Platform Strategies

Curation has always been at the heart of scholarly publishing, from the peer review process through to publishing and measuring impact, with myriad qualitative and quantitative judgements taking place in between. Earlier this year, an award funded by the Wellcome Trust to “support learned society publishers who want to explore new ways of signaling the significance of published research outputs in an open and transparent manner,” signals the continued importance of publishers’ curatorial function in scientific communication. But there’s so many ways to approach curation—automated or manually, expert or machined—what really works and engages readers? And what systems serve as prerequisites for these approaches? Join Tasha Mellins-Cohen of the Microbiology Society (recipient of one of the Wellcome Trust awards), Claire Moulton, Publisher of The Company of Biologists (home to the preLights, a new preprint highlights service), and Bert Carelli, Director of Partnerships at the recommendation engine TrendMD, to discuss how they’ve engaged their communities and what comes next.