Alex Frost, Vice President for Research Initiatives, Sermo
"Sermo as a model for online information sharing: relations to open science, open review, and post-publication review."
Academic publishers are beginning to explore new uses of the internet to materially impact the information presented to their readers. Many provocative examples involve harnessing the input of relatively large numbers of people in the process of shaping, selecting, and interpreting scholarly research. In an idealized form, efforts such as these could help to improve the quality and integrity of published research, but early efforts have yielded mixed results and there is justifiable apprehension about the rapid expansion of ‘user-generated content’.
Sermo is a knowledge ecosystem for physicians that has been designed from the bottom-up to aggregate the observations of a large group of informed participants. This presentation will explore Sermo’s information architecture as a potential new model for open science, open review, and post-publication review.

Dr. Ben Goldacre, Medical Doctor who writes the Bad Science column in the Guardian.
"On Popular Misunderstanding of Science"
The mendacity of the media goes beyond selectively reporting imaginary scares and miracle cures: there are structural problems which remain unexamined. A fetishism for "new findings" misrepresents the structure of science, which develops through the emergence of new themes supported by a raft of evidence from multiple disciplines. Journalists' naïve and amateurishly reductionist approach, especially with research around social problems, promotes a form of "scientism" to which - paradoxically - few actual scientists would subscribe. Blogs are offering a new model for"authority" and "trust" emerging naturalistically through familiarity with an individual voice, offering unmediated expertise, free linking to primary references, and transparent peer commentary.


Richard Kidd, Manager of Editorial Production Systems, Royal Society of Chemistry
"Project Prospect - Introducing semantics into chemical science publishing"
Project prospect has been the first application of semantic enrichment in primary research material, and as such a great example of what the semantic web will offer. The presentation will focus on why we need it, how we've done it with Project Prospect, where it will go next, and how we hope everyone else will do it


Sally Morris, Consultant, Morris Associates and Editor-in-Chief, Learned Publishing
"Quality and Trust in Scholarly Publishing"
Quality is not only about content;  it also applies to the service which a journal provides. Quality means different things for different people; authors, editors and referees, readers, librarians, intermediaries. The journal itself, and the organisation behind it (the publisher) have key roles in ensuring and maximising quality for all these players. In order that they may all trust a publication, they have to be absolutely confident that they know what they are getting. Some of the new and proposed approaches to scholarly communication could weaken that trust – we need to find ways of ensuring that it is preserved in any new models.


Kieron O'Hara. Senior Research Fellow, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton.
"Electronic publishing and public trust in science."
Public trust in science is generally high (compared to that in other institutions), but is often affected by controversies whether justified or not. The proper conduct of peer reviewed publication is rarely high profile, although there have been recent issues (for example, with respect to the MMR vaccine and the debate surrounding the actions of Hwang Woo-Suk) where the publication of results has come into the public eye. This talk reviews the evidence relating trust and publication in the context of recent moves to use the Internet to facilitate knowledge sharing amongst scientists.


Pritpal S Tamber,  MBChB Managing Director, Faculty of 1000 Medicine Council Member, Committee on Publication Ethics
"Faculty of 1000 Medicine: Post-publication peer recommendation"
There are three key problems in medical information. Firstly, there is too much of it, making it nigh on impossible to decide what's worth reading. Secondly, given the increasing complexity of medical research, it is getting harder for full-time clinicians to implement research findings to the bedside. Thirdly, while the search and synthesis of 'evidence' has been a positive development over the last decade, only a fraction of clinical decisions can be backed by reliable evidence. Faculty of 1000 Medicine aims to address these problems. Respected researchers and clinicians select what they think is worth reading, explain why they think so, and then rate the article, helping the wider community to sift key literature by a numerical rating."


Edward Wates, Global Journal Content Management Director, Wiley-Blackwell
"Trustworthiness: Does the publisher have a role to play?"
The publisher’s role in supporting the article of record; managing version control of research output; intellectual property issues and dealing with infringements.