2023 Business Meeting and Awards Plenary

"Transformation, Trust, and Transparency" The pace of change in our industry continues unabated, with seismic shifts in areas such as the dissemination of research, business models, and the nature of the workplace. And yet, while pressure for change has become the new normal, fundamental change has proved more elusive. We invite you to join us in highlighting the Trust and Transparency issues that underlie many of the challenges we face and exploring what it takes to create more meaningful Transformation in scholarly publishing.

Melanie Dolechek has served as the Executive Director of the Society for Scholarly Publishing since 2015. She is founder and past Convener for the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communication and past treasurer of the Kansas City Society of Association Executives where she has also served on the Communications and Program committees. Melanie holds a Master of Science in Management from Baker University, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Kansas State University and is a Certified Association Executive. She has been active in scholarly publishing since 2006, previously serving as the Director of Publishing and Marketing of Allen Press. She has been a speaker at several KCSAE events over the past several years and a presenter at the ASAE Annual Meeting in 2019, 2021, and 2024. In 2023 she was awarded the KCSAE Distinguished Association Executive Award.

Randy Townsend, MPS, (he, him, his) is President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) and has served in leadership positions for the Council of Science Editors, and AM&P Network’s Association Council, and has co-chaired DEIA Committees for AM&P Network and SSP. He has actively supported C4DISC and contributed to the development of many of their freely available resources. At Origin Editorial, Randy takes innovative approaches to lead and implement peer review strategies. Randy was the inaugural Editor in Chief for the GW Journal of Ethics in Publishing and is an Associate Professor of the MPS in Publishing program in the College of Professional Studies at George Washington University.