Please note that all of the recordings of the conference are now openly available Scroll down for the link. The UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition 2021 will be held online for the first time. The event is a major event in the scholarly communications calendar which attracts a large number of delegates each year from around the world – librarians, publishers, content providers, consultants and intermediaries. The conference combines high-quality plenary presentations, lightning talks and breakout sessions with virtual social events and a major online trade exhibition.
When
Where
Monday, April 12, 2021 – 09:00 BST
to
Wednesday, April 14, 2021 – 14:00 BST
Online
United Kingdom
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About the Event
Delegate Registration
Bookings for the conference have now closed.
If you have booked and have an access query, please email UKSG 2021 @ Underline <uksg2021@underline.io> where they will be able to help you. You will have needed to set up an account at http://www.underline.io and clicked on the Confirm Account in the email you received.
You can also use the headset icon on the Underline site.
Please see scroll down for the latest programme – note: all session timings are UK/British Summer Time (BST).
Programme
Scroll down the page for the full programme. Our conference was hosted by Underline.io and all recordings are now openly available here: https://underline.io/events/53/reception

Our exhibitors and sponsors are hosting their own events during the exhibit hours – please see the list of activities here.
Exhibition
Social Media
Accessibility
How to turn on closed captioning on the Underline platform – Accessibility: Conference transcripts/captioning details
UKSG wants to provide the best possible experience for all our delegates, making presentations as accessible and inclusive as possible. We strongly encourage our speakers to provide auto-generated closed-captioning for both live and recorded events as well as making sure the slides as easy as possible for all people to read. In addition we can provide auto generated transcripts post-event for each of the recorded sessions.
If you have particular accessibility needs or questions about this event, please contact events@uksg.org
Delegate Information:
More details on the event platform technical requirements
All presentations have been recorded and available to watch on demand to registrants on the Underline.io platform.
2021 John Merriman joint NASIG/UKSG award
The UK award is again supported by the generous sponsorship of Taylor & Francis Group the winner will receive free registration at the 44th Annual UKSG and the 36th Annual NASIG.
Named in honour of John Merriman, in recognition of his work in founding both UKSG and NASIG, this prestigious award provides an invaluable opportunity for anyone keen to learn and share experiences from a different angle.
Bursaries for #UKSG2021
We are pleased to say that we have offered bursaries and scholarships to 35 individuals from across the sector and around the world, enabling them to attend UKSG2021 this year. Our thanks to AAAS, Adam Matthew Digital, Cell Press, Content Online, Cambridge University Press and Wiley for supporting our bursary programme. (Please remember to visit them in our virtual exhibition!)
Key Sponsors
Gold Sponsors


















Silver Sponsors




Programme
- Day 1 – 12 April
- Day 2 – 13 April
- Day 3 – 14 April
Time
Programme
Speakers
09.00
Breakout Sessions: Group A
More details on individual speakers can found the under Breakout Session Group A tab.
** ALL TIMINGS ARE BST **
09.30
Chair Yoga with Poppy
Kindly Sponsored by AIP Publishing
11.15
Opening of the conference

Andrew Barker
Lancaster University
See Biography
Andrew Barker has been Director of Library Services & Learning Development at Lancaster University since September 2019. Prior to that he held a number of senior roles within diverse university libraries, including the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University. Andrew was Chair of UKSG between 2018 and 2022, and has been Vice-Chair of SCONUL since December 2021.
11.30
Lightning Talk Group A – Advancing open data: implementing an Open and FAIR data sharing policy
This lightening session will outline our experiences of implementing a progressive data sharing policy across a number of Earth Science journals at Taylor & Francis. Including the impact on our systems and feedback from other stakeholders involved. Such policies place significant new responsibilities on individual researchers, including how and where they preserve their data. This session will therefore be of particular interest to those involved in supporting authors to follow new data sharing requirements. It will also give a fascinating insight into how different parts of the scholarly communications community are working together to drive the data sharing agenda

Matt Cannon
Associate Director Biochemical Society/Portland Press Ltd
See Biography
Gaynor is committed to develolping sustainable and fair routes enabling authors the choice of not for profit journals in which to publish their research.
11.38
Lightning Talk Group A – Engaging the public in academic research – what has open access done for the wider community?
Wider access to academic research is recognised as a benefit of open access but what does that mean for the public? With an increasingly educated population, more people want access to reliable information.
In 2019, the library research support teams at the University of the West of England and University of Bristol, delivered a public engagement event at a local public library. This aimed to showcase the tools available to access academic research outputs and provide guidance on how to appraise the information found.
This talk will explore the feedback received and next steps in response to Covid 19.

Jane Belger
University of the West of England
See Biography
Jane Belger has been Research and Open access librarian at the University of the West of England since 2014, having previously held a number of customer service roles. Her focus as part of the Library research support team is providing training on open access and data management for research staff and students as well as managing open access publishing payments and the UKRI block grant.
11.46
Lightning Talk Group A – Castles, airports and indexes: impact beyond impact factor
In 2005, Brougham Castle Bridge in Cumbria, UK, suffered significant storm flood damage and partially collapsed. Cumbria County Council paid a UK structural design firm £1.15 million to conduct repairs, and in 2019 the paper of its renovation was published. Unfortunately, academics who wish to write about real-world impact will find systemic barriers to themselves publishing in a journal that prominently features practitioners, leading them to often do so ‘off-the-books’. What is the future post-UKRI ‘Pathways to Impact’? This talk identifies the challenges that practice-oriented journals face in a metric-driven research environment.

Ben Ramster
ICE Publishing
See Biography
Ben Ramster is Journals Manager at ICE Publishing, of society and UK charity the Institution of Civil Engineers. He has >15 years of experience working in journals editorial teams, first at Elsevier (life science) and then for a medical communications agency working with the pharmaceutical industry. He has seen ICE Publishing grow from 13 peer-reviewed titles to today’s 35, and has organised seminars for ALPSP on both Author Care and Open Access.
12.00
Poster Sessions
Visit our lightning speakers in an interactive poster session, where they will be available to talk more in depth and answer your questions.
12.00
Exhibition opens
Take the opportunity to visit our online interactive exhibition, speak to direct to our exhibitors.
12.00
Breakout Sessions Live Q&A: Group A (part one)
Join our breakout speakers for a live question and answer session
14.00
Plenary 1.1 OA publishing and the financial sustainability challenge / UUK-Jisc Content Negotiation Strategy Group –
The UUK-Jisc Content Negotiation Strategy Group – a new approach to UK academic sector negotiations with journal publishers – Liam Earney, Jisc
In early 2020 Universities UK and Jisc established a new high level negotiation strategy group to oversee UK universities negotiations with major publishers. This presentation will provide an update on the context for the group and its objectives. It will then provide an overview of the progress that has been made in negotiations with publishers in 2020, before looking to the priorities for the group in 2021 and beyond.
OA publishing and the financial sustainability challenge – reflections based on the experience at The University of Manchester – Colette Fagan, University of Manchester

Colette Fagan
University of Manchester
See Biography
Professor Colette Fagan, FAcSS, Vice-President for Research, is responsible for leading and implementing The University of Manchester’s research and doctoral training strategy. She is incoming chair of the Russell Group’s PVC-Research Group, and serves on the editorial board of The Conversation the N8 research partnership Senior Executive Group and the UUK/JISC Content Negotiating Strategy Group. She co-authored the British Academy’s 2016 report Crossing Paths: Interdisciplinary institutions, careers, education and applications. Colette’s research and policy impact focus is employment, working conditions and job quality; including gender inequalities and international comparative analysis. She is an elected Fellow of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences in recognition of her research standing.

Liam Earney
Jisc
See Biography
Liam Earney is the Executive Director of Digital resources at Jisc since August 2019. He is responsible for Jisc’s licensing, open research, content & discovery services for further and higher education and research. This includes services such as Jisc Collections, Chest, Library hub, JUSP and SHERPA which collectively save UK universities and colleges over £100 million per annum.
Liam is also the executive leadership team lead overseeing Jisc’s strategy to support members’ research and innovation activity.
Previously Director of licensing at Jisc, with a responsibility for the units undertaking the licensing and negotiation of agreements for digital content and software on behalf of UK universities and further education colleges. Overseeing the evolution of Jisc’s approach to the negotiation of open access agreements, in particular how Jisc could best support the sector achieve its aims around pure gold, hybrid and green open access.
14.20
Plenary 1.2 – Societies and the three-legged stool
Society finances are often thought to rest on a three-legged stool, where publishing is complemented by event and membership income. Publishing revenues have been under pressure for years. In partner-published societies, the inclusion of journals in big deals means shrinking revenue and a loss of transparency, while at the same time independent society publishers have struggled to sell single subscriptions in a market where the majority of funds are directed at big deals. Society approaches to OA, however, are driven by the needs and preferences of their members and therefore many societies are embracing OA and aiming to transition away from subscription revenues. In practice this has meant independent society publishers implementing new models, working with consortia as well as agents and introducing entirely new workflows and metadata to manage deals, in a very short space of time. By contrast partner-published societies have been swept along by their partners, usually with a further loss of visibility and control over their own titles.
Then 2020 arrived, bringing with it a global pandemic, and the other two legs of the society stool became as unstable as publishing revenues. Societies were unable to deliver their usual events, and thus lost the new members who would usually sign up for those events. In the UK the government pressed ahead with a hard Brexit but delayed decisions until the last possible moment, leaving societies, like everyone else, to scramble for a response. The question must be asked: How might societies and institutions better work together to properly support the scholars who rely on both sides?

Tasha Mellins-Cohen
Mellins-Cohen Consulting
See Biography
Tasha Mellins-Cohen, Executive Director at COUNTER Metrics and Founder of Mellins-Cohen Consulting, joined the scholarly publishing industry in 2001. She has held roles within learned societies and commercial publishers across operations, technology, editorial and executive functions, while donating time to key industry initiatives and bodies such as UKSG, ALPSP and STM. In 2020 she started consulting in response to requests for help in developing and implementing OA business models in not-for-profit groups. In 2022 she stepped up from volunteer to Director at COUNTER Metrics, the standard for usage metrics, alongside her consulting work.
14.45
Plenary 1.3 – Innovating to meet research community needs in an ever-changing, uncertain environment
In a continually developing marketplace, an array of challenges are being addressed by publishers to meet the needs of the research community and increasing requirements of funders. Pressures and needs related to the COVID health crisis only exacerbated these.
Publishers are offering a range of sustainable business models to support Open Science and Open Access publishing. These options maintain research quality, integrity and author choice. They also assist researchers in making data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable) and support initiatives to make research more available through public libraries. This session will explore how scholarly publishers add essential value to and continue to safeguard quality, which is critical in a time of global pandemic and ‘fake science’.

Ian Moss
STM
See Biography
Ian Moss is CEO of STM, the global trade association for scholarly publishing that represents more than 140 members, including all the major commercial publishers, learned societies and university presses. STM’s members are responsible for around two thirds of all published papers from the world of science, technology, medicine, social science and humanities.
Ian was formally Director of Public Affairs at the BPI, the British Recorded Music Industry. Before this, Ian spent twelve years in the UK Government and was a Senior Civil Servant in the Ministry of Justice as Director of Criminal Justice Strategy following roles as Head of Strategy in the Department for Work and Pensions, Principal Private Secretary at the Cabinet Office, Head of Technology and Innovation at HM Treasury and Head of Broadcasting Regulation at the Office of Telecommunications. His full biography can be found here (link to: https://www.stm-assoc.org/about-stm/whos-who-at-stm/).
15.10
Plenary Session 1: Live Q&A
Lorraine Estelle will host a live Q&A session with plenary speakers:
- Colette Fagan, The University of Manchester
- Liam Earney, Jisc
- Tasha Mellins-Cohen, Mellins-Cohen Consulting
- Ian Moss, STM
15.45
Breakout Sessions Live Q&A: Group A (part two)
Join our breakout speakers for a live question and answer session
16.00
Exhibition
Take the opportunity to visit our online interactive exhibition, browse around and speak directly to our exhibitors.
17.00
Social Activity: Quiz night
Join your peers for some conference social fun! Our legendary quiz night has gone online so grab a drink and a snack and join our quiz host Mark Hester to test your trivia knowledge. Please register your attendance here
Kindly Sponsored by Overleaf

Registration
Tuesday, December 10, 2019 – 00:00 GMT – Wednesday, September 16, 2020 – 00:00 BST
£ 475.00
+95.00 VAT
UKSG Member
UKSG Member – £475.00 +VAT (total £570.00)
£645.00
+129.00 VAT
Non-Member
UKSG Non-Member – £645.00+VAT (total £774.00)
NB: UKSG reserves the right to alter or vary the programme due to events or circumstances beyond its reasonable control without being obliged to refund monies.
Contact
For any queries
Sponsorship queries – Beatrice Palombo Fumey, Marketing Manager, Content Online, +46 (0)72-253 62 99; beatrice@contentonline.com
General queries – events@uksg.org
Exhibition queries – Karina Hunt at KHEC – karina@khec.co.uk /telephone 07900 165948
Cancellations
The closing date for cancellations is Friday 1st March at 5pm GMT, after which date cancellations will not be eligible for a refund. Cancellations should be sent into writing to events@uksg.org
The UKSG code of conduct can be found here
The General UKSG booking terms and conditions can be found here