Society for the Scientific Study of Reading

President’s Newsletter 2008

As 2008 draws to a close, I am pleased to report that the Society continues to prosper and in spite of the rising costs of air travel, we held another excellent conference this year organised by Hugh Catts and Don Compton. We are extremely grateful to them for their hard work. Altogether there were 19 symposia, 117 spoken papers, and 138 interactive papers presented at the conference in Asheville which was attended by 375 delegates, including 110 students. In addition, the Society was proud to host a pre-conference Festschrift for Don Shankweiler, in celebration of his enormous contribution to our field.

Two award winners were announced at this year’s conference. The winner of the Society’s award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution was Hollis Scarborough who will accept the award at the annual meeting in 2010 and the newly established Rebecca Sandak award which was given to Shelley Xiuli Tong from Hong Kong.

The Society’s journal, Scientific Studies of Reading has flourished in recent years and now has an impact factor of 2.68 (ranked 3/105 for journals in Education in 2007). Submissions have increased significantly providing enough material for 6 issues per year and to facilitate editorial work, I am delighted to announce that an Associate Editor has been appointed.   He is Rauno Parrila of the University of Alberta, Canada.     Charles Hulme the Editor is coming to the end of his term of office and accordingly the Publications Committee is now considering the nominations that have been received for a new Editor.

I am also pleased to welcome, Catherine (Cammie) McBride Chang who has been elected as a Board member in the recent election. We also say ‘goodbye’ to Steven Petrill who has stepped down as Treasurer, and to thank him for his sterling work over three years.

The growth of the Society is now such that it is the feeling of the Board that we need to appoint an academic to take on a more long-term administrative role in overseeing the affairs of the Society. The present arrangements of having Board members who meet only once a year and serve for only 2-3 years is now under strain. So the Board will be considering other options in the coming year. Anyone who has any ideas, we would be very pleased to hear from you!

Plans are going ahead for the 2009 conference which will be held in Boston with Nonie Lesaux as local organiser. The Board has also agreed to hold a one-day pre-conference workshop for graduate students and early career researchers, organised by Helene Deacon. As expected, the meeting is likely to be very popular; we have received a total of 424 submissions including 25 symposia. This is almost 70 more than last year and unfortunately it means that even allowing for four parallel sessions, the selection panel will have to reject up to 100 papers. Furthermore, given space constraints, it is likely that in the first instance, registration will have to be restricted to the first authors of accepted papers.

In the more distant future, Berlin has been chosen as the conference site for 2010 and Don Compton is looking into venues.