Optimizing Publishing Infrastructure: A Case Study of ASM and ACS

Publishing infrastructure—which includes submission and peer review platforms, production and finance systems, author dashboards, and any other underlying systems that different users interact with throughout the publishing process—is essential to publishers running their business. Well-connected publishing infrastructure enables publishers to differentiate themselves and can enhance the experience for all users—authors, reviewers, editors, and administrators. In this session, we will discuss the concept of atomizing publishing infrastructure and connecting it under a single platform, thereby enabling publishers to introduce new, innovative capabilities such as custom pre-submission checks or chosen research integrity screenings, without having to deal with constraints from legacy systems. We will hear from speakers from the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and the American Chemical Society (ACS), two organizations that have modernized their publishing workflows by de-coupling submissions from peer review, and connecting different systems on the ChronosHub platform, thereby unifying their user journey and maintaining operational flexibility. We will highlight successes and challenges, and discuss improvements that simplify submissions, enhance efficiency, and enable seamless integration with different peer review and other systems

Publication Date

May 2025

47th Annual Meeting (2025)

47

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.

Anthony Apodaca

1

Director, Publishing Platforms, American Chemical Society

Beth Craanen

1

Director, Editorial Operations, American Physical Society

With over 20 years of experience spanning leadership roles in academic and nonprofit settings, Beth Craanen is a seasoned professional known for driving transformative change and operational excellence. She recently joined the American Physical Society as the Director of Editorial Operations. Beth previously served as the Senior Director of Global Editorial Operations at the American Chemical Society where she led a team through strategic growth and fiscal responsibility. She has also held key leadership roles at The Electrochemical Society where she played a pivotal role in developing innovative open access models and forging successful industry partnerships.

David Haber

2

Publishing Operations Director, American Society for Microbiology

David Haber is the Director of Publishing Operations at the American Society for Microbiology, which publishes 15 peer-reviewed journals from food microbiology to genomics and the microbiome. He collaborates with a team responsible for all content and metadata operations from submission into the peer review system, through article flow during production, and to eventual publication and distribution online. For the past twenty years, he has held a wide range of positions in the STM ecosystem, from copyediting manuscripts to typesetting articles, from digital conversion modeling to solution architecture for publishing support systems, from old-school, print workflow management to speedy OA publication models.

Romy Beard

2

Head of Publisher Relations, ChronosHub

Teodoro Pulvirenti

1

Senior Director, Global Editorial Strategy, American Chemical Society

Teodoro (Teo) oversees the portfolio of ACS Journals, which includes more than 80 titles covering diverse fields of chemistry and related sciences, and is responsible for the portfolio development and strategy. He is also responsible for the ACS Partner Publishing strategy in the US and content commissioning effort and oversees ACS editorial initiatives in India. Before joining ACS Publications in 2021, Teo was the Director of Editorial Development and Executive Editor of Journal of Experimental Medicine at Rockefeller University Press. In line with his commitment to equity and inclusion, Teo serves as the representatives of ACS Publications on STM Working Group for Diversity and Inclusion and was the first chair of the ACS LGBTQ+ Affinity Group. In previous years, Teo served on the STM STEC Working Group on Image Alterations and Duplications.