Michael Cairns

Michael Cairns is Head of Partner and Channel Development at the American Psychological Association (APA), a publisher of 90 scholarly journals, academic trade and reference titles, online textbooks and children’s books serving the field of psychology. In his role at APA, Michael is responsible for implementing APA’s open access journal program, expanding engagement with channel partners and further developing APA’s PsycLearn educational products.

Michael will bring to the STM board the perspective of a large non-profit social/behavioral sciences publisher and one with a strong focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a leader in these efforts, this practice is present in the APA’s staffing composition, community outreach and publishing output. Additionally, APA Publishing has chosen to expand its publishing output beyond traditional research journals to books, textbooks, and children’s products to broaden its impact on the practice and teaching of psychology and mental health awareness. As a senior leader within APA publishing, Michael is actively involved in supporting all these activities and will bring this experience to the STM board.

Earlier in his career, Michael held senior management positions with Reed Elsevier, R.R. Bowker/ProQuest, Wolters Kluwer, Macmillan, Inc., Berlitz International, Inc. and Ingenta, plc. As a business strategy consultant, Michael has worked with academic and scholarly publishers and professional membership organizations including IEEE, APA, Wiley, Cengage, American Library Association, Book Industry Study Group, American National Standards Institute, AARP and OCLC.

Michael has served on the boards of several industry groups and associations including the Association of American Publishers, the International ISBN Agency (where he served as Chairman), ONIX (founding board member), CrossRef, CHORUS, and the Book Industry Study Group. Born in England, he has lived in five countries and currently resides in Hoboken, New Jersey. He has an undergraduate degree from Boston University and an MBA from Georgetown University