How Libraries and Publishers are Advancing Accessible Scholarly Publishing Amidst Evolving Legislation

Although every year in the scholarly publishing ecosystem is a balancing act of innovation, optimization, and value creation, 2025 is shaping up to be particularly challenging as the pace and scale of change is accelerating more than we’ve ever seen before. There is increasing pressure to provide value to and to meet the incredibly diverse needs of the global research community while maintaining financial health for our own organizations, living our values, and continuing to protect the scholarly record. With AI, open access, integrity, and mistrust frequently dominating the conversation, we are in the midst of an unprecedented shift in both our industry and society as a whole. As always, the SSP community continues to focus on bringing together academics, funders, librarians, publishers, service providers, technologists, researchers and countless others with a communal interest and stake in disseminating scholarly information. We look to the 47th Annual Meeting as an opportunity to continue this tradition and welcome all colleagues and community stakeholders.

Charles manages the Publishing division of the U-M Library (publishing.umich.edu) which is composed of three parts - University of Michigan Press (UMP), Michigan Publishing Services (MPS), and Deep Blue repository and research data services (DBRRDS). Professionally, he has worked at University of Michigan since 2014. Previously he was in a similar position at Purdue University Libraries and Director of Publications at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. He has have a BA/MA from University of Cambridge in Archaeology and Anthropology and an MBA from Oxford Brookes University.

Jude Perera, Associate Director for Global Partnerships at Wiley in Berlin, brings over nine years of experience in publishing, marketing, and partnerships to his role. Known for creating the Research Impact Podcast and fostering collaboration among diverse stakeholders, he leads discussions on crucial industry topics including AI, Open Access, and Accessibility. Through his content creation and industry engagement, he actively promotes and empowers accessibility initiatives, driven by his conviction that scholarly content should enable every researcher and student to engage fully with academic materials. As a committed member of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, ALPSP, APE and other industry organizations, he actively contributes to advancing these critical themes and practices within scholarly communications.

Karen Stoll Farrell is Director of Scholarly Communication and Open Publishing at Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington, where they were previously the Librarian for South and Southeast Asian Studies. They hold an MA in South Asian Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, an MLIS from Wayne State University, and a BA in Anthropology from Kalamazoo College. Currently, their research is focused on feminist management practices and on disability equity, including equity in scholarly communications and for neurodiverse librarians, specifically. They are active in work incorporating equitable values into open access practices. Their most recent publication, coauthored with nicholae cline, is “Envisioning Leadership: Principles of Feminist Management in Practice” a chapter in Critical Library Leadership (2024).

As a member of the ARL Scholarship and Policy team, Katherine Klosek formulates Association positions on key information policy debates, and develops and implements advocacy strategies to advance the Association’s legal and public policy agenda in legislative, administrative, and judicial forums. Building strong partnerships with stakeholders in libraries, higher education, scholarship, and civil society, she represents the Association in outreach to policy makers on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch. Serving as the staff lead to ARL’s Advocacy and Public Policy Committee, Katherine helps mobilize ARL’s membership to influence government policy–making in key moments, and in responding and adapting to major legal and policy developments.

Simon Holt is Senior Product Manager for Content Accessibility at Elsevier, where he leads work making books, journals, video and audio accessible to people with disabilities. As a sight impaired person himself, accessibility is important to him personally as well as professionally. He has worked in scholarly publishing for over 15 years, working with authors and editors, and is involved in several industry initiatives including serving as a Director for the Society of Scholarly Publishing, a member of an Advisory Board for the Royal National Institute for Blind People and as a Trustee for the sight-loss charity MyVision Oxfordshire. He lives in Oxford, UK.