What Smaller Publishers Need from Tech Vendors to Level Up

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.

Brian Cody is CEO and Co-Founder of Scholastica, a scholarly publishing technology provider with easy-to-integrate peer review, production, and open access hosting solutions for journal programs of any size. Before starting Scholastica, Brian was doing doctoral work in sociology at the University of Chicago, and he is a self-taught Ruby on Rails programmer. He tweets at @briancody.

Emilie Delquié serves on the Executive Team at Silverchair as Senior Vice President, Product and Customer Success. Prior to that, she was the Director, Rightsholder Relations and Global Alliances for Copyright Clearance Center, where she was involved with hundreds of publishers and societies worldwide. In total, Emilie has 20+ years of experience in the publishing industry, serving in a variety of account management, business development and marketing positions in scholarly communication including PCG/Ingenta and the UMass Boston Library. She is pursuing an Executive MBA and serving her 3rd term on the SSP Board, where she is currently Treasurer.

Lily Simmons joined Penn Press in 2019 as an editorial assistant and shifted to digital operations with an opportunity to switch roles. She oversees database administration, metadata and asset distribution, data integrity, ONIX, and performs complex system-wide data analysis and imports. She is interested in systems optimization, recently completing a master’s in Computer and Information Technology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Michelle is the Editorial Director at the American Society of Civil Engineers, where she has general oversight over the editorial operations of the society's journals, books, and proceedings product-lines. Prior to working at ASCE, Michelle was the Director of Operations at J&J Editorial. Michelle enjoys volunteering and is a past Vice President of ISMTE, co-chair of SSP's Career Development Committee and currently active on several professional committees. She holds a master’s degree in English and Publishing from Rosemont College and BA degrees in English and Philosophy from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

Rebecca is a publishing professional who has over 40 years of experience in all aspects of scientific, technical, and medical publishing—book, journals, periodicals, and online. She is the former Publisher of American Psychiatric Publishing, a division of the American Psychiatric Association, and the world’s leading publisher of books, journals, periodicals, and online resources on psychiatry, mental health, and behavioral science. Previously Rebecca served as Senior Director and Publisher at The Endocrine Society and Senior Director of Publishing at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.