Each year, SSP awards fellowships to students and professionals in the first four years of their careers in scholarly communications. This highly competitive program offers a range of career development, training, and networking opportunities, including:
- Pairing each fellow with an industry expert mentor
- Collaborating with other fellows to create a poster presentation for SSP’s Annual Meeting
- Joining an SSP committee and contributing to ongoing community initiatives
- Receiving complimentary SSP membership, registrations for selected SSP events, and travel assistance to attend the Annual Meeting
Through these experiences, fellows gain valuable insight into the scholarly publishing landscape while developing meaningful professional relationships across disciplines and continents. SSP is deeply committed to fostering a community that supports and benefits from the talents of scholarly publishers from myriad backgrounds. We believe that our community must center on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, and we strongly encourage people from traditionally marginalized groups to apply as Fellows.
Learn more about our 2026 Fellows
Application Requirements
Student Fellowship Requirements: must be current students in a dedicated publishing or library and information science program, or in another program in which they take publishing, librarianship, or information science courses.
Early-Career Fellowship Requirements: must be in their first four years of work in the publishing and information profession.
Fellows will be selected based on their responses to the questions below. Please include your résumé with your application.
- How do your work, education, and qualifications demonstrate your suitability for this Fellowship? Please share any relevant experiences you have had.
- Beyond sharing insights from the SSP Annual Meeting with peers, how specifically will you integrate this new knowledge into your professional or academic endeavors?
- Given the current shifts within scholarly communications, discuss how this industry could or should evolve over the next five years to meet the changing needs of scholars and researchers.
Fellowship Benefits
SSP Fellows receive the following:
- Complimentary SSP membership
- Discounted membership for two additional years
- Assignment of an industry expert mentor, with opportunities to communicate via e-mail and Zoom throughout the program and at the Annual Meeting
- Facilitated monthly meetings with other fellowship recipients on developing leadership skills and paths for career growth
- Free registration for the Annual Meeting
- Fellowship meet-up and networking event at the Annual Meeting for current and former fellows
- Travel stipend to assist with expenses incurred to attend the meeting
- Free registration to SSP webinars organized throughout the year
- Opportunity to participate in a SSP committee, and
- Free registration to the Leadership Academy
Fellowship Responsibilities
All Fellows are ambassadors of the Society and are expected to undertake the following as part of their fellowship:
- Attend and actively participate in monthly calls and complete all assigned projects.
- Submit a written report after attending the SSP Annual Meeting describing experiences and learning outcomes. Note: This report may be used as the basis for an article on The Scholarly Kitchen.
- Submit a poster to the Annual Meeting for the benefit of other early-career professionals and students studying publishing and library and information science.
- Participate in an annual fellowship survey to provide feedback on the program.
- Complete any feedback surveys for seminars, webinars, and networking events attended throughout the year.
- Communicate and engage with their assigned mentor throughout the year.
- Give back to SSP by joining a committee at the end of the fellowship.
Supporting the SSP Fellowship Program
SSP’s Fellowship Program is funded through sustainable allocations from the Generations Fund, our community-funded endowment to support our Fellowship, Mentoring, and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility programs. If you’d like to donate to the Generations Fund, please email info@sspnet.org for more information.
