SSP’s 48th Annual Meeting kicks off on Wednesday, May 27th, with 30-minute Industry Breakout sessions, spread across five time slots throughout the afternoon. These sessions are a perfect warm-up for all SSP 2026 has to offer, and give vendors and publishers a chance to share what they’re actually building, what’s working, and what’s still keeping them up at night.
Here’s a sampling of what’s on the schedule:
Why Global Marketing Falls Short and How Localization Helps | Charlesworth
As scholarly publishing reaches more researchers globally, the assumption that international reach equals meaningful engagement is increasingly being tested. The practical takeaway: distinguishing localization from translation is not a minor distinction, and marketing teams navigating central brand consistency versus regional flexibility will find this session directly applicable.
Trends in Academic Publishing 2026 | Deanta
Deanta’s annual Trends survey is a perennial reference point for the community, and this year’s data surfaces what many already sense: there is a significant gap between modernization ambition and execution across the industry. The session frames this through three lenses — strategic outcomes, operational processes, and organizational culture — and examines the attitudes toward AI adoption that are driving (or stalling) that modernization.
From Reviewer Fatigue to Reviewer Support: What Actually Helps Reviewers Say “Yes” | ReviewerOne
The peer review sustainability conversation has largely revolved around motivations and volume; this session from ReviewerOne shifts the focus upstream to the practical friction points that define the reviewer experience — unclear expectations, inconsistent guidance, and uneven recognition. The session frames “reviewer support” as a combination of expectation setting, training, structured guidance, and workload design, rather than as a single intervention.
Do More, Faster: Unlock Your Publishing Process with New Technologies | Typefi
Typefi’s session takes a broad view of the technological shifts reshaping core publishing workflows, with particular attention to remote work, automation, and AI’s growing role in editing and production. The framing is intentionally balanced — acknowledging both the benefits and the real drawbacks of these tools — and the session promises practical guidance on staying at the cutting edge without compromising a publisher’s core values.
Staying Independent through Collaboration: The Value of Publishing Vendor Partnerships | Technica Editorial Services
This session makes the case that independent scholarly publishers — particularly mission-driven societies and institutional publishers — are best positioned to thrive through strategic vendor partnerships rather than despite them. The argument is that the most resilient publishers of the coming years will be those who work with vendors to automate manual tasks and amplify their editorial teams, rather than trying to build everything in-house.
Lessons from the Early Days of Scholar Gateway: What Publishers Need to Know | Wiley
Wiley’s Scholar Gateway launched to address the challenge of making publisher content accessible and traceable in AI-powered discovery environments. The practical focus is on how AI agents actually rewrite user queries, how researchers’ behavior in AI-connected environments differs from what traditional platform analytics would predict, and what that means for publisher workflows.
Connecting Publishing Infrastructure without Replacement | ChronosHub
ChronosHub’s presentation explores how publishers can modernize their workflow architecture without ripping out the systems they’ve already invested in. The approach centers on decoupling core components and reconnecting them through a unified front-end. The session draws on publisher case studies to illustrate how this model enables new capabilities, like configurable pre-submission checks and research integrity screenings, while preserving existing investments.
Smart, Safe and Boring AI: From Prototype to Production | TNQTech, A Lumina Datamatics Company
In an industry where precision and trust are non-negotiable, making AI reliable matters more than making it impressive. TNQTech uses its own product journey to illustrate what it looks like to move from AI prototypes to production systems, with an honest accounting of how risk, confidence, and accountability shift as AI moves from assistive to more autonomous behavior.
More AI Isn’t the Answer. Smarter Orchestration Is | Enago
As submission volumes grow and AI-assisted writing becomes more prevalent, Enago’s session argues that the answer to more complex integrity challenges is not simply more AI — it’s the right AI applied to the right problem. The practical framing of which technology is best suited to which class of problem should be useful for publishers building or evaluating their integrity workflows.
Discovery Architects: How Platform Infrastructure Is Evolving | Silverchair
How do platforms serve as stewards of discovery in a landscape that is fragmenting across traditional SEO, AI-powered semantic search, and multiple emerging access pathways? The session addresses how Silverchair approaches the dual role of strategic advisor and technical implementer — developing the frameworks, tools, and features that protect publishers while maximizing discoverability.
CCC’s RightsLink: Building Best-in-Class Technology Through Customer Collaboration | Copyright Clearance Center
CCC’s session traces the evolution of RightsLink for Scientific Communications since its 2014 launch, when it was developed in response to early challenges in the operationalization of open access. Over a decade later, the platform is trusted by dozens of society publishers and thousands of global academic institutions, and this session focuses on how that growth was driven by customer feedback and market responsiveness rather than top-down product decisions.
Society Journals in a Time of Change: A Roundtable Discussion | Springer Nature
Springer Nature returns with a reverse roundtable format designed for peer-to-peer engagement on the challenges facing society journals. The discussion topics are broad and timely: long-term sustainability and strategic forecasting, AI across all aspects of publishing, globalization and funding volatility, evolving open access mandates, and the perennial question of self-publishing versus partnering with a large commercial publisher.
Technically Sound, Personally Useless: Fixing the Last Mile of Peer Review | CACTUS
The publishing industry built scalable, objective peer review through the megajournal model, but never developed tools to help individual researchers assess personal relevance. The session introduces the concept of “personal peer review” — an AI-enabled assessment that generates customized evaluations based on a reader’s specific research context, methods, career stage, and questions.
Scaling Research Integrity with the Dimensions Author Check API | Digital Science
Digital Science’s session introduces the Dimensions Author Check API, which surfaces research integrity insights — flagging retracted publications, expressions of concern, atypical co-authorship networks, and other indicators — in real time and within existing editorial systems.
The Future of Journal Publishing: What Publishers Are Changing Right Now | Kriyadocs
Kriyadocs brings its “Future of Journal Publishing” survey to the stage, with experts from across editorial and production reflecting on what industry shifts mean in practice. The session addresses the full range of pressures: funding constraints, shifting business models, evolving author expectations, rapid technological change, and the persistent challenge of doing more with less without sacrificing quality, integrity, or trust.
SSP’s 48th Annual Meeting takes place May 27–29, 2026, at the Gaylord Pacific Resort & Convention Center in Chula Vista, CA. Learn more and register here!
News contribution by SSP member Stephanie Lovegrove Hansen. Stephanie is the Vice President of Marketing at Silverchair.
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