Framework

The Chicago Collaborative Operating Framework Chicago Collaborative: A New Working Group of STM Library/Publisher/Editor Organization Representatives February 4, 2009

New Working Group Established May, 2008: The Chicago Collaborative is a new working group composed of representatives from key science, technology, and medicine (STM) publisher organizations, editorial associations, and an academic health sciences library organization. The name reflects the founding meeting location and emphasizes the spirit of the initial meeting: the importance of collaboration in addressing the grand challenges and opportunities associated with scholarly scientific communication. The Collaborative’s common constituency is academic health center personnel (administrators, faculty, researchers, clinicians, and students).

Vision and Goals

The Chicago Collaborative believes that collaboration is essential and critical to successful scholarly scientific communication. Its goals include:

  1. Develop shared understanding of scholarly scientific communication issues (opportunities and challenges)
  2. Create effective strategies to address common understandings
  3. Build a sustainable trust and dialog among Collaborative members

Strategies:

1) Focus Collaborative membership on professional organizations and associations rather than individual publishers, librarians, or editors.

  • Collaborative representatives are selected by the participating professional organization/association
  • Each representative serves as the primary communications liaison between the Collaborative and his/her organization

2) Conduct sustainable ongoing open dialogues among members regarding broad or higher level scholarly scientific communication issues: opportunities and challenges

  • Members share ideas and issues representing his/her organization’s interests
  • Members are equal partners in the dialogue
  • Members develop consensus driven statements or position papers when appropriate
  • Collaborative drafted resolutions or recommendations are reviewed and approved by member organizations

3) Educate the Collaborative’s common constituency regarding broader scholarly scientific communication topics (e.g., effective authorship, effective editorship, role of scholarly journal) rather than specific initiatives (e.g., NIH Public Access Mandate)

  • Provide a clearinghouse for educational materials about the scholarly publishing process, the key roles of stakeholders, and external factors affecting scientific communication
  • Develop instructional materials
  • Sponsor educational sessions which feature factors affecting scholarly scientific communication (e.g. scholarly publishing process, peer review process, academic health center funding)

4) Initially, emphasize building awareness of broad, higher level scholarly scientific communication opportunities and challenges

Sample Issues Discussed by Collaborative:

  1. Responsibilities and roles of authors, editors, publishers, and librarians regarding scholarly scientific communication
  2. Preservation of scholarly scientific content
  3. Scientific misconduct/conflict of interest and its effect on scholarly communication
  4. Journal article peer review process
  5. Content discovery options
  6. Branding journal experience

Expected Outcomes:

  1. A sustainable mechanism for ongoing conversations and actions among publisher, editor, and librarian communities which does not follow the traditional buyer/seller model found in forums such as the Charleston Conference and NASIG.
  2. A trusted venue for discussing broad scholarly scientific communication opportunities and challenges.