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Vertical Integration of the Vibe
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Vertical Integration of the Vibe
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Upload Date:
2024-02-02T00:00:00.0000000
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Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
You know. Don't I have four kids. I have a husband. And my passion, my thing that I like to do for me is to do this work. I love scholarly publishing. I hope that shows, you know, when I'm at SSP, I authentically love this community.
I just really enjoy what I do. So I had worked previous to the AOA at the American Society of Plant biologists, and actually I don't know if anyone in this room, there are colleagues who are here from aspb so or have worked there in the past, and anybody that knows anything about aspb knows that Plant Biologists are very cool. They're very focused on important things.
They're very fun to be around. They're very engaged with one another. And I am not saying that urologists are not fun and that they're not, you know, engaged. But when I got to the aoa, I was coming from this world of we'd have board meetings that would last up to two days. We had publications committee that would fly out, you know, once a year to the aspb and spend days with us.
We would also meet at our annual meeting. On top of that, we had engagement out off the charts. I started the AOA and I'm like, OK, so when's our first two day board meeting? Everyone looked at me like I had 5,000 heads. Um, we don't have a booth. At the meeting they told me we don't have board meetings that last, last more than one hour. And I was like, wait, what?
And as it turns out, as I started to dig the flagship journal, the Journal of urology, we met one time a year. This this journal had been in business for over 100 years. No editors. They didn't really one another. They didn't really care about one another. Our editor in chief was also like, you want to meet with me every two weeks?
Jennifer why? Like, what are we going to do? What do you want to talk to me about? Um, not even mean. Just kind of like, what are you thinking of here? Um, and so slowly I started working on changing those things, and it was, it was just really important to me. And I'll tell you, though, when the AOA hired me, a lot of people, if you know, if we're talking about data analytics, if we're talking about other publishing skills, a lot of people applied for that job who were a lot smarter than me.
But what my boss told me and I love her, we're very close. She's like, yeah, she has admitted by, you know, now that we're three years in, yeah, you were the personality hire and that is true. I was hired because they wanted someone who would change things. They wanted someone who would come in and be nice to my team, who would also silo the publications and make them integrate it into the departments and divisions that we have.
And then they also wanted someone who built a community city with the journals. And from day one until now, I have had the support and the leadership behind me to make these things happen. And if you know anything about me, I am a little crazy. I have some crazy ideas and I'll tell you what the AOA says yes to me probably 93% of the time. And that's a lot.
If you think about some of the wild stuff that I do, which we'll talk about in a little bit. Um, but that to have the vibe and to really be able to make meaningful changes, you have to have people behind you who are willing to let you do that. Um, so what did those first few months look like at the aoa? They were not easy. It was the time of COVID lockdowns.
This was June 2020. If you had told me a year before that I would pull up to a dark office building, meet a strange man in a Black mask at the door of a dark building and sit six feet apart from him to pick up my laptop and then go home and work with strangers who I had never met in person, I would have told you that you were crazy, so the vibe had to start there too. So like, how was I even going to get to know the people on my team?
How was I going to get to know my boss? How was I going to? Also, one of my big tasks was, as I mentioned, get to know the other departments and divisions within my organization. And I'll tell you what, that was. It just wasn't easy. Then on top of that, get to know the editors and the editorial boards of all of these journals.
And we had no idea when we would be able to meet in person again. And there was only going to be a one hour meeting anyway. It was a lot. Um, but people were ready for it. I was pushy. I showed up and faces had lots of virtual happy hours, had lots of Zoom calls. And we are where we are now.
Because people were willing to listen to me. They were willing to accept the vibe into their zone. Um, I also had a team who. We and Bonnie, I'm sure can speak to this a little bit. They had a little bit of PTSD. Um, they had they had no interaction with the AOA. They were as new to the AOA as I was. They also didn't have connection with our editors either.
They also did things. It was like walking into 1965. We didn't have a production tracking system at all. Every single. Um, and if Wolters kluwer is in the room, our commercial partner, they can attest to this. We were sending page proofs via career with handwritten changes. It was wild.
I didn't really understand the full scope of what I was walking into during the interview process, but it was like, OK, we have a room at the AOA where we have stacks on stacks of papers we print out. Every submission was like, wow, OK, I'm not even connected to a printer on Earth. And to print out the notes for today was a challenge because I don't use printers. Um, there was no internal interaction with any part of our organization that, you know, we really needed to have connection with.
For instance, our guidelines department. The most cited piece of the Journal of urology is our guideline summaries. And our two departments never spoke, so they had no idea how an impact factor worked. They're like, oh, we you, our stuff is what makes the Journal of urology this important. We didn't speak to our Office of research. We fund research all across urology, and the outputs of that were never getting published in our journals.
They were going to other journals. Like what? So those were the things, you know, those are just a few examples. There was no communication either between our publications. So the editors in chief did not even one another. There was no connection there. They didn't care about the other journals, not even.
But in a very apathetic kind of way. It wasn't an ego thing at all. Like, I don't like what even are the other journals? We don't care. Um, also the other thing is when I walked in, we didn't even offer open access as an option. Open access was predatory in the mind of the community. Um, people were like, why would someone ever pay to publish? Like what?
That's ridiculous. Um, we also, you know, had to get some strategy in place. That's where Bonnie came in. And also Delta Thank does not pay me, but I'm obsessed with them. And can highly recommend them. And she did not ask me to say this and she's probably let me say. Are you turning red?
Yeah, she is. Um, and I cannot say enough about reaching out for help. Ask for help. I went to the fellowship breakfast this morning. And one of the biggest pieces of advice people were giving the most amazing advice to it was a mentor mentee breakfast, and someone in the room said, ask for help. And that's what we did.
My boss and I went out with an RFP that we wanted a five year strategy plan to shake everything up and make it awesome, make it the best that it could be. We knew we couldn't figure this all out by ourselves, though. And also, if you know anything about me, I have a vibe. But I am terrible with data analytics I don't like. I understand it when it's handed to me, but how to get there? I'm like, I'm not.
That's not for me. Um, so that's where Delta think came in. Um, I'm going to introduce Bonnie again. She came in and she kind of walked. She I don't think she fully appreciated what she walked into until she started talking to us. So Bonnie. Well, I will say we are very privileged to have worked with you.
And we came in everything that Jennifer said was true. And so it is kind of like, where do you start? There are so many components that were backwards at the time, and your predecessor had been there decades, I believe, and policy two years, 52 years. Her predecessor had been there. But where she must have been at the time was sort of a maintenance period of where things had been, you know, 20 years ago.
So it was really behind the times, the program. And of course, Jennifer starts and she's full of energy and excitement and we're, you know, scanning across everything like, Oh my goodness, how do you get your hands around the challenge that the program is facing? Because when we went back way in time, you know, 15, 20 years ago, we could see how even you were with competition and you were really facing a competitive challenge in the market.
So internally, the challenges. But then there were a number of urology journals or particularly European urology, which had skyrocketed in prestige and an impact factor and was now beginning to take content that should have come to the Journal of urology. So taking a scan of all of that and understanding where we were, where our starting point is and even getting that together was a challenge.
But we started always with an understanding of what your readers and authors want. So where are they in this picture? And we started by surveying them and then doing a slew of interviews of the author community. What did they know? How did they feel about the program? Why did they make the choices to publish elsewhere? You know, your top urologists, how can we bring them back into the fold and create a community, not just a journal, but a community around it that makes it a very appealing and desired place to publish your top research.
And so through all of that, we pulled that together. We also did a ton of data analytics, as Jennifer said, understanding from financial perspectives, but also breaking down the impact factor. Not to make this an impact factor story, but it was important for editors and for the staff to understand how that gets built up and what kinds of content lead to an impact factor and how to diversify.
Even the content within the journal in which you published to make it a more valuable to readers or be more interesting to them in general, across commentary, across research articles, across reviews, of course, the guidelines pulling that all together into a comprehensive publication that adds value to your readers and also, by the way, will improve impact factor, but over time. So that's a longer that's a longer plan.
I know that's not your whole play. So we're really here more about community, but it all comes together in terms of creating the most valuable set of publications you can have. You also had urology practice up, and that journal had its own little challenges so that was more focused on practice and less on research and clinical research.
And that journal had been rejected for, for indexing for three times. I forgot it was three times, but I knew it had been several times, a lot because of poor policies or outdated policies and no ethics policies and things that you could fix. And actually, Wolters kluwer was helpful in putting all of that together as well. And actually, just a couple of weeks ago, you that was I'll jump ahead of myself, but that would have been one of our recommendations of creating best in class.
We pull all of that together. And also I shouldn't forget our news. So our news is the membership publication that was in scope of this. You're talking about the journal, the scientific journal. But AOA news was an important communication piece, of course, with membership and it all tied in together. And and when we were starting to work with you AOA news was only available.
One of those flip views on online. It's really, really hard to read online. It was, you know, technology that was 15 years old and this is, of course, is a mix of an advertising vehicle. So it is part of the financial success of the publication portfolio as well as a communication vehicle. And as Jennifer said, nobody was connected. So the AOA news people were over here and they had this flip thing and, you know, you was over here and and, you know, everybody was kind of doing their own thing.
So pulling that all together, pulling the insights from the readership community, they didn't even know about urology practice. That even though that journal had been around for a number of years, by that point, I mean, people just didn't even know it existed. So there was a detriment in marketing and even positioning what that journal could be and how it adds value to the whole portfolio and to practitioners overall.
And so we ended up pulling into four main categories. It's not going to sound too surprising, but the first one, because you also talked about open access, there was no open access and there was no open access. Even the journals, there wasn't a hybrid option, there wasn't anything. So a mix of an open access set of policies, but also portfolio mix and diversification and launching an open access journal and educating your editorial board and educating the team of why that would be valuable.
And that was part of the interviews and part of the survey. Would people would your community accept an open access journal? And it was like 75% were like all open to it. Right it was really terrific. Certainly we talked about in a whole category of best in class improvements, and that was everything from like changing from paper to digital in terms of peer review to the submission process was so difficult. It was such a barrier and they had all these challenges and figures and table submissions and all, you know, some of this, you know, goes back 20 years.
But it was kind of modernizing what it means to have a publication and to break down every barrier to submission you possibly could have make it easy for authors to submit. We had a whole component around the reimagination of news, its delivery, its advertising, its integration, both from an editorially to highlight articles not that they would have the same kinds of articles, but even funneling some case reviews and case reports that were not necessarily right for journal of urology, but could be in a unos, for instance, and continue to make that a more interesting delivery vehicle of content around the society.
And the last component that we bucketed was around enhanced marketing, branding and continued voice of customer, voice of readership, voice of authors into there and to really build a reason around why, why should you submit you know let's that whole concept of like the vibe and, and changing the vibe of publishing in a way was huge. And we wanted to get that across as we were starting to work through our teams.
How do we get that across to the community? Like this is really this can be a great place to publish and all the changes are made. Also with post publication and post publication, marketing and community building around that. And of course you were the right personality to make that all happen. And I'll stop talking. Thank you.
Pass it on to. All right. So my story is also similar in that it's the story of starting from scratch. And this is kind of taking a side trip into a completely different journal called microbiology spectrum. It's a journal that we at ASM, we relaunched it back in 2021, and we decided to relaunch it as a broad scope, open access title, so encompassing all microbiology research from basic clinical to applied.
And in addition to that, it would be a sound science approach, meaning no, not taking into impact or novelty into account and making editorial decisions. And then on top of that, it's also a cascade journal, meaning that if you are rejected from another title, you can have a second chance at microbiology spectrum. So knowing all of this, when we relaunched it, we figured due to the projected volume, we would need somewhere around 400 editors.
And no, that's not the jet lag speaking or my lack of sleep or having a lot of coffee. We needed 400 editors, which is a lot of people. So OK, well, starting an editorial board from scratch. Usually when you approach an editorial board, either a new one or people cycling off, you usually have some kind of committee or search committee who look for people who would be a good person for this role, who is known in this field.
Who do we know about and who do we think would be a good choice? Well, I don't know about you, but I don't think I know 400 people. Jennifer might know 400 people. I'm actually sure she most likely does. But, um, it's just not conceivable. So we started from scratch with a very small team of people just to get the journal started.
But it just became increasingly clear that you can't do it on our own. We can't do it just reaching out to existing networks. So in sort of a. Sort of a not really a desperation, but saying, OK, we need to figure out what's a better way to do this. And we said, OK, well, let's try an open call. So other journals I know have done open calls in the past and even we had done some very, very small ones, but not to the extent that we decided to do this.
We said, well, let's just open it up to everybody and anybody who wants to apply. If they're a microbiologist, if they meet our set of criteria, they can be on the board. And so we started this again, not quite knowing what we were getting ourselves into. And I would say over the past, from at least from April through the current year, we are still actively building the board.
We've received over 2000 applications. And we have chosen over 300 editors from those applications. So those are very big numbers and they sound impressive and the numbers are not what I want you to focus on. If you take that away today, what I want you to what I really like to focus on are the people behind those numbers. We received applications from over 80 countries.
We had a good mix of early career as well as people later in their career, and it's all people who are just very, very passionate about wanting to be a part of this community and wanting to be a part of this sound science approach within microbiology. And from that, we have been able to build a board that has representation from around 40 countries, which as a American based society, that's not that's not a small feat.
I mean, traditionally a lot of our editorial boards historically have been predominantly us based or even just based in North America, to be honest. Um, and then we also have been able to maintain a pretty close 50 over 50 gender balance. And we also have a few non-binary individuals on our board as well. So a lot of great successes. But that said, there are things that are still challenging about this approach.
Um, so in terms of what we saw, maybe only of the applicants, we got only around 25% were women, which is surprising. But also when you really think about it, not surprising at all. And also in addition, yes, we got over 80 countries to apply. However, looking at the data, about 50% of those applicants were either from two countries. And you can probably guess that those two countries are one of them were that right now is the United States.
The other one is China. And again, not surprising given the huge growth in that region these past 10 years. Um, then also in addition to that, it's a lot of staff work. We're a we're a mid-sized society, but still there's not a lot of us working on this journal. It's myself, um, the journal development editor, anon balasubramani, as well as my two assistant managing editors.
And we received a very large number of applicants on a monthly basis. Anand is usually the one who goes through them as he has a scientific background. Again, I am not a scientist myself. I do not think it's fair for me to judge somebody's qualifications. So and from there it's just a lot of staff work to, number one, cull through all these applications to see who meets our criteria.
Then it's also working with the editor in chief, who, again, she is very passionate and devoted has been committed to this open board from day one. However, she is also a working scientist. She has her own lab and her own responsibilities. So yes, we might have a queue of maybe 100 people at a time. We're trying to get her to please take a look at this. But she has a lot of other things on her plate.
And then, yes, when she finally does say yes, OK, great. Let's onboard them. How do you onboard a large number of editors and especially people that we want to be fairly independent. So given the volume of what we receive, we want our editors to be able to more or less act independently on our own and trust that they can do that. And what does that mean?
That means they're the ones who do more or less an initial evaluation as soon as they receive that paper, is it in scope? Should it be rejected right away before peer review? If it can be peer reviewed, who do you invite? So they have to invite those reviewers. And then read those reviews and make a decision, not a recommendation, a decision as I don't want my editor in chief having to.
Well, think around last year or first full year, we published over 2000 articles and that's a lot to ask one person to check 2000 articles. So we want these people to be independent. So we have to make sure from the beginning we give them good training, we give them resources, we create resources from scratch. So that there's a centralized place where they know where all the policies are, what to do, who to ask, if they have no idea.
Um, and from there, just again, just typical maintenance things like system permissions. Is putting them on websites. So it's a lot of staff work. So knowing what I know from what we had the past year, we said, wow, this is something that's actually pretty cool and we'd like to tell other people about it. As I'm sure this is not scholarly publishing is not a silo.
I mean, there's only I don't think people spend a lot of time recreating the wheel when you don't have to. And if it's something that, yes, I don't have the copyright on open boards, again, anybody could do that. And I think that's something that we want to empower people to do and also not only empower them to know that this is a really great option, but also these are things you need to know because it is a lot of work.
You just don't open something and that instantly creates an equitable, perfect board does take work and diligence and things on our side. So I started myself and as well as a non, we talked at a few conferences of starting at last year at the atypon user group, which Jennifer was also one of my co-panelists on that. So that's when I first heard about Jennifer and all the interesting things that she's been doing at Iowa to really revitalize and reinvigorate the journal and the editorial board in that community.
And again, since then, we also have found ourselves on the same panel A few other times. So it's OK. This is an interesting pattern. Um, and it's just been every time the talks come, we just evolve more and more and to learn a bit more about each other. And so finally Jennifer asked me, hey, do you want to come talk to my editorial board?
And I said, no one's ever asked me to talk to their board before. That's kind of odd. I'm OK talking to scarlet publishing professionals. I'm OK talking to my own board. But a completely different journal, which I knew I knew of journal of urology way back in the day when I was still actually a production editor at Elsevier. The only thing I knew about it is that it was a very storied, prestigious title.
It had its own way of doing things and not to ask any questions, and that's really all I knew. But so I said, OK, well, given the work that Jennifer has done in these past three years, it's amazing. And sure, I would love to talk to your editors. And I came in. I had no idea what to expect, but everybody was very engaged and had a lot of questions for me. I think I spent more time answering questions than actually doing my prepared five slides that I brought.
But coming away from that, I thought, wow, this is something amazing. I know we talked to each other, but I think we don't really use other people as much as a resource from outside of our own organizations. I mean, I think that's why we're all here today. We're learning from each other. We're trying to figure out things and knowledge that other people may not be aware of within your own organizations.
So you can take that back when you get back. Um, so it's like overall, it's been an inspirational to me as well, just to see Jennifer's approach. And I've been trying to do some a few similar things as well, saying, OK, if there's something I don't know about, I want other people to know about, hey, can maybe not talk to my editors, but maybe come talk to my task force committee. Tell us about your how implementing a editor has worked for you.
What were the challenges? How has that worked out for your journal? Have you seen noticeable differences? Um, and it's really great to have that framework and to yeah, just really be more a part of this community in that sense and mean and Jennifer has since told me and she could probably talk more about this as well. She and the Journal of urology, they've started a few open calls of their own with a lot of really great success.
And it just made me overjoyed to hear that they had they were able to more or less take an idea because again, you come, you talk, you don't know, OK, maybe they listen, they'll think about it, but it gets put to the side along with everything else. The fact that they actually actioned on it and saw it as something to prioritize I thought was absolutely fantastic. And it really.
Yeah, it just makes me feel very fuzzy inside. But get so I will pass it over to a little bit more on the editor view of how this has gone. So what these women are doing works and I'm a testament to that. So so basically, I am a pediatric urologist. And when you're a urologist, our parent organization is the American Urological Association. So the AOA.
So if you want to receive the journal, if you want to attend the meetings, this is your parent organization that you pay dues to that you're a part of. And once a month you receive your journal in the mail and your AOA news pamphlet. And this is what connects you to the world of academic urology. And growing up as a budding urologist, I would kind of look in the journal.
I would see the same type of urologic oncology articles from like the same 20 people. I would read the AOA news, which was always written by the same few people, and I would always feel just moderately disconnected from the world of academic urology. And just to paint a picture, urology is currently. So now in 2023 it is 10% women. OK, 90% identify as male and the vast majority are actually close to retirement age.
And so we're sort of seeing this interesting change in demographics where we're seeing a lot of people retiring and a lot of young people coming into the field who I think are very desiring of change. And so I think that Jennifer taking over at this time is really monumental because it really harnesses the power of people wanting to change their parent organization to reflect what's happening in the world, if that makes sense.
So for me, myself personally, I always felt like I love what I do, I love urology, I want to publish, I want to be productive, but didn't see myself reflected when it came to editorial boards or really even just the content, to be perfectly honest. And so I think that it was really interesting for me. So right before Jennifer started, I created a group called urologists for equity.
And this group was really a grassroots organization of people who are looking to kind of, you know, connect with each other across the country. You know, I may be the only woman in my institution and you may be the only person of a minoritized background at your institution and have no support system. And so we wrote a letter and we actually submitted it to the Journal of urology. This is dirty laundry.
And they sent us back a very polite email that before Jennifer that was like, Thank you so much for submitting this, but this really doesn't fit what we're looking to put out into the world. And so, you know, when you put yourself out there as a person who wants to publish you, you feel that back, right? I see you're not putting out material that I connect with and you're rejecting trying me trying to put new ideas into the world.
So Jennifer, she comes in and, you know, she reaches out to me and she's like, look, I think we connected on Twitter to be like, perfectly honest. I am very outspoken about wanting to change the face of urology to be more representative of the population. She was like, look, I think that I like what you're doing. Would you be interested in connecting with us as like an online content editor?
And I had a really open and honest conversation with her where I was like, yes, but I don't want to be a member of a group that doesn't, you know. Walk the walk. You know, like, I kind of want to see what this is all about. And it's been a really amazing and fruitful relationship having joined this team, because the truth is that it really is about harnessing people who want change. And so Jennifer and Dr. Siemens have really created that environment.
And as a result, you can see all of the changes that have happened since this sort of new vibe has come into town. So just to give some more background on how all of this has sort of played out. So now the aihua group of publications has something called the head table, and the head table is effectively a group of individuals from the editorial board who are all committed to die in different arenas and varieties from different backgrounds, geographical locations, gender identities, race, ethnicity, et cetera.
And so this group has actually started just publishing thing and, and writing like this is what we've done. And what a small step to take, but important step to take to kind of communicate with the community. These are our values and not just our values and writing, but these are the steps we've taken to actually change our community for the better. And I think that that's been a really amazing and tangible product that's sort of come out of these relationships.
The other thing is, is that it's no longer siloed. So I feel like there's a lot of overlap between the news urology, practice, Jew and even the editorial boards from other journals that are not connected financially. And so I think that it's been really wonderful to kind of see this community grow organically as a result of just becoming more inclusive and really valuing the thoughts and opinions of other people who are involved. I'm on the I'm on the board of the Society of Women in urology and the Society of Women in urology has been a group that is kind of growing in excitement and fervor.
And last year, in June, after the Dobbs decision came out, there was a lot of discussion about whether or not this is something that we should tackle, right? We are only 10% of practicing urologists, but we do feel as physicians that this is something that we're passionate about and we want to be able to talk about it. And we look around and we see all of these other major journals are saying something, right?
I mean, we have the big journals making these comments. And so I think we sort of I very timidly but boldly emailed Jennifer and Dr. Siemens and I was like, would we be able to say something? And I was really, really excited to see that Dr. Siemens with the head table basically put out a commentary talking about how it is OK for us as physicians and people on editorial boards to tackle these difficult conversations and to keep these commentaries open.
You don't have to necessarily shut these conversations down. And maybe historically, they were such as was evidenced by the prior letter that had tried to submit. And so I thought that that was also just a really powerful and tangible change since all of these ideas had been implemented. And then on top of that, there is the idea not just of how you engage people in the community in terms of how do you get people to submit articles to you.
But one of the cool things, and I think that this has also kind of come about through the pandemic is people want to feel more connected, right? You don't know what other people are up to and how they're doing. And so with I think really with the backing of Jennifer, there's been an entire community that has really rallied together to form, just like a cohesive group who want to interact with the journal publications and all the pubs.
They have a much more focused online presence. And so by harnessing social media, they're connecting with medical students. They're connecting with residents and Fellows and people of all ages and backgrounds and locations and countries. And that's been really amazing. And so Jennifer has really done a great job of I mean, honestly, probably literally befriending every single person and keeping them close by.
So then she can remember them and make them feel like they're part of the community and bring them in. And that's been really great. And so she even created these Fanny packs. I'm wearing one and I'm not paid to sponsor it. Um, and so like write a Fanny pack, you're like, oh, who cares? But these are actually like a hot ticket item because when you wear it, it's like a symbol that you're connected to the journal.
And if you she now has a booth at the AOA. She was saying that previously they didn't have a booth. The booth is like a hot ticket location. Everyone wants to stop by. Everyone wants to take a picture with Jennifer. Everyone wants to post on Twitter and everyone wants to have a Fanny pack. And they post their Fanny packs in the wild on Twitter as if it was like the garden gnome from amelie, right?
But how powerful is that as a symbol of community when you previously, just three years ago, had an editorial board who didn't even know each other? And I think that that's like a real testament to what this team has done for the publications. And as a result, I think we've seen a shift in terms of not just the community. So you're going to see diversity filtering in through the types of articles that are being published.
You're going to see diversity. In terms of the reviewers, I think a lot more people are now willing to engage and say like, hey, I want to be a reviewer for your journals. How do I sign up? And that's something that's very under discussed, right? Like how do you really build a robust group of people who want to review for you? Building community is a really great way of doing that.
And then you have more people submitting to your journal because they see you as a friendly place to submit their papers. OK, so you open up the community. People want to submit to you and then you also change the representation of leadership. And so when I first started and I expressed some of my concerns to Jennifer, I slipped her a list of people that I thought deserved to be on editorial boards who had been passed over for other reasons, and most of them come from minoritized backgrounds or women or gender diverse individuals.
And I said like, look, these are people who are not like just early career people who need a chance, but people who might be like mid or senior career who should have had a chance 10 years ago, who still don't have any editorial board positions. And I slipped her this list and she said she was like, Casey, I have this list. I can't do anything with it right this second.
But just wait and trust me. And I swear to you that I think every single person on that list has now been engaged in some way, shape or form throughout our publications. And I can't say how powerful that is and how much change that has brought to the community. And so I think that there's actually been a ton of change that's happened in the past 2 to 3 years, and it's really hard to measure it, but that it's been a really amazing experience in terms of the way that we've engaged people and created a community around that.
And when Jennifer was like, what can we still change? It's like really hard to think about it because it's been such a whirlwind and it's been so exciting that I think just the transparency of the processes, continuing these open calls, embracing the younger generations of urologists who want to see these changes, integrating the news into more of like a sort of. Into like more of a publication than just like a little flip book on a website, right?
Yeah, people are really enjoying it. There's so much positivity surrounding it that I think that it's sort of an unstoppable force. I also wear a hat at another publication, which we call the gold journal, which is one of the other urology publications, and I don't feel like there's competition and I love being able to kind of talk about the things that we're doing on both sides and to engage.
And so between working with the Society of Women in urology, the gold journal and the publications, I'm beginning to see so much crossover and overlap that it only makes the community stronger. And so I think that that's been really productive and fruitful. And that's what I have to say from my side. You feel a little teary? Honestly, so I do. I took some notes on some of the things that you all said with a pink pen just to stay on brand in case anyone's interested.
Um, but I just have so much to say that I didn't even prepare to say. And now I'm going to do that. I would first like to say that you all are amazing and Thank you for going along with the crazy with the hot mess express, because honestly, the hot mess express does have an ultimate goal, and that is for everyone to feel included. And that's what I love about SSP, is I always feel included here.
I can just be my weird pink self and you guys are like, come on, Jennifer, bring it on. Um, a couple things, though, to note here. First thing is Bonnie and our five year strategy plan, they did such a great job at Delta. Thank on our five year strategy plan. We finished it in actually under three years. And so now we're like, Oh yeah, we're like, OK. It was just so well executed.
And when they handed it to us, we're like, dang, this is a lot of work. I don't know how we're going to do this, but then we're like, OK, but we're going to do it. And we did. And it has been with help from this community. It has been with help from everyone sitting at this table and from an organization that really was inspired to make it happen.
I mean, I can't say enough to you know, if you find yourself in a spot where the people behind you are not backing you, then you're probably in the wrong spot. Um, and I know that's really, you know, that's easy for me to say, but I, you know, now that I'm old, I really wish I had gotten myself out of a lot of situations a lot earlier where I wasn't supported in the way that I am now. Um, another thing is I want to talk about.
I got there to the AOA. My first day was wild. Let's just say that we had this massive ethical concern day one, I said, OK. Oh, so where's our publications committee? Oh silly me. Oh silly me. Um, lol, what's a publications committee like? I'm like, who's going to help me with this ethical.
That's your thing, Jennifer. And I'm like, Oh no, we don't. Jennifer does not make the ethical decisions. Um, so that was interesting and said, OK, AOA we need a publications committee and we need it like yesterday. I don't know how you've been functioning all these years without this. So the AOA is like, OK, write it down.
Like, what do you want it to be? And I wrote it down and they're like, OK, you can do that. One of my big things of it though, was we need it non urologists on that committee. So Bonnie is now a member of our publications committee. I sucked her and she's like, Oh my god, really? And I was like, yes, really? Really and she has been amazing. Jennifer pasinelli, who's not at the meeting, but she's at the biophysical society.
She is our other non urologist on that publications committee. And what's great is all of my editors are always saying, ask Bonnie and Jennifer. Ask Bonnie and Jennifer. Ask Bonnie and Jennifer. We want to know what other people are doing who are not from urology. And how fascinating and awesome is that they said yes. And then, you know, I do also bug them with all of our ethical stuff.
I sent you a doozy this week. Um, but anyway, anyway, though, it's just great. And then and they are just so well respected on that committee. They come to every meeting and show up prepared and I honestly cannot tell you how many times I say no for you because they're like, can she come do this? Can she come do this? Can she do this?
Um, and so, yeah, it's pretty awesome. We love you. Um, so then another thing is Dr. Seidman was talking about the front matter of our journals, and that is something, you know, when I first got to the aoa, I'm like, where's your, your good, juicy stuff in the front of the journal that makes people want to pick it up and read it. And they're like, huh, what are you talking about?
And I'm like, no, you guys have to be talking about stuff up here. You know, you have to talk about the hard stuff, the Dobbs things you need to talk about. Also, like, not everyone agrees with all the research we're printing. Why aren't we print, you know, having point counter points, things like that. Um, also, like I said, the AOA does let me do the crazy.
So the Fanny pack thing, they're like, OK, I don't get it, but OK, just do it, I guess. Did probably, you know, ask for forgiveness rather than permission on that one. But anyway, it has it's just the best thing because my favorite thing is to open up Instagram and Twitter because you're around people then continue to show me, look, here I am out in the wild with my Fanny pack, the head table.
I should mention that head stands for Health equity and diversity has been amazing as well. We actually welcome membership on that from you don't even have to be on our board to be a part of that. So far, we don't have. Any non editors on there. But that's what I'm saying. Why would we have a group that wouldn't be inclusive in every way?
Dr. Seidman also mentioned the Society of Women in urology, and I should probably not talk about this right now because I might have another breakdown like I did that day. But I first of all, they let me join as an editorial office member. I think made a new category. He's the first non urologist. Yes yes. And I'm so excited about that.
But I walked into this room, you guys, the vibe. You want to talk about a vibe they had standing room only at their meeting at the standing room only. And when I walked into that room, so many people were wearing pink and I was like, oh, my gosh. And then afterwards, though, everyone came and spoke to me and was like, you know, things. We just love being part of the publications now and then. I might have had a mental breakdown because I was really exhausted and started to hysterically sob in front of everyone.
But anyway, though, how great is it to be a place where you can be your true, authentic self? And then another thing I just wanted to mention is the monthly series that we do, and that's where Adriana was one of our first speakers. So all I can say is we hung up the phone with her. She was peppered with questions, and then Dr. Simmons was immediately, I think actually he was sitting in my office with me for that one call.
So we hung up the phone and he's like, OK, we're doing this now and you're figuring it out, Jennifer and we're having an open call for editors, so we don't need to Thank god, find 400 people. But when we had an opening, we put that out there into the wild. We kind of did it organically. We didn't have like a great plan behind it. Like a lot of things that I do, you know, just kind of threw it out there.
100 applications, amazing people we never would have thought of. And they every single one of them was awesome. Our editors loved it, picked someone from that pool of applicants. Then we wrote a letter though, and it was just like, look, we love you. We love you. I'm so sorry we didn't pick you. We only have this one spot, but we're obsessed with you.
Stay with us. Stick with us. I promise something will work out. And now we have 99 new friends, plus 1 really awesome editor that we never would have had that person as an editor if it weren't for that open call. So just, you know, I encourage you to go out there and go for it. Another thing that we gave away this year that worked out really well, we do a newsletter for the Journal of urology and we call it the Jew stream.
And one of the big things in there, one of the most urologists are also very competitive and they love their pets. And so I have an email inbox filled with pet pictures, people freaking out like, what's it going to take to get my pet in Jew stream? Um, so Dr. Seidman has a beautiful Kat and what Dr. Simmons said to me. So now these, you know, the crazy is now bleeding into other people.
He said, I want us to have a pet of the month calendar to give away with the Fanny pack. And so I believe Teddy was November. Mr November. So we did the pet of the month calendar. And my best story from the meeting was I got this text from this strange British number of us like, I don't know who this is. I open it up.
It was our competitor, European urology, the editor in chief. He's like, Jennifer, I need to find you right this instant. I will come anywhere that you are in the city of Chicago. Can you just give me a Fanny pack? I can't go home without one. And I was like, OK, say less. I'm like, I will find you right now. So I went racing to find this man. And of course, I was prepared to take a selfie.
No, he said, I need to take a selfie because I'm putting this on Twitter. And he did it. And I was like, OK, there you go. And my point there is collaboration over competition. I mean, there are competition, but there are so many things that you need to collaborate for. So now we work with European Urology. They are they have a better impact factor than we do, but also we need to do things together.
We went to Milan this year and worked with them to do a writing course. They came to Chicago and did a writing course with us. Now we're going to Paris next year and doing this now we're going to start working with the Canadian journal of urology and do some similar partnerships, because why would we compete about things like that? We now invite you to come to our monthly series because again, why would we compete over my big idea that I would love to do with them?
And we're trying to work out the details, but we would also love to put together a die reviewing board that would be on the mastheads of all of the big journals gold journal, EU and bju, who are. Again, our competition. But there's also very limited resources for reviewers in that space. So why would we compete there? So again, I could go babbling on more for days.
I'd love to see if there's any questions from the audience before we talk a little more. Hi there Marcelo from I'm a plus. I'm also on the publications committee of another society. So yeah, really just inspiring. Yeah to hear about the work that you all have done. Um, so yeah, two questions. I guess it was super interesting to hear how this combination of a, of a kind of charismatic publications leader coming in, but then also, Dr. Seidman, what you talked about, this kind of grassroots sort of energy from membership for sort of change in a number of different ways, but about the publications program in particular.
Um, so yeah, hearing those two sides of that was really interesting to me. Um, so one question. Yeah are there sounds like you connected over Twitter, right? Not through kind of a formal society governance mechanism, but I'm curious about that. Like are there ways for society governance to help bring those two things together or do you think it's really about relationships and less so about formal governance?
Um, and then second question. Yeah in the prompt, Jennifer, that you read at the beginning, you talked about really instilling that vibe and threading it through processes from beginning to end. And I just wondered, could you give kind of a really specific kind of boring example of, of maybe instilling this into something like editorial process, making things easier to submit?
Um, Yeah. I guess I'm curious, like, does your partner, does Walter have to be part of the vibe in order for this to work? Like, yeah, how do you, how does that really embed itself in little things like processes where maybe there are vendors or sort of other folks involved? Boys oppressions of governance. London yeah, sure.
Think that there are definite ways for societies themselves to create that inclusive environment and to motivate people. I think it just has to be incredibly intentional. Right? and so a lot of the times I don't think societies are intentional when it comes to creating community and engaging membership and really cultivating that from a sort of early career, even trainee perspective, because those are your prime people, right?
And so I've always been kind of disappointed in the engagement process. So if you're on the society side of things, I think that there's a lot of room for opportunity to engage folks. And I think things like open calls are big. I think social media is huge. And it doesn't have to be a single person's individual social media account.
Like right now, the Journal of urology has a really robust social media presence and people engage with that. And so I think that once you create that inclusive environment and create a community around your society, you'll find more engagement. However, what I will say is that someone obviously runs that right. There's always a person behind the curtains and so you want that person to be strategic and to really reach out and to be intentional and to be like always thinking about diversity in terms of location, career, stage, gender, identity, race, ethnicity, because that's how I think truly show membership that you care about those things.
And then to answer the question. So for Wolters kluwer and also my eyes are terrible, so I can't see if anyone from Wolters kluwer is in the room. Wait who is it? Was it you, shelly? Hey OK. Hi My eyes are so bad. I'm ashamed. I need to go to the eye doctor, but it's a marriage.
OK, so it's a marriage. It's a partnership. It really is. And I drive them crazy, and I say this all the time, but it really is true. We were not being a good partner to Wolters kluwer when I got here. That's just the honest truth, and that just isn't good for anyone.
So what does a partnership look like? I mean, you know, I mentioned I have four kids, I have a husband. And so, like, if I'm doing the dishes and driving the kids all around, he better be mopping the floors and folding the laundry and putting it away type of thing, you know? Um, it's not just like, oh, hey, Wolters, kluwer just do like, they're not our vendor.
It's not like, OK, just do all of our work and send us a check, and that's all we're going to do. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's like, really, really working closely and carefully and making sure that their needs are met and our needs are met and doing that together. So what does that look like in reality? An example is let's just talk about the submission process, learning from them.
OK? Wolters kluwer you tell us like what's best practice? You have proprietary journals and you have many, many also very significant medical societies like ours that your partners with. What are other people doing help us to be better. And then at the same time, then us. It's up to us, though they can't know what urologists want and what our authors and what our, you know, our reviewers want, our editors and what they want editorial manager to look like.
So actually, we're working right now on a project. One one of my other online content editors came to me and he's like, look, he's like, let's revolutionize peer review. And I'm like, say no more. That sounds exciting. And so that's what we've been doing. So we've been sitting down and basically doing you'd be so proud of me, Bonnie, doing this.
Oh my gosh. Because this is outside of my wheelhouse of like doing things. So we've been doing focus groups and putting together these process charts. Oh my gosh, it's a hot mess. Express it looks terrible, but we've already been able to implement some quick changes that have been making people happy.
But then also we are working on what does it look like to have a nice clean roadmap for the peer review process. And I also, you know, I had to show our underwear drawer essentially and say, look, Dr. Harris, just one thing. You really do need to know. The first group you need to do a focus group on is us, the editorial office.
Like I'm ashamed to admit, we need to look at the processes of what we're doing. The picture he drew of that was I'm like getting dizzy thinking about it. It was the biggest hot mess express but we're going to fix it. So these are the things, you know, that you have to be looking at. And yes, a lot of it is not exciting.
Pink Fanny packs. It's, you know, making things better for the people who are working hard for us. So that's my very long answer to your question, I'm sure if I can just add one more point to all of this, because we talk a lot internally and all the recommendations that we've put forward, and I'm always a big fan of measure, measure, measure and understanding.
So I think, you know, it asked me about opportunities and things to do next, and I think it's probably time to like, did those messages make it deeply into the community? And because we've heard some, you know, or they're great researchers out there and they still aren't 100% sure if Ju is the right journal for them, you know, for various reasons, maybe the message didn't get completely through.
So I think it behooves all of us to be in constant contact, you know, with your readers, with your authors, and making sure, you know, if you're doing net promoter score, if you're doing that kind of measurement analysis is are those messages, you know, you know, funneling down into the community deeply where you need it to be and it's not just some kind of an ivory tower, but although there's amazing things that have happened, you know, I think there's an opportunity to do that.
You're right. I know I hate to measure things. So that's why we have Delta think. OK so I have that's why we have Bonnie on our speed dial. So that's I think our next project to work on. Does anyone else have any questions? Oh, Yeah. No, go ahead. OK Oh.
Hi, I'm Latoya Fletcher and I'm the editor engagement manager for the Aces. So I did have a couple curiosity questions for you, Jennifer. One is I also feel like I was a personality hire and I'm lucky enough to have the buy in from the organization. But with having almost 900 editors, how did you get their attitudes to change and have buy in from them once you arrived all pink and bubbly?
And then to as far as social media, which content do you feel resonates the most with editors specifically? OK, great questions. So I got lucky. I got there and it turns out nobody understood that they should enjoy being an editor. It was just kind of like, ugh, I'm like, just doing this and. How did we get the buy in?
We just started slowly. I have Dr. Siemens is our new editor. And before that, though, his predecessor. He was like, why do you want to meet with me all the time? Do we mean why does the board want to meet? And I was like, look, here's why. Well, it turns out when it was time for him to leave his position, he stayed six months later than he should have.
We're like, Dr. smith, you got to go. You got to go. And it was he's like he's like, it's really hard for me to leave because I wish I had had this vibe all along. But what did that look like? was being slow. It was being intentional. And it was me reaching out. And every single time I reached out, though, everyone always took my call and they're like, OK, this.
Yeah, we're in. So we meet all the time. Now we meet in small groups of our senior editors. We meet with we have early career editors on our board, which we did not have before. We meet with those groups. We meet with disease state editorial groups within our boards and everyone wants to do it. People very rarely say no.
It's usually just for something like a surgery or something that they're saying no. But Yeah. Can I piggyback on that? I think that when you're looking at your and when you're looking at engaging with people, especially when you're coming into a new organization, you should look at the process of how these people became editors and on your editorial board.
And so historically, what you'll find is people might have this position and hold on to it until they die. That's a problem, right? I mean, I think Jennifer walked into that. A lot of people were like, should have retired 10 years ago and are still holding on with both hands. And the other question is, how did they get chosen?
And a lot of the times it was like, you know, without airing any dirty laundry, if the editor is from mush organization, they're going to tap all of the people around them, right? And so what you have is a favoritism embedded system where people are told to do it. They're not actually actively trying to get this position and it's theirs forever until they decide to give it up. And so that's, I think, a problem.
And if you see that within your organization, you need to consider things like term limits and open calls, because what you're going to find is that people want people who want to be a part and want to engage will apply and want to be a part of the process. So I think it's kind of about changing that. And Jennifer didn't talk about that, but I think that's one of the most powerful changes that she made within our organization.
And then the social media content question is what works for us the best is anything that has again, engagement. So we have a wonderful online content editor team that helps us with that. But people again want to understand the vibe. So videos are great. We work with actually, that's how I know Latoya initially. We work with cactus communications and they make visual abstracts for us that are absolutely beautiful and the engagement for those cactus doesn't pay me either.
But the engagement for those is insane. It's just, you know, about really getting people to consume your content in a different way that's accessible for them. Susan yes. What's your question? I'm scared a little. No, no. And Thank you.
And to be fair and my disclosure is that I've known Jennifer for a long time and I've watched her grow. And I knew when she went to Iowa, I knew exactly what was going on. And so I've heard a lot of this, and I'm so proud of my friend for what she's done. And I get to ask her questions and text message all the time. So this question is not for the Iowa, but it's for the American Society of microbiology.
So, Adriana, this question is for you. We are in the middle right now of we just we're doing two searches. One is completed and the second one will be completed soon and effective in January, we will have two brand new ad boards. We are a small medical society like the AOA. We're very related. We're the kidneys.
So we handle what gets sent to you, if you will. And one of our directives is to get a more diverse board. Every category of diversity. And I'm fascinated by what you've done for with the open calls. And we're I don't know that we can do that, given how conservative. We are.
But I'm very curious. You talked about the trust you have in your editors. And I thought I heard you say you don't have regular board meetings. And I'm just wondering, how do you manage this very large international board? Because that's the hit that we keep getting is, oh, we can't have international because we have to produce this journal and we have to have weekly board meetings and we can't schedule it for Australia time.
Can you talk about that a little bit? I know it's kind of mundane compared to the pink Fanny pack, but it's really interesting. No, Thank you so much for that question. So we do have meetings per se, but we have to be very strategic about those meetings because it's one thing to build a board and get diversity, especially from a geographic level. And that's something that a lot of editors who historically yes, they know, OK, well, I do need they do need to have like, let's say, for example, representation in China, you know, especially since a lot of research is coming from China.
And they're on board with the idea. But in practice, they said, well, how do I communicate? You know, we're all in different time zones, et cetera. So it's I can't say that it's easy. It's something that we still are kind of managing ourselves, but a few things that have worked. So we do have we do have a few times a year. We do aim to have very general editorial board meetings where we give them updates, reminders, et cetera.
But those are very large meetings, especially when you have and we do have one in the Western hemisphere time and other one in the Eastern hemisphere time, and that involves at least one of us on the team, you know, staying up at about
10: 00 at night Eastern.
10: But it is what it is. People show up and they're very appreciative of our time. But that's really not enough just to have, you know, just having a meeting because, again, even in those situations, it's not all the editors, it's not all 300 people, but it's still a larger group. And sometimes people might feel intimidated speaking up in a larger group. Um, so what we're trying to so we have, we try to make ourselves as accessible as possible to them.
10: So whether that's encouraging them to we have a support structure more or less. So we let them know if you're having trouble with, let's say, making a decision. So you have a split decision. Reviewer one says, yes, this is great. Reviewer two says, throw it in the trash. How do you reconcile those two, those two ideas? So we say, you know, your senior editor is there for you.
10: So we do have a structure where we have another layer of editorial leadership where there's somebody that can reach out to for a second opinion or just a sanity check. And also, of course, they can reach out to staff if they have any kind of questions or we also try to help them help each other. And so trying to create that engagement, that's something that's one of our key priorities this year.
10: In the past, what we've done is we've had a Slack channel historically, not everybody is on the Slack channel, but the people who are. It's a great way to have maybe like at least, you know, a few people be able to talk to each other or just have an area where, you know, people can ask questions. And sometimes I sometimes I answer the question, but I'm pleasantly surprised.
10: And that as we've been doing this and there's more editors who've been on the journal for over a year now, sometimes people step in and say, oh, yeah, this is the right answer. I'm like, oh, you did my job for me. That's amazing. I can go back to other things. But we're also trying to figure out how to do more focused meetings.
10: So whether that's a focus on a particular subject area, because again, it's a broad scope journal, we want to make sure that we're reaching out to everybody where they are and say, OK, well, what's going well in clinical microbiology right now? What kind of papers are you seeing? Are there things you feel are in scope? Does everybody feel the same about what are we saying is in scope versus not in scope, or are there things that we're getting that are really interesting that we should highlight?
10: And should we have collections from there and have editors take charge of those collections so that they have more engagement in the journal. But we're also starting to looking to get more regionally focused meetings as well. So this past December, we onboarded our first senior editor from China again. So a lot of that has been a big learning challenge for us as well as, again, you know, since she's on a different time zone, it's at least one of us trying to stay awake and make sure that she feels supported or sometimes if it's a meeting is not possible, I'll just do a pre-recorded zoom, kind of check in or chat and say, hey, Hello Hui, how are you doing?
10: This is the thing in the system. I wanted to show you how to do. If you have questions, let me know and I'll record another video. Hopefully my bird isn't screaming in the background and you can hear what I'm saying. So there's a few. So it's something that we're trying to as now that we do have a larger board, we say, OK, we have all these people, how do we keep.
10: I'm engaged and I'm just very inspired by a lot of what Jennifer has done as well in terms of making sure that she's talking to her editorial board and giving them opportunities to not just talk with us as a society, but talk with each other, because that's how they're here, to make connections and network and find people that, again, they would not have been able to work with before. So well, Thank you to these wonderful women who took their time to work on this.
10: This panel with me, I truly appreciate you. And also, I do want to mention that mojo is Adriana's bird and is super famous in her own right. So make sure that you have her show you a video of mojo playing basket. Basketball can actually make baskets. Thank you all. Safe travels home. I really appreciate that.
10: All of you took time out of your schedules to come to this. Thank you.
Segment:0 .
You know. Don't I have four kids. I have a husband. And my passion, my thing that I like to do for me is to do this work. I love scholarly publishing. I hope that shows, you know, when I'm at SSP, I authentically love this community.
I just really enjoy what I do. So I had worked previous to the AOA at the American Society of Plant biologists, and actually I don't know if anyone in this room, there are colleagues who are here from aspb so or have worked there in the past, and anybody that knows anything about aspb knows that Plant Biologists are very cool. They're very focused on important things.
They're very fun to be around. They're very engaged with one another. And I am not saying that urologists are not fun and that they're not, you know, engaged. But when I got to the aoa, I was coming from this world of we'd have board meetings that would last up to two days. We had publications committee that would fly out, you know, once a year to the aspb and spend days with us.
We would also meet at our annual meeting. On top of that, we had engagement out off the charts. I started the AOA and I'm like, OK, so when's our first two day board meeting? Everyone looked at me like I had 5,000 heads. Um, we don't have a booth. At the meeting they told me we don't have board meetings that last, last more than one hour. And I was like, wait, what?
And as it turns out, as I started to dig the flagship journal, the Journal of urology, we met one time a year. This this journal had been in business for over 100 years. No editors. They didn't really one another. They didn't really care about one another. Our editor in chief was also like, you want to meet with me every two weeks?
Jennifer why? Like, what are we going to do? What do you want to talk to me about? Um, not even mean. Just kind of like, what are you thinking of here? Um, and so slowly I started working on changing those things, and it was, it was just really important to me. And I'll tell you, though, when the AOA hired me, a lot of people, if you know, if we're talking about data analytics, if we're talking about other publishing skills, a lot of people applied for that job who were a lot smarter than me.
But what my boss told me and I love her, we're very close. She's like, yeah, she has admitted by, you know, now that we're three years in, yeah, you were the personality hire and that is true. I was hired because they wanted someone who would change things. They wanted someone who would come in and be nice to my team, who would also silo the publications and make them integrate it into the departments and divisions that we have.
And then they also wanted someone who built a community city with the journals. And from day one until now, I have had the support and the leadership behind me to make these things happen. And if you know anything about me, I am a little crazy. I have some crazy ideas and I'll tell you what the AOA says yes to me probably 93% of the time. And that's a lot.
If you think about some of the wild stuff that I do, which we'll talk about in a little bit. Um, but that to have the vibe and to really be able to make meaningful changes, you have to have people behind you who are willing to let you do that. Um, so what did those first few months look like at the aoa? They were not easy. It was the time of COVID lockdowns.
This was June 2020. If you had told me a year before that I would pull up to a dark office building, meet a strange man in a Black mask at the door of a dark building and sit six feet apart from him to pick up my laptop and then go home and work with strangers who I had never met in person, I would have told you that you were crazy, so the vibe had to start there too. So like, how was I even going to get to know the people on my team?
How was I going to get to know my boss? How was I going to? Also, one of my big tasks was, as I mentioned, get to know the other departments and divisions within my organization. And I'll tell you what, that was. It just wasn't easy. Then on top of that, get to know the editors and the editorial boards of all of these journals.
And we had no idea when we would be able to meet in person again. And there was only going to be a one hour meeting anyway. It was a lot. Um, but people were ready for it. I was pushy. I showed up and faces had lots of virtual happy hours, had lots of Zoom calls. And we are where we are now.
Because people were willing to listen to me. They were willing to accept the vibe into their zone. Um, I also had a team who. We and Bonnie, I'm sure can speak to this a little bit. They had a little bit of PTSD. Um, they had they had no interaction with the AOA. They were as new to the AOA as I was. They also didn't have connection with our editors either.
They also did things. It was like walking into 1965. We didn't have a production tracking system at all. Every single. Um, and if Wolters kluwer is in the room, our commercial partner, they can attest to this. We were sending page proofs via career with handwritten changes. It was wild.
I didn't really understand the full scope of what I was walking into during the interview process, but it was like, OK, we have a room at the AOA where we have stacks on stacks of papers we print out. Every submission was like, wow, OK, I'm not even connected to a printer on Earth. And to print out the notes for today was a challenge because I don't use printers. Um, there was no internal interaction with any part of our organization that, you know, we really needed to have connection with.
For instance, our guidelines department. The most cited piece of the Journal of urology is our guideline summaries. And our two departments never spoke, so they had no idea how an impact factor worked. They're like, oh, we you, our stuff is what makes the Journal of urology this important. We didn't speak to our Office of research. We fund research all across urology, and the outputs of that were never getting published in our journals.
They were going to other journals. Like what? So those were the things, you know, those are just a few examples. There was no communication either between our publications. So the editors in chief did not even one another. There was no connection there. They didn't care about the other journals, not even.
But in a very apathetic kind of way. It wasn't an ego thing at all. Like, I don't like what even are the other journals? We don't care. Um, also the other thing is when I walked in, we didn't even offer open access as an option. Open access was predatory in the mind of the community. Um, people were like, why would someone ever pay to publish? Like what?
That's ridiculous. Um, we also, you know, had to get some strategy in place. That's where Bonnie came in. And also Delta Thank does not pay me, but I'm obsessed with them. And can highly recommend them. And she did not ask me to say this and she's probably let me say. Are you turning red?
Yeah, she is. Um, and I cannot say enough about reaching out for help. Ask for help. I went to the fellowship breakfast this morning. And one of the biggest pieces of advice people were giving the most amazing advice to it was a mentor mentee breakfast, and someone in the room said, ask for help. And that's what we did.
My boss and I went out with an RFP that we wanted a five year strategy plan to shake everything up and make it awesome, make it the best that it could be. We knew we couldn't figure this all out by ourselves, though. And also, if you know anything about me, I have a vibe. But I am terrible with data analytics I don't like. I understand it when it's handed to me, but how to get there? I'm like, I'm not.
That's not for me. Um, so that's where Delta think came in. Um, I'm going to introduce Bonnie again. She came in and she kind of walked. She I don't think she fully appreciated what she walked into until she started talking to us. So Bonnie. Well, I will say we are very privileged to have worked with you.
And we came in everything that Jennifer said was true. And so it is kind of like, where do you start? There are so many components that were backwards at the time, and your predecessor had been there decades, I believe, and policy two years, 52 years. Her predecessor had been there. But where she must have been at the time was sort of a maintenance period of where things had been, you know, 20 years ago.
So it was really behind the times, the program. And of course, Jennifer starts and she's full of energy and excitement and we're, you know, scanning across everything like, Oh my goodness, how do you get your hands around the challenge that the program is facing? Because when we went back way in time, you know, 15, 20 years ago, we could see how even you were with competition and you were really facing a competitive challenge in the market.
So internally, the challenges. But then there were a number of urology journals or particularly European urology, which had skyrocketed in prestige and an impact factor and was now beginning to take content that should have come to the Journal of urology. So taking a scan of all of that and understanding where we were, where our starting point is and even getting that together was a challenge.
But we started always with an understanding of what your readers and authors want. So where are they in this picture? And we started by surveying them and then doing a slew of interviews of the author community. What did they know? How did they feel about the program? Why did they make the choices to publish elsewhere? You know, your top urologists, how can we bring them back into the fold and create a community, not just a journal, but a community around it that makes it a very appealing and desired place to publish your top research.
And so through all of that, we pulled that together. We also did a ton of data analytics, as Jennifer said, understanding from financial perspectives, but also breaking down the impact factor. Not to make this an impact factor story, but it was important for editors and for the staff to understand how that gets built up and what kinds of content lead to an impact factor and how to diversify.
Even the content within the journal in which you published to make it a more valuable to readers or be more interesting to them in general, across commentary, across research articles, across reviews, of course, the guidelines pulling that all together into a comprehensive publication that adds value to your readers and also, by the way, will improve impact factor, but over time. So that's a longer that's a longer plan.
I know that's not your whole play. So we're really here more about community, but it all comes together in terms of creating the most valuable set of publications you can have. You also had urology practice up, and that journal had its own little challenges so that was more focused on practice and less on research and clinical research.
And that journal had been rejected for, for indexing for three times. I forgot it was three times, but I knew it had been several times, a lot because of poor policies or outdated policies and no ethics policies and things that you could fix. And actually, Wolters kluwer was helpful in putting all of that together as well. And actually, just a couple of weeks ago, you that was I'll jump ahead of myself, but that would have been one of our recommendations of creating best in class.
We pull all of that together. And also I shouldn't forget our news. So our news is the membership publication that was in scope of this. You're talking about the journal, the scientific journal. But AOA news was an important communication piece, of course, with membership and it all tied in together. And and when we were starting to work with you AOA news was only available.
One of those flip views on online. It's really, really hard to read online. It was, you know, technology that was 15 years old and this is, of course, is a mix of an advertising vehicle. So it is part of the financial success of the publication portfolio as well as a communication vehicle. And as Jennifer said, nobody was connected. So the AOA news people were over here and they had this flip thing and, you know, you was over here and and, you know, everybody was kind of doing their own thing.
So pulling that all together, pulling the insights from the readership community, they didn't even know about urology practice. That even though that journal had been around for a number of years, by that point, I mean, people just didn't even know it existed. So there was a detriment in marketing and even positioning what that journal could be and how it adds value to the whole portfolio and to practitioners overall.
And so we ended up pulling into four main categories. It's not going to sound too surprising, but the first one, because you also talked about open access, there was no open access and there was no open access. Even the journals, there wasn't a hybrid option, there wasn't anything. So a mix of an open access set of policies, but also portfolio mix and diversification and launching an open access journal and educating your editorial board and educating the team of why that would be valuable.
And that was part of the interviews and part of the survey. Would people would your community accept an open access journal? And it was like 75% were like all open to it. Right it was really terrific. Certainly we talked about in a whole category of best in class improvements, and that was everything from like changing from paper to digital in terms of peer review to the submission process was so difficult. It was such a barrier and they had all these challenges and figures and table submissions and all, you know, some of this, you know, goes back 20 years.
But it was kind of modernizing what it means to have a publication and to break down every barrier to submission you possibly could have make it easy for authors to submit. We had a whole component around the reimagination of news, its delivery, its advertising, its integration, both from an editorially to highlight articles not that they would have the same kinds of articles, but even funneling some case reviews and case reports that were not necessarily right for journal of urology, but could be in a unos, for instance, and continue to make that a more interesting delivery vehicle of content around the society.
And the last component that we bucketed was around enhanced marketing, branding and continued voice of customer, voice of readership, voice of authors into there and to really build a reason around why, why should you submit you know let's that whole concept of like the vibe and, and changing the vibe of publishing in a way was huge. And we wanted to get that across as we were starting to work through our teams.
How do we get that across to the community? Like this is really this can be a great place to publish and all the changes are made. Also with post publication and post publication, marketing and community building around that. And of course you were the right personality to make that all happen. And I'll stop talking. Thank you.
Pass it on to. All right. So my story is also similar in that it's the story of starting from scratch. And this is kind of taking a side trip into a completely different journal called microbiology spectrum. It's a journal that we at ASM, we relaunched it back in 2021, and we decided to relaunch it as a broad scope, open access title, so encompassing all microbiology research from basic clinical to applied.
And in addition to that, it would be a sound science approach, meaning no, not taking into impact or novelty into account and making editorial decisions. And then on top of that, it's also a cascade journal, meaning that if you are rejected from another title, you can have a second chance at microbiology spectrum. So knowing all of this, when we relaunched it, we figured due to the projected volume, we would need somewhere around 400 editors.
And no, that's not the jet lag speaking or my lack of sleep or having a lot of coffee. We needed 400 editors, which is a lot of people. So OK, well, starting an editorial board from scratch. Usually when you approach an editorial board, either a new one or people cycling off, you usually have some kind of committee or search committee who look for people who would be a good person for this role, who is known in this field.
Who do we know about and who do we think would be a good choice? Well, I don't know about you, but I don't think I know 400 people. Jennifer might know 400 people. I'm actually sure she most likely does. But, um, it's just not conceivable. So we started from scratch with a very small team of people just to get the journal started.
But it just became increasingly clear that you can't do it on our own. We can't do it just reaching out to existing networks. So in sort of a. Sort of a not really a desperation, but saying, OK, we need to figure out what's a better way to do this. And we said, OK, well, let's try an open call. So other journals I know have done open calls in the past and even we had done some very, very small ones, but not to the extent that we decided to do this.
We said, well, let's just open it up to everybody and anybody who wants to apply. If they're a microbiologist, if they meet our set of criteria, they can be on the board. And so we started this again, not quite knowing what we were getting ourselves into. And I would say over the past, from at least from April through the current year, we are still actively building the board.
We've received over 2000 applications. And we have chosen over 300 editors from those applications. So those are very big numbers and they sound impressive and the numbers are not what I want you to focus on. If you take that away today, what I want you to what I really like to focus on are the people behind those numbers. We received applications from over 80 countries.
We had a good mix of early career as well as people later in their career, and it's all people who are just very, very passionate about wanting to be a part of this community and wanting to be a part of this sound science approach within microbiology. And from that, we have been able to build a board that has representation from around 40 countries, which as a American based society, that's not that's not a small feat.
I mean, traditionally a lot of our editorial boards historically have been predominantly us based or even just based in North America, to be honest. Um, and then we also have been able to maintain a pretty close 50 over 50 gender balance. And we also have a few non-binary individuals on our board as well. So a lot of great successes. But that said, there are things that are still challenging about this approach.
Um, so in terms of what we saw, maybe only of the applicants, we got only around 25% were women, which is surprising. But also when you really think about it, not surprising at all. And also in addition, yes, we got over 80 countries to apply. However, looking at the data, about 50% of those applicants were either from two countries. And you can probably guess that those two countries are one of them were that right now is the United States.
The other one is China. And again, not surprising given the huge growth in that region these past 10 years. Um, then also in addition to that, it's a lot of staff work. We're a we're a mid-sized society, but still there's not a lot of us working on this journal. It's myself, um, the journal development editor, anon balasubramani, as well as my two assistant managing editors.
And we received a very large number of applicants on a monthly basis. Anand is usually the one who goes through them as he has a scientific background. Again, I am not a scientist myself. I do not think it's fair for me to judge somebody's qualifications. So and from there it's just a lot of staff work to, number one, cull through all these applications to see who meets our criteria.
Then it's also working with the editor in chief, who, again, she is very passionate and devoted has been committed to this open board from day one. However, she is also a working scientist. She has her own lab and her own responsibilities. So yes, we might have a queue of maybe 100 people at a time. We're trying to get her to please take a look at this. But she has a lot of other things on her plate.
And then, yes, when she finally does say yes, OK, great. Let's onboard them. How do you onboard a large number of editors and especially people that we want to be fairly independent. So given the volume of what we receive, we want our editors to be able to more or less act independently on our own and trust that they can do that. And what does that mean?
That means they're the ones who do more or less an initial evaluation as soon as they receive that paper, is it in scope? Should it be rejected right away before peer review? If it can be peer reviewed, who do you invite? So they have to invite those reviewers. And then read those reviews and make a decision, not a recommendation, a decision as I don't want my editor in chief having to.
Well, think around last year or first full year, we published over 2000 articles and that's a lot to ask one person to check 2000 articles. So we want these people to be independent. So we have to make sure from the beginning we give them good training, we give them resources, we create resources from scratch. So that there's a centralized place where they know where all the policies are, what to do, who to ask, if they have no idea.
Um, and from there, just again, just typical maintenance things like system permissions. Is putting them on websites. So it's a lot of staff work. So knowing what I know from what we had the past year, we said, wow, this is something that's actually pretty cool and we'd like to tell other people about it. As I'm sure this is not scholarly publishing is not a silo.
I mean, there's only I don't think people spend a lot of time recreating the wheel when you don't have to. And if it's something that, yes, I don't have the copyright on open boards, again, anybody could do that. And I think that's something that we want to empower people to do and also not only empower them to know that this is a really great option, but also these are things you need to know because it is a lot of work.
You just don't open something and that instantly creates an equitable, perfect board does take work and diligence and things on our side. So I started myself and as well as a non, we talked at a few conferences of starting at last year at the atypon user group, which Jennifer was also one of my co-panelists on that. So that's when I first heard about Jennifer and all the interesting things that she's been doing at Iowa to really revitalize and reinvigorate the journal and the editorial board in that community.
And again, since then, we also have found ourselves on the same panel A few other times. So it's OK. This is an interesting pattern. Um, and it's just been every time the talks come, we just evolve more and more and to learn a bit more about each other. And so finally Jennifer asked me, hey, do you want to come talk to my editorial board?
And I said, no one's ever asked me to talk to their board before. That's kind of odd. I'm OK talking to scarlet publishing professionals. I'm OK talking to my own board. But a completely different journal, which I knew I knew of journal of urology way back in the day when I was still actually a production editor at Elsevier. The only thing I knew about it is that it was a very storied, prestigious title.
It had its own way of doing things and not to ask any questions, and that's really all I knew. But so I said, OK, well, given the work that Jennifer has done in these past three years, it's amazing. And sure, I would love to talk to your editors. And I came in. I had no idea what to expect, but everybody was very engaged and had a lot of questions for me. I think I spent more time answering questions than actually doing my prepared five slides that I brought.
But coming away from that, I thought, wow, this is something amazing. I know we talked to each other, but I think we don't really use other people as much as a resource from outside of our own organizations. I mean, I think that's why we're all here today. We're learning from each other. We're trying to figure out things and knowledge that other people may not be aware of within your own organizations.
So you can take that back when you get back. Um, so it's like overall, it's been an inspirational to me as well, just to see Jennifer's approach. And I've been trying to do some a few similar things as well, saying, OK, if there's something I don't know about, I want other people to know about, hey, can maybe not talk to my editors, but maybe come talk to my task force committee. Tell us about your how implementing a editor has worked for you.
What were the challenges? How has that worked out for your journal? Have you seen noticeable differences? Um, and it's really great to have that framework and to yeah, just really be more a part of this community in that sense and mean and Jennifer has since told me and she could probably talk more about this as well. She and the Journal of urology, they've started a few open calls of their own with a lot of really great success.
And it just made me overjoyed to hear that they had they were able to more or less take an idea because again, you come, you talk, you don't know, OK, maybe they listen, they'll think about it, but it gets put to the side along with everything else. The fact that they actually actioned on it and saw it as something to prioritize I thought was absolutely fantastic. And it really.
Yeah, it just makes me feel very fuzzy inside. But get so I will pass it over to a little bit more on the editor view of how this has gone. So what these women are doing works and I'm a testament to that. So so basically, I am a pediatric urologist. And when you're a urologist, our parent organization is the American Urological Association. So the AOA.
So if you want to receive the journal, if you want to attend the meetings, this is your parent organization that you pay dues to that you're a part of. And once a month you receive your journal in the mail and your AOA news pamphlet. And this is what connects you to the world of academic urology. And growing up as a budding urologist, I would kind of look in the journal.
I would see the same type of urologic oncology articles from like the same 20 people. I would read the AOA news, which was always written by the same few people, and I would always feel just moderately disconnected from the world of academic urology. And just to paint a picture, urology is currently. So now in 2023 it is 10% women. OK, 90% identify as male and the vast majority are actually close to retirement age.
And so we're sort of seeing this interesting change in demographics where we're seeing a lot of people retiring and a lot of young people coming into the field who I think are very desiring of change. And so I think that Jennifer taking over at this time is really monumental because it really harnesses the power of people wanting to change their parent organization to reflect what's happening in the world, if that makes sense.
So for me, myself personally, I always felt like I love what I do, I love urology, I want to publish, I want to be productive, but didn't see myself reflected when it came to editorial boards or really even just the content, to be perfectly honest. And so I think that it was really interesting for me. So right before Jennifer started, I created a group called urologists for equity.
And this group was really a grassroots organization of people who are looking to kind of, you know, connect with each other across the country. You know, I may be the only woman in my institution and you may be the only person of a minoritized background at your institution and have no support system. And so we wrote a letter and we actually submitted it to the Journal of urology. This is dirty laundry.
And they sent us back a very polite email that before Jennifer that was like, Thank you so much for submitting this, but this really doesn't fit what we're looking to put out into the world. And so, you know, when you put yourself out there as a person who wants to publish you, you feel that back, right? I see you're not putting out material that I connect with and you're rejecting trying me trying to put new ideas into the world.
So Jennifer, she comes in and, you know, she reaches out to me and she's like, look, I think we connected on Twitter to be like, perfectly honest. I am very outspoken about wanting to change the face of urology to be more representative of the population. She was like, look, I think that I like what you're doing. Would you be interested in connecting with us as like an online content editor?
And I had a really open and honest conversation with her where I was like, yes, but I don't want to be a member of a group that doesn't, you know. Walk the walk. You know, like, I kind of want to see what this is all about. And it's been a really amazing and fruitful relationship having joined this team, because the truth is that it really is about harnessing people who want change. And so Jennifer and Dr. Siemens have really created that environment.
And as a result, you can see all of the changes that have happened since this sort of new vibe has come into town. So just to give some more background on how all of this has sort of played out. So now the aihua group of publications has something called the head table, and the head table is effectively a group of individuals from the editorial board who are all committed to die in different arenas and varieties from different backgrounds, geographical locations, gender identities, race, ethnicity, et cetera.
And so this group has actually started just publishing thing and, and writing like this is what we've done. And what a small step to take, but important step to take to kind of communicate with the community. These are our values and not just our values and writing, but these are the steps we've taken to actually change our community for the better. And I think that that's been a really amazing and tangible product that's sort of come out of these relationships.
The other thing is, is that it's no longer siloed. So I feel like there's a lot of overlap between the news urology, practice, Jew and even the editorial boards from other journals that are not connected financially. And so I think that it's been really wonderful to kind of see this community grow organically as a result of just becoming more inclusive and really valuing the thoughts and opinions of other people who are involved. I'm on the I'm on the board of the Society of Women in urology and the Society of Women in urology has been a group that is kind of growing in excitement and fervor.
And last year, in June, after the Dobbs decision came out, there was a lot of discussion about whether or not this is something that we should tackle, right? We are only 10% of practicing urologists, but we do feel as physicians that this is something that we're passionate about and we want to be able to talk about it. And we look around and we see all of these other major journals are saying something, right?
I mean, we have the big journals making these comments. And so I think we sort of I very timidly but boldly emailed Jennifer and Dr. Siemens and I was like, would we be able to say something? And I was really, really excited to see that Dr. Siemens with the head table basically put out a commentary talking about how it is OK for us as physicians and people on editorial boards to tackle these difficult conversations and to keep these commentaries open.
You don't have to necessarily shut these conversations down. And maybe historically, they were such as was evidenced by the prior letter that had tried to submit. And so I thought that that was also just a really powerful and tangible change since all of these ideas had been implemented. And then on top of that, there is the idea not just of how you engage people in the community in terms of how do you get people to submit articles to you.
But one of the cool things, and I think that this has also kind of come about through the pandemic is people want to feel more connected, right? You don't know what other people are up to and how they're doing. And so with I think really with the backing of Jennifer, there's been an entire community that has really rallied together to form, just like a cohesive group who want to interact with the journal publications and all the pubs.
They have a much more focused online presence. And so by harnessing social media, they're connecting with medical students. They're connecting with residents and Fellows and people of all ages and backgrounds and locations and countries. And that's been really amazing. And so Jennifer has really done a great job of I mean, honestly, probably literally befriending every single person and keeping them close by.
So then she can remember them and make them feel like they're part of the community and bring them in. And that's been really great. And so she even created these Fanny packs. I'm wearing one and I'm not paid to sponsor it. Um, and so like write a Fanny pack, you're like, oh, who cares? But these are actually like a hot ticket item because when you wear it, it's like a symbol that you're connected to the journal.
And if you she now has a booth at the AOA. She was saying that previously they didn't have a booth. The booth is like a hot ticket location. Everyone wants to stop by. Everyone wants to take a picture with Jennifer. Everyone wants to post on Twitter and everyone wants to have a Fanny pack. And they post their Fanny packs in the wild on Twitter as if it was like the garden gnome from amelie, right?
But how powerful is that as a symbol of community when you previously, just three years ago, had an editorial board who didn't even know each other? And I think that that's like a real testament to what this team has done for the publications. And as a result, I think we've seen a shift in terms of not just the community. So you're going to see diversity filtering in through the types of articles that are being published.
You're going to see diversity. In terms of the reviewers, I think a lot more people are now willing to engage and say like, hey, I want to be a reviewer for your journals. How do I sign up? And that's something that's very under discussed, right? Like how do you really build a robust group of people who want to review for you? Building community is a really great way of doing that.
And then you have more people submitting to your journal because they see you as a friendly place to submit their papers. OK, so you open up the community. People want to submit to you and then you also change the representation of leadership. And so when I first started and I expressed some of my concerns to Jennifer, I slipped her a list of people that I thought deserved to be on editorial boards who had been passed over for other reasons, and most of them come from minoritized backgrounds or women or gender diverse individuals.
And I said like, look, these are people who are not like just early career people who need a chance, but people who might be like mid or senior career who should have had a chance 10 years ago, who still don't have any editorial board positions. And I slipped her this list and she said she was like, Casey, I have this list. I can't do anything with it right this second.
But just wait and trust me. And I swear to you that I think every single person on that list has now been engaged in some way, shape or form throughout our publications. And I can't say how powerful that is and how much change that has brought to the community. And so I think that there's actually been a ton of change that's happened in the past 2 to 3 years, and it's really hard to measure it, but that it's been a really amazing experience in terms of the way that we've engaged people and created a community around that.
And when Jennifer was like, what can we still change? It's like really hard to think about it because it's been such a whirlwind and it's been so exciting that I think just the transparency of the processes, continuing these open calls, embracing the younger generations of urologists who want to see these changes, integrating the news into more of like a sort of. Into like more of a publication than just like a little flip book on a website, right?
Yeah, people are really enjoying it. There's so much positivity surrounding it that I think that it's sort of an unstoppable force. I also wear a hat at another publication, which we call the gold journal, which is one of the other urology publications, and I don't feel like there's competition and I love being able to kind of talk about the things that we're doing on both sides and to engage.
And so between working with the Society of Women in urology, the gold journal and the publications, I'm beginning to see so much crossover and overlap that it only makes the community stronger. And so I think that that's been really productive and fruitful. And that's what I have to say from my side. You feel a little teary? Honestly, so I do. I took some notes on some of the things that you all said with a pink pen just to stay on brand in case anyone's interested.
Um, but I just have so much to say that I didn't even prepare to say. And now I'm going to do that. I would first like to say that you all are amazing and Thank you for going along with the crazy with the hot mess express, because honestly, the hot mess express does have an ultimate goal, and that is for everyone to feel included. And that's what I love about SSP, is I always feel included here.
I can just be my weird pink self and you guys are like, come on, Jennifer, bring it on. Um, a couple things, though, to note here. First thing is Bonnie and our five year strategy plan, they did such a great job at Delta. Thank on our five year strategy plan. We finished it in actually under three years. And so now we're like, Oh yeah, we're like, OK. It was just so well executed.
And when they handed it to us, we're like, dang, this is a lot of work. I don't know how we're going to do this, but then we're like, OK, but we're going to do it. And we did. And it has been with help from this community. It has been with help from everyone sitting at this table and from an organization that really was inspired to make it happen.
I mean, I can't say enough to you know, if you find yourself in a spot where the people behind you are not backing you, then you're probably in the wrong spot. Um, and I know that's really, you know, that's easy for me to say, but I, you know, now that I'm old, I really wish I had gotten myself out of a lot of situations a lot earlier where I wasn't supported in the way that I am now. Um, another thing is I want to talk about.
I got there to the AOA. My first day was wild. Let's just say that we had this massive ethical concern day one, I said, OK. Oh, so where's our publications committee? Oh silly me. Oh silly me. Um, lol, what's a publications committee like? I'm like, who's going to help me with this ethical.
That's your thing, Jennifer. And I'm like, Oh no, we don't. Jennifer does not make the ethical decisions. Um, so that was interesting and said, OK, AOA we need a publications committee and we need it like yesterday. I don't know how you've been functioning all these years without this. So the AOA is like, OK, write it down.
Like, what do you want it to be? And I wrote it down and they're like, OK, you can do that. One of my big things of it though, was we need it non urologists on that committee. So Bonnie is now a member of our publications committee. I sucked her and she's like, Oh my god, really? And I was like, yes, really? Really and she has been amazing. Jennifer pasinelli, who's not at the meeting, but she's at the biophysical society.
She is our other non urologist on that publications committee. And what's great is all of my editors are always saying, ask Bonnie and Jennifer. Ask Bonnie and Jennifer. Ask Bonnie and Jennifer. We want to know what other people are doing who are not from urology. And how fascinating and awesome is that they said yes. And then, you know, I do also bug them with all of our ethical stuff.
I sent you a doozy this week. Um, but anyway, anyway, though, it's just great. And then and they are just so well respected on that committee. They come to every meeting and show up prepared and I honestly cannot tell you how many times I say no for you because they're like, can she come do this? Can she come do this? Can she do this?
Um, and so, yeah, it's pretty awesome. We love you. Um, so then another thing is Dr. Seidman was talking about the front matter of our journals, and that is something, you know, when I first got to the aoa, I'm like, where's your, your good, juicy stuff in the front of the journal that makes people want to pick it up and read it. And they're like, huh, what are you talking about?
And I'm like, no, you guys have to be talking about stuff up here. You know, you have to talk about the hard stuff, the Dobbs things you need to talk about. Also, like, not everyone agrees with all the research we're printing. Why aren't we print, you know, having point counter points, things like that. Um, also, like I said, the AOA does let me do the crazy.
So the Fanny pack thing, they're like, OK, I don't get it, but OK, just do it, I guess. Did probably, you know, ask for forgiveness rather than permission on that one. But anyway, it has it's just the best thing because my favorite thing is to open up Instagram and Twitter because you're around people then continue to show me, look, here I am out in the wild with my Fanny pack, the head table.
I should mention that head stands for Health equity and diversity has been amazing as well. We actually welcome membership on that from you don't even have to be on our board to be a part of that. So far, we don't have. Any non editors on there. But that's what I'm saying. Why would we have a group that wouldn't be inclusive in every way?
Dr. Seidman also mentioned the Society of Women in urology, and I should probably not talk about this right now because I might have another breakdown like I did that day. But I first of all, they let me join as an editorial office member. I think made a new category. He's the first non urologist. Yes yes. And I'm so excited about that.
But I walked into this room, you guys, the vibe. You want to talk about a vibe they had standing room only at their meeting at the standing room only. And when I walked into that room, so many people were wearing pink and I was like, oh, my gosh. And then afterwards, though, everyone came and spoke to me and was like, you know, things. We just love being part of the publications now and then. I might have had a mental breakdown because I was really exhausted and started to hysterically sob in front of everyone.
But anyway, though, how great is it to be a place where you can be your true, authentic self? And then another thing I just wanted to mention is the monthly series that we do, and that's where Adriana was one of our first speakers. So all I can say is we hung up the phone with her. She was peppered with questions, and then Dr. Simmons was immediately, I think actually he was sitting in my office with me for that one call.
So we hung up the phone and he's like, OK, we're doing this now and you're figuring it out, Jennifer and we're having an open call for editors, so we don't need to Thank god, find 400 people. But when we had an opening, we put that out there into the wild. We kind of did it organically. We didn't have like a great plan behind it. Like a lot of things that I do, you know, just kind of threw it out there.
100 applications, amazing people we never would have thought of. And they every single one of them was awesome. Our editors loved it, picked someone from that pool of applicants. Then we wrote a letter though, and it was just like, look, we love you. We love you. I'm so sorry we didn't pick you. We only have this one spot, but we're obsessed with you.
Stay with us. Stick with us. I promise something will work out. And now we have 99 new friends, plus 1 really awesome editor that we never would have had that person as an editor if it weren't for that open call. So just, you know, I encourage you to go out there and go for it. Another thing that we gave away this year that worked out really well, we do a newsletter for the Journal of urology and we call it the Jew stream.
And one of the big things in there, one of the most urologists are also very competitive and they love their pets. And so I have an email inbox filled with pet pictures, people freaking out like, what's it going to take to get my pet in Jew stream? Um, so Dr. Seidman has a beautiful Kat and what Dr. Simmons said to me. So now these, you know, the crazy is now bleeding into other people.
He said, I want us to have a pet of the month calendar to give away with the Fanny pack. And so I believe Teddy was November. Mr November. So we did the pet of the month calendar. And my best story from the meeting was I got this text from this strange British number of us like, I don't know who this is. I open it up.
It was our competitor, European urology, the editor in chief. He's like, Jennifer, I need to find you right this instant. I will come anywhere that you are in the city of Chicago. Can you just give me a Fanny pack? I can't go home without one. And I was like, OK, say less. I'm like, I will find you right now. So I went racing to find this man. And of course, I was prepared to take a selfie.
No, he said, I need to take a selfie because I'm putting this on Twitter. And he did it. And I was like, OK, there you go. And my point there is collaboration over competition. I mean, there are competition, but there are so many things that you need to collaborate for. So now we work with European Urology. They are they have a better impact factor than we do, but also we need to do things together.
We went to Milan this year and worked with them to do a writing course. They came to Chicago and did a writing course with us. Now we're going to Paris next year and doing this now we're going to start working with the Canadian journal of urology and do some similar partnerships, because why would we compete about things like that? We now invite you to come to our monthly series because again, why would we compete over my big idea that I would love to do with them?
And we're trying to work out the details, but we would also love to put together a die reviewing board that would be on the mastheads of all of the big journals gold journal, EU and bju, who are. Again, our competition. But there's also very limited resources for reviewers in that space. So why would we compete there? So again, I could go babbling on more for days.
I'd love to see if there's any questions from the audience before we talk a little more. Hi there Marcelo from I'm a plus. I'm also on the publications committee of another society. So yeah, really just inspiring. Yeah to hear about the work that you all have done. Um, so yeah, two questions. I guess it was super interesting to hear how this combination of a, of a kind of charismatic publications leader coming in, but then also, Dr. Seidman, what you talked about, this kind of grassroots sort of energy from membership for sort of change in a number of different ways, but about the publications program in particular.
Um, so yeah, hearing those two sides of that was really interesting to me. Um, so one question. Yeah are there sounds like you connected over Twitter, right? Not through kind of a formal society governance mechanism, but I'm curious about that. Like are there ways for society governance to help bring those two things together or do you think it's really about relationships and less so about formal governance?
Um, and then second question. Yeah in the prompt, Jennifer, that you read at the beginning, you talked about really instilling that vibe and threading it through processes from beginning to end. And I just wondered, could you give kind of a really specific kind of boring example of, of maybe instilling this into something like editorial process, making things easier to submit?
Um, Yeah. I guess I'm curious, like, does your partner, does Walter have to be part of the vibe in order for this to work? Like, yeah, how do you, how does that really embed itself in little things like processes where maybe there are vendors or sort of other folks involved? Boys oppressions of governance. London yeah, sure.
Think that there are definite ways for societies themselves to create that inclusive environment and to motivate people. I think it just has to be incredibly intentional. Right? and so a lot of the times I don't think societies are intentional when it comes to creating community and engaging membership and really cultivating that from a sort of early career, even trainee perspective, because those are your prime people, right?
And so I've always been kind of disappointed in the engagement process. So if you're on the society side of things, I think that there's a lot of room for opportunity to engage folks. And I think things like open calls are big. I think social media is huge. And it doesn't have to be a single person's individual social media account.
Like right now, the Journal of urology has a really robust social media presence and people engage with that. And so I think that once you create that inclusive environment and create a community around your society, you'll find more engagement. However, what I will say is that someone obviously runs that right. There's always a person behind the curtains and so you want that person to be strategic and to really reach out and to be intentional and to be like always thinking about diversity in terms of location, career, stage, gender, identity, race, ethnicity, because that's how I think truly show membership that you care about those things.
And then to answer the question. So for Wolters kluwer and also my eyes are terrible, so I can't see if anyone from Wolters kluwer is in the room. Wait who is it? Was it you, shelly? Hey OK. Hi My eyes are so bad. I'm ashamed. I need to go to the eye doctor, but it's a marriage.
OK, so it's a marriage. It's a partnership. It really is. And I drive them crazy, and I say this all the time, but it really is true. We were not being a good partner to Wolters kluwer when I got here. That's just the honest truth, and that just isn't good for anyone.
So what does a partnership look like? I mean, you know, I mentioned I have four kids, I have a husband. And so, like, if I'm doing the dishes and driving the kids all around, he better be mopping the floors and folding the laundry and putting it away type of thing, you know? Um, it's not just like, oh, hey, Wolters, kluwer just do like, they're not our vendor.
It's not like, OK, just do all of our work and send us a check, and that's all we're going to do. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's like, really, really working closely and carefully and making sure that their needs are met and our needs are met and doing that together. So what does that look like in reality? An example is let's just talk about the submission process, learning from them.
OK? Wolters kluwer you tell us like what's best practice? You have proprietary journals and you have many, many also very significant medical societies like ours that your partners with. What are other people doing help us to be better. And then at the same time, then us. It's up to us, though they can't know what urologists want and what our authors and what our, you know, our reviewers want, our editors and what they want editorial manager to look like.
So actually, we're working right now on a project. One one of my other online content editors came to me and he's like, look, he's like, let's revolutionize peer review. And I'm like, say no more. That sounds exciting. And so that's what we've been doing. So we've been sitting down and basically doing you'd be so proud of me, Bonnie, doing this.
Oh my gosh. Because this is outside of my wheelhouse of like doing things. So we've been doing focus groups and putting together these process charts. Oh my gosh, it's a hot mess. Express it looks terrible, but we've already been able to implement some quick changes that have been making people happy.
But then also we are working on what does it look like to have a nice clean roadmap for the peer review process. And I also, you know, I had to show our underwear drawer essentially and say, look, Dr. Harris, just one thing. You really do need to know. The first group you need to do a focus group on is us, the editorial office.
Like I'm ashamed to admit, we need to look at the processes of what we're doing. The picture he drew of that was I'm like getting dizzy thinking about it. It was the biggest hot mess express but we're going to fix it. So these are the things, you know, that you have to be looking at. And yes, a lot of it is not exciting.
Pink Fanny packs. It's, you know, making things better for the people who are working hard for us. So that's my very long answer to your question, I'm sure if I can just add one more point to all of this, because we talk a lot internally and all the recommendations that we've put forward, and I'm always a big fan of measure, measure, measure and understanding.
So I think, you know, it asked me about opportunities and things to do next, and I think it's probably time to like, did those messages make it deeply into the community? And because we've heard some, you know, or they're great researchers out there and they still aren't 100% sure if Ju is the right journal for them, you know, for various reasons, maybe the message didn't get completely through.
So I think it behooves all of us to be in constant contact, you know, with your readers, with your authors, and making sure, you know, if you're doing net promoter score, if you're doing that kind of measurement analysis is are those messages, you know, you know, funneling down into the community deeply where you need it to be and it's not just some kind of an ivory tower, but although there's amazing things that have happened, you know, I think there's an opportunity to do that.
You're right. I know I hate to measure things. So that's why we have Delta think. OK so I have that's why we have Bonnie on our speed dial. So that's I think our next project to work on. Does anyone else have any questions? Oh, Yeah. No, go ahead. OK Oh.
Hi, I'm Latoya Fletcher and I'm the editor engagement manager for the Aces. So I did have a couple curiosity questions for you, Jennifer. One is I also feel like I was a personality hire and I'm lucky enough to have the buy in from the organization. But with having almost 900 editors, how did you get their attitudes to change and have buy in from them once you arrived all pink and bubbly?
And then to as far as social media, which content do you feel resonates the most with editors specifically? OK, great questions. So I got lucky. I got there and it turns out nobody understood that they should enjoy being an editor. It was just kind of like, ugh, I'm like, just doing this and. How did we get the buy in?
We just started slowly. I have Dr. Siemens is our new editor. And before that, though, his predecessor. He was like, why do you want to meet with me all the time? Do we mean why does the board want to meet? And I was like, look, here's why. Well, it turns out when it was time for him to leave his position, he stayed six months later than he should have.
We're like, Dr. smith, you got to go. You got to go. And it was he's like he's like, it's really hard for me to leave because I wish I had had this vibe all along. But what did that look like? was being slow. It was being intentional. And it was me reaching out. And every single time I reached out, though, everyone always took my call and they're like, OK, this.
Yeah, we're in. So we meet all the time. Now we meet in small groups of our senior editors. We meet with we have early career editors on our board, which we did not have before. We meet with those groups. We meet with disease state editorial groups within our boards and everyone wants to do it. People very rarely say no.
It's usually just for something like a surgery or something that they're saying no. But Yeah. Can I piggyback on that? I think that when you're looking at your and when you're looking at engaging with people, especially when you're coming into a new organization, you should look at the process of how these people became editors and on your editorial board.
And so historically, what you'll find is people might have this position and hold on to it until they die. That's a problem, right? I mean, I think Jennifer walked into that. A lot of people were like, should have retired 10 years ago and are still holding on with both hands. And the other question is, how did they get chosen?
And a lot of the times it was like, you know, without airing any dirty laundry, if the editor is from mush organization, they're going to tap all of the people around them, right? And so what you have is a favoritism embedded system where people are told to do it. They're not actually actively trying to get this position and it's theirs forever until they decide to give it up. And so that's, I think, a problem.
And if you see that within your organization, you need to consider things like term limits and open calls, because what you're going to find is that people want people who want to be a part and want to engage will apply and want to be a part of the process. So I think it's kind of about changing that. And Jennifer didn't talk about that, but I think that's one of the most powerful changes that she made within our organization.
And then the social media content question is what works for us the best is anything that has again, engagement. So we have a wonderful online content editor team that helps us with that. But people again want to understand the vibe. So videos are great. We work with actually, that's how I know Latoya initially. We work with cactus communications and they make visual abstracts for us that are absolutely beautiful and the engagement for those cactus doesn't pay me either.
But the engagement for those is insane. It's just, you know, about really getting people to consume your content in a different way that's accessible for them. Susan yes. What's your question? I'm scared a little. No, no. And Thank you.
And to be fair and my disclosure is that I've known Jennifer for a long time and I've watched her grow. And I knew when she went to Iowa, I knew exactly what was going on. And so I've heard a lot of this, and I'm so proud of my friend for what she's done. And I get to ask her questions and text message all the time. So this question is not for the Iowa, but it's for the American Society of microbiology.
So, Adriana, this question is for you. We are in the middle right now of we just we're doing two searches. One is completed and the second one will be completed soon and effective in January, we will have two brand new ad boards. We are a small medical society like the AOA. We're very related. We're the kidneys.
So we handle what gets sent to you, if you will. And one of our directives is to get a more diverse board. Every category of diversity. And I'm fascinated by what you've done for with the open calls. And we're I don't know that we can do that, given how conservative. We are.
But I'm very curious. You talked about the trust you have in your editors. And I thought I heard you say you don't have regular board meetings. And I'm just wondering, how do you manage this very large international board? Because that's the hit that we keep getting is, oh, we can't have international because we have to produce this journal and we have to have weekly board meetings and we can't schedule it for Australia time.
Can you talk about that a little bit? I know it's kind of mundane compared to the pink Fanny pack, but it's really interesting. No, Thank you so much for that question. So we do have meetings per se, but we have to be very strategic about those meetings because it's one thing to build a board and get diversity, especially from a geographic level. And that's something that a lot of editors who historically yes, they know, OK, well, I do need they do need to have like, let's say, for example, representation in China, you know, especially since a lot of research is coming from China.
And they're on board with the idea. But in practice, they said, well, how do I communicate? You know, we're all in different time zones, et cetera. So it's I can't say that it's easy. It's something that we still are kind of managing ourselves, but a few things that have worked. So we do have we do have a few times a year. We do aim to have very general editorial board meetings where we give them updates, reminders, et cetera.
But those are very large meetings, especially when you have and we do have one in the Western hemisphere time and other one in the Eastern hemisphere time, and that involves at least one of us on the team, you know, staying up at about
10: 00 at night Eastern.
10: But it is what it is. People show up and they're very appreciative of our time. But that's really not enough just to have, you know, just having a meeting because, again, even in those situations, it's not all the editors, it's not all 300 people, but it's still a larger group. And sometimes people might feel intimidated speaking up in a larger group. Um, so what we're trying to so we have, we try to make ourselves as accessible as possible to them.
10: So whether that's encouraging them to we have a support structure more or less. So we let them know if you're having trouble with, let's say, making a decision. So you have a split decision. Reviewer one says, yes, this is great. Reviewer two says, throw it in the trash. How do you reconcile those two, those two ideas? So we say, you know, your senior editor is there for you.
10: So we do have a structure where we have another layer of editorial leadership where there's somebody that can reach out to for a second opinion or just a sanity check. And also, of course, they can reach out to staff if they have any kind of questions or we also try to help them help each other. And so trying to create that engagement, that's something that's one of our key priorities this year.
10: In the past, what we've done is we've had a Slack channel historically, not everybody is on the Slack channel, but the people who are. It's a great way to have maybe like at least, you know, a few people be able to talk to each other or just have an area where, you know, people can ask questions. And sometimes I sometimes I answer the question, but I'm pleasantly surprised.
10: And that as we've been doing this and there's more editors who've been on the journal for over a year now, sometimes people step in and say, oh, yeah, this is the right answer. I'm like, oh, you did my job for me. That's amazing. I can go back to other things. But we're also trying to figure out how to do more focused meetings.
10: So whether that's a focus on a particular subject area, because again, it's a broad scope journal, we want to make sure that we're reaching out to everybody where they are and say, OK, well, what's going well in clinical microbiology right now? What kind of papers are you seeing? Are there things you feel are in scope? Does everybody feel the same about what are we saying is in scope versus not in scope, or are there things that we're getting that are really interesting that we should highlight?
10: And should we have collections from there and have editors take charge of those collections so that they have more engagement in the journal. But we're also starting to looking to get more regionally focused meetings as well. So this past December, we onboarded our first senior editor from China again. So a lot of that has been a big learning challenge for us as well as, again, you know, since she's on a different time zone, it's at least one of us trying to stay awake and make sure that she feels supported or sometimes if it's a meeting is not possible, I'll just do a pre-recorded zoom, kind of check in or chat and say, hey, Hello Hui, how are you doing?
10: This is the thing in the system. I wanted to show you how to do. If you have questions, let me know and I'll record another video. Hopefully my bird isn't screaming in the background and you can hear what I'm saying. So there's a few. So it's something that we're trying to as now that we do have a larger board, we say, OK, we have all these people, how do we keep.
10: I'm engaged and I'm just very inspired by a lot of what Jennifer has done as well in terms of making sure that she's talking to her editorial board and giving them opportunities to not just talk with us as a society, but talk with each other, because that's how they're here, to make connections and network and find people that, again, they would not have been able to work with before. So well, Thank you to these wonderful women who took their time to work on this.
10: This panel with me, I truly appreciate you. And also, I do want to mention that mojo is Adriana's bird and is super famous in her own right. So make sure that you have her show you a video of mojo playing basket. Basketball can actually make baskets. Thank you all. Safe travels home. I really appreciate that.
10: All of you took time out of your schedules to come to this. Thank you.
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