library & Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Information Management, Loughborough University University libraries are used to adapting with change as they cope with transformations in technology, pedagogy, funding and physical spaces. Users‘ information seeking and scholarly communication behaviours are also changing. At Loughborough University Library, attempts have been made to track researchers’ behaviour using approaches including internal benchmarking, dashboards and user studies (such as ‘Grab and Go’ with York University). This has provided part of the picture (but not all). There is high hope that a joint UX project with Taylor & Francis will fill the gaps.  (audio) (presentation)
12:15	Lunch break
13:15	Innovation Panel: User Experience in the Digital Library – what value in cross-stakeholder collaboration? - Tracy Roberts, Publishing Director (AHSS Journals), Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group Loughborough University and Taylor & Francis Group are currently half way through an eight month qualitative research project to better understand the ways in which graduate students’ engagement with online academic content continues to evolve.  In undertaking the project both parties want to gain a better understanding of the user experience, to build a closer picture of the typical research journey, the ease of that journey, and the common frustrations found along the way.  What are the advantages of collaborating on a project that looks at a distinct issue, from different perspectives, and how can this type of joint project benefit today and tomorrow’s researchers?  (audio) (presentation)
13:30	Delivering a great experience for the author of the future - Harriet Bell, Marketing Director, Emerald Group Authors are heavy researchers and often ‘power users’ of publisher platforms, products, networks and journals. This presentation will look at the challenges in the author journey from securing funding, to finding collaborators, writing text, figures and managing data, complying with funding or institutional mandates, submission and publication, sharing and translating research for a wider public, tracking impact, showcasing and managing their reputation. A case study from Emerald Publishing on early career authors will be shared to highlight the potentially daunting user experience across multiple platforms, networks and publishers. Is there a call for some common, best in class UX understanding, principles and practices that multiple publishers and providers could adopt to improve a user’s experience as they move from one environment to another?  (audio) (presentation)
13:45	Community engagement in innovation at PLOS - Joseph Brown, Senior Editorial Manager (Cross Journal), PLOS Publishers are often faced with "buy or build?" questions around technology. After years of using existing products, PLOS - founded to accelerate progress in science and medicine by transforming research communication - decided to build our own manuscript submission and peer review system. We need a system that is faster, flexible and scalable. Using an agile development methodology, we tapped into the extensive PLOS contributor community for input on design and function. We've learned it's important to balance user input with the underlying business need in order to stay focused on delivering a fast, flexible and scalable system. We continue to look for opportunities to engage our community in our development and as inspiration for innovation.   (audio) (presentation)
14:00	Linda Lee, Product Manager, ReadCube We examine the development of the ReadCube reference management toolset, and it's evolution in response to customer feedback. We will also look at how ReadCube has built a dedicated group of users and product ambassadors, as well as their methods for measuring user satisfaction.  (audio) (presentation)
14:15	Scientific Writing and Publishing in the Age of the Cloud - John Hammersley, Co-Founder and CEO, Overleaf The web was invented by scientists, but scientific writing and publishing somehow got stuck at Web 1.0. Even though science is by nature global and collaborative, we still write papers mainly using single-user tools that run on desktop computers (Word). We then send our files through a slow, frustrating and expensive publishing process that runs on email and clunky, fiddly web forms. Meanwhile, the rest of the world races ahead with modern, integrated, collaborative tools. We can do better.Overleaf is an online collaborative editor for writing scientific documents that is bringing the scientific writing and publishing process into the cloud, where it can be made easier, faster and more open. We built Overleaf to solve a problem we were facing – how to collaborate effectively when writing up our interdisciplinary research papers – and now over 350,000 authors from around the globe are using it too.  (audio) (presentation)
14:30	Reimagining scientific news: How user research led to an entire product redesign - Miriam Keshani, Head of Product, Sparrho Sparrho’s vision is to be the one-stop-shop for the latest scientific content and we’ve recently made some major changes as we transition into Sparrho 4.0. As Chief Happiness Officer I’ve spoken to hundreds of Sparrho users, a diverse community ranging from academia (PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty members) to journalists, industry professionals, investors, concerned parents, and more. While all of our users wanted to stay up to date with the latest in science, the problems they were trying to solve were very different - by trying to solve everybody’s, we ended doing too much. I moved into the role of Head of Product and took a drastic measure - to rebuild Sparrho from the bottom up.  (audio)  (presentation) (audio - panel round-up with Tracy Roberts)
14:45	Coffee break
15:00	How Readers Discover Content in Scholarly Publications - Tracy Gardner, Simon Inger Consulting Ltd Join Tracy who will present findings from her latest research report co-written with Simon Inger.  You can download a copy of the report for free here. (audio) (presentation)
15:30	Closing Remarks and Discussion - Terri Teleen, Editorial Operations and Communications Director, John Wiley and Sons Terri will reflect on some key takeaways from the day and suggest how we might act on what we have learned.  She will also share highlights of some of Wiley’s work around the question of what the future might hold.  (audio) (presentation)
16:00	Drinks and networking

For further information please contact:
Sabia Morrison - info@alpsp.org T: +44 (0)1442 864563

Registration fees (including lunch)

ALPSP Member: £205.00 excl VAT (£246.00 incl VAT @ 20%);
Academic (incl UKSG members): £230.00 excl VAT (£276.00 incl VAT @ 20%);
Non-Member: £340.00 excl VAT (£408.00 incl VAT @ 20%)
Payment may be made by credit/debit card or you may request an invoice.

How to book

Please note that you will need to log in to your account or register a new account to book a place on this seminar. If you have any questions about this please email Sabia Morrison or any of the ALPSP team.

1605RFR