How Lessons Learned from Shark Research, Conservation, and Education Can Help Advance Scholarly Communications

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. David Shiffman is a marine conservation biologist who studies endangered sharks and how to protect them. His more than 60 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles have been cited over 2,500 times, and his public-facing writing has appeared in National Geographic, Scientific American, the Washington Post, globally-syndicated op-eds, and a monthly column in SCUBA Diving Magazine. He's spoken to thousands of members of the interested public around the world, notably during a 70-city international book tour for his book "Why Sharks Matter" (published by Johns Hopkins University Press). And he is one of the most-followed scientists in the world on social media, where he invites you to follow him on all platforms @ WhySharksMatter.