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Motivating Behavioral Change: A NISO Training Series

Motivating Behavioral Change: A NISO Training Series

May 2025
Course Facilitator, Jennifer Gibson, Executive Director of Dryad

Whether it’s encouraging open data practices, rethinking publishing decisions, or introducing new services, driving change in scholarly communication, comes down to one thing: behavior. Changing it is no small task.

This June, NISO will host Secrets to Changing Behavior in Scholarly Communication, a four-part training series designed to help participants understand how to influence scholarly communities more effectively. Drawing from the field of social marketing—a strategy originally developed in public health to influence societal behavior—this series will explore how similar principles can be applied to encourage meaningful shifts in practice.

Participants will gain tools to identify and segment audiences, craft persuasive messages, align services with needs, and evaluate outreach impact. The course will be led by Jennifer Gibson, Executive Director of Dryad and a longtime leader in open research communications.

The series will also feature two distinguished guest speakers. Nici Pfeiffer, Chief Product Officer at the Center for Open Science, brings deep experience in infrastructure design for open research workflows. She leads development of the Open Science Framework (OSF) and collaborates with researchers, funders, and institutions to streamline adoption of transparency and reproducibility practices. 

Joining her is Liz Allen, Director of Marketing, Communications, and Strategic Development at Annual Reviews. With a broad background that includes leadership roles at PLOS, ScienceOpen, and Nature, Liz brings a sharp perspective on messaging, marketing strategy, and the communication challenges involved in converting scholarly audiences toward open access and broader engagement with research.

Whether you work in a library, scholarly publishing, IT, or research support, this course offers fresh and practical approaches to motivating change.

Dates: June 5, 12, 18, 26, 2025

Weekly 90-minute sessions (recordings available to registrants).

Kimberly Gladfelter Graham

Education Program Manager & DEIA Advocate

Kimberly Gladfelter Graham's role at NISO has evolved since joining the organization in 2018.  In her role as Office Manager, she handled administration priorities and supported the Executive