UKSG 2021 Annual Conference
Thanks to everyone who came, and to everyone who spoke - we had 1,184 registrants from 48 countries, which was incredible. Nearly 40% of the attendees were first-timers - due to it being online, the pricing reduction and the library group package rate which proved extremely popular. During the conference we had nearly 100,000 page views, 8,500 video visits and over 5,200 visits to the exhibition.
Thanks also to everyone who completed the delegate survey - the feedback was very positive overall, and the criticisms very constructive and helpful (too much content!). This was a first for us and it seems our efforts to make it a bit different paid off. Definitely lessons learned though for future online only events.
We are still waiting on the detailed exhibitor traffic statistics from Underline, so please bear with us.
Remember you can go back and look at all of the videos and slide decks - if you need any assistance getting back in, please email UKSG2021@Underline.io.
Hold the date!
UKSG 2022 will be held in Glasgow on the 28-30 March 2022 at the Scottish Event Campus. We've sent out the call for papers, and your can submit your presentation ideas here. You can submit a plenary session (around 25 minutes), a lightning talk (around 10 minutes) or a breakout (around an hour, including questions). If you would like to talk through your idea ahead of submitting, please don't hesitate to contact me, bev@uksg.org
AGM/Election Results
We held our Annual General Meeting on the 12 May 2021 - thanks to those of you who took part. We will post the minutes and the recording on our site shortly. We announced the results of the election too, and congratulations to the following who are joining the Board of Trustees in 2021/2022.
Rob Johnson
Rob Johnson is the founder and managing director of Research Consulting, a mission-driven business working to improve the effectiveness and impact of research and scholarly communication. He qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG and spent a number of years as Head of Research Operations at the University of Nottingham, UK.
As a consultant, Rob has brought an independent, expert perspective to more than 100 projects for libraries, funders, publishers and software suppliers. He was the lead author of the 2018 STM Report, and served as an independent evaluator for the European Commission’s Science with and for Society programme. He has published widely in venues including UKSG Insights, The Scholarly Kitchen and Learning Publishing.
Rob has previously worked as an external auditor and advisor for a wide range of charities and has served on conference planning committees for the Association of Research Managers and Administrators and Researcher to Reader.
Tasha Mellins-Cohen
After two decades in scholarly publishing Tasha is now an independent publishing consultant. Having worked with society and commercial publishers, Tasha has a deep appreciation for the changing pressures on publishers, funders, researchers and research institutions and uses that to partner with publishers to develop data-driven business models that will allow them to achieve a sustainable transition to open access.
Believing that we must take responsibility for the changes we wish to see in our industry, she is an active participant in the scholarly publishing community as a member of the COUNTER Executive Committee, and regularly volunteers time to Jisc, UKSG, OASPA, and other industry bodies.
"UKSG has played an important role in my professional life, offering me a way to connect with library colleagues to better understand the pressures in their roles and determine how I can influence publishing practices to make everyone’s lives easier. The organisation has a unique ability to bring together libraries, publishers, intermediaries and others in a way that allows all of us to have a voice."
Gareth Smith
Gareth has worked for EBSCO for over 18 years holding a variety of sales posts, most recently as Vice President of Sales for the UK & Nordic region. In that role he has responsibility across all of the business portfolio of EBSCO which includes; managing subscriptions, databases, point of care, discovery and all SaaS related products through a team of over 120 staff.
As part of his existing role he is responsible for developing products to ensure that specific UK and European requirements are met, whether that be meeting new legislation, statutory requirements or creating new products to meet specific market needs. In addition he is responsible for the overall development plan for the UK & Nordic region.
Prior to EBSCO he was the European Sales Manager for Thomson Information for over 10 years, focusing primarily on the corporate market and innovation developments.