Joanna Ball, Managing Director, DOAJ and Chair, UKSG
This year’s UKSG conference is returning to the vibrant city of Glasgow, a favourite location amongst regular attendees at the conference. Why (in the words of Billy Connolly) do “I wish I was in Glasgow”, and why should you make sure that you’re there too?
At the conference last year, we launched our new strategic vision. The Annual Conference is the embodiment of these strategic themes – include, connect, innovate, and deliver – and of UKSG’s special role as a meeting point for the entire scholarly communications community.
Include
Our strategic vision articulates our intention to represent the diversity of the scholarly communications community and to feature global perspectives. To enable this, we have established a new Conference Planning Sub-Committee which represents the breadth of knowledge, expertise, and diversity of our sector. Thanks to their careful curation, we are delighted to present our most diverse programme yet. Our opening plenary session discusses global equity for open access and indigenous knowledge preservation, and the second features leaders from the HE sector exploring how we can build inclusion and optimism into our organisations.
The conference also embodies our commitment to providing a voice for new entrants to the profession, with an informal reception where first-timers can meet each other in advance, a helpful first-timers guide produced by our fabulous team at UKSG, and plenty of early career professionals presenting during the event.
Connect
The UKSG conference is all about connections – new and established – and the programme is full of opportunities to connect formally and informally. This year’s gala reception will be held at the impressive Kelvingrove museum, complete with an organ recital performed by one of our members. The exhibition is as usual an integral part of the event, and is a focal point to meet and mingle with our exhibitors, many of whom are new this year. There’s a buzz and energy at UKSG which I’ve yet to experience at other conferences,
UKSG is all about providing a space for transparent, meaningful debate around challenging topics, and our final plenary on Saturday morning does precisely that, bringing together leaders from across the sector to discuss and debate some of our pain points. We’re keen to make this session interactive and include your questions, so do look out for the call for input on social media.
Innovate
The programme is full of opportunities for delegates to bring themselves up to date on the challenges and trends within scholarly communications. Watch out for our punchy plenary on a topic that is so important for our sector: the impact of Plan S for our sector in 2025 and beyond, featuring a stellar lineup of funders, publishers and consortia.
With nearly 30 interactive breakout sessions to choose from, there’s something for everyone, and the opportunity to tailor your conference experience to your own areas of specialist interest: research assessment, retracted research, AI, cyber security, accessibility, citizen science, OA monographs, TDM, tackling environmental sustainability and lots more.
And we’re closing the conference on a high with a different type of session: speaker Andy Cope will be delivering a motivating and inspiring session to send us on our way.
Deliver
Finally, I challenge anyone to come away from UKSG without an idea or project that they can take back home and use within their organisation.
As well as practical projects, workshops and initiatives covered by our breakout session, there are also 9 practical lightning talks to inspire and enable our delegates to implement concrete change within their organisation: operationalising DEIA, integrating Open research into information literacy training and developing new communities of practice.
I hope I’ve convinced you to book your ticket to Glasgow. Look forward to seeing you there!