A new voice for scholarly communication – PeerJ sponsors Advancing Research Communication & Scholarship (ARCS), Philadelphia, April 26-28

PeerJ is proud to be sponsoring and taking part in the forthcoming ARCS: Advancing Research Communication & Scholarship (Philadelphia, April 26-28), a new conference dedicated to bringing together different voices – scholars, librarians, scientists, publishers, professional societies, and funders – to discuss the challenges they face and find solutions for improving scholarly communication.

We asked Robin Champieux (ARCS Conference Chair) to explain why she felt a new forum for scholarly communication was needed, and what will be discussed over the three days. Here’s what she said “We are committed to building a conference that explores and respectively debates the different, and even conflicting, ideas of what a better system of scholarly communication should look like and how to build it. Among the questions we would like to answer: How can we increase access to the scholarly literature? How might we make data sharing a reality? How can we improve the process of peer review? How should the impact of research be measured? How can we improve evaluation and incentive systems in academia?”

Robin also added that “In constructing our program, it was important to ensure that not only senior voices in scholarly communication were heard, but also that students and early-career researchers (ECRs) be given a seat at the table. We established a scholarship program to provide lodging and meeting registration support for students and ECRs, and set out to find sponsors who shared our goals.”

As one of those sponsors we’re delighted to be supporting the ARCS event and our sponsorship will go towards funding an early career researcher’s travel fees to attend the event in Philadelphia. We share the ARCS vision and understand that if we are to ever solve our greatest challenges we need a 21st century update to scholarly communication.

PeerJ’s co-founder Pete Binfield will be taking part on a panel discussion Disrupting the Status Quo – New models and technologies for scholarly communication at ARCS on Monday 27th April (3.40pm EST).

We’re excited to hear all of the outcomes from the discussions taking place at this new meeting, and we wish ARCS continued success for future events.

Note: Erin McKiernan (co-organiser of ARCS) has also written a more personal blog perspective for us on her experiences as an author publishing with PeerJ, which illustrates how PeerJ is innovating to address common scholarly communication issues such as access, cost, peer review, and more.