How Publishers and Librarians Can Work Together to Support Early Career Researchers

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.

Dr. Anca Pusca is Executive Editor at Springer Nature. She is an International Studies specialist and runs the International Studies book commissioning team. She is a former Senior Lecturer in International Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has also taught at the CUNY Graduate Center and the New School.

Brigitte Shull is Senior Consultant at the research publishing and library services consulting firm, Gold Leaf. She has held management and editorial positions at Cambridge University Press & Assessment, Springer Nature, Palgrave Macmillan, and Pearson Education, and co-chaired the AUPresses 2022-2023 Open Access Committee.

Ms. Chiseche Mibenge is a Human Rights Lawyer, Researcher and Educator. She has worked as a Lecturer at Stanford University, Assistant Professor at Lehman College, and Director of International Research at Guttmacher Institute. She currently serves on the Governance Board of the Global Interfaith Network and is also a series editor for the Human Rights Interventions book series.

Elliott Hibbler is the Head Librarian, Scholarly Communications at Boston College. He provides advice and support on a number of publishing topics, including copyright, open access, author rights, author identity, journal submissions, licensing, and institutional repositories. He also administers Boston College’s Open Access Publishing Fund and its Institutional Repository. Prior to joining Boston College, Elliott was the Senior Law Librarian for Publishing Services at Northeastern University School of Law, and has taught classes on legal research at Simmons University and Suffolk University. He holds a J.D., an M.S. in Urban Informatics, and an M.S. in Information Science.