JOINLaura Hassink
Laura Hassink is Managing Director for STM Journals. In that capacity she is responsible for Elsevier’s portfolio of 2,750 journals managed by more than 30,000 editors, who collectively publish more than 600,000 research articles a year. She leads a team of over 1350 people worldwide.
Laura has a genuine passion for understanding the needs of the research communities we serve and maintaining the highest quality and integrity standards in scholarly communications. Strategic priorities this year are to work towards a more equitable publishing experience worldwide where every article that deserves to be published should be able to find a suitable journal at Elsevier. Laura and her team actively try to reduce bias and focus on equity.
Before her current role, Laura served as Senior Vice President of Publishing Transformation, overseeing all aspects of operational support for its journals, improving, and innovating the publication experience for authors, peer reviewers and editors. Laura has also been instrumental in accelerating Elsevier’s substantial progress in open access publishing, with the company now offering more than 750 gold open access journals, as well as offering open access publishing options across all its portfolios.
Prior to that role Laura served as SVP Product Management for ScienceDirect and Journal Branded Solutions, responsible for defining the strategy and product roadmap to improve customers’ reading experience and visibility of the journals Elsevier publishes.
During her 26 years with Elsevier, she also served as SVP Physical Sciences in STM Journals and held positions in Strategy, Business Development and Journal Services.
Since 2015, Laura has been active as a board member of the Dutch Publishers Association, Mediafederatie and Chair of the Media Voor Vak en Wetenschap (MVW), and currently serves as Chair of the MEVW Open Science Forum.
She holds a Master’s degree in Economics from Vrije Universiteit, and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Nyenrode Business Universiteit.