Leslie Lansman joined Springer Nature as their Global Permissions Manager in 2019. She oversees the licensing of all book and journal permissions across all SN imprints. Before joining SN, Leslie pursued a PhD in copyright law at Queen Mary University CCLS, as well as leading several copyright policy initiatives in conjunction with the Intellectual Property Office and the Ministry of Justice. Originally trained as a lawyer at Boston University School of Law, she has almost 20 years’ experience in copyright across a range of creative industries.
Newly appointed to the role of CEO for BMJ in April 2020, Chris brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to BMJ from a very successful career across the publishing and learning sectors.
Chris has a passion for working in and leading purpose based organisations and strongly believes that only in purpose led organisations are you able to connect the motivations and core beliefs of all the people inside the business with the values of the people and customers they serve.
He was previously the Group CEO of the City & Guilds Group, a leading educational charity, for 12 years, leading its transformation from an examinations board operating in the UK to a work-based learning organisation operating globally. During this time, the group made a number of acquisitions, most notably in digital learning and learning technology platforms. Chris was also responsible for setting up the City & Guilds Foundation, an organisation purely focused on helping the most disadvantaged individuals access education employment.
Before joining City & Guilds Group, Chris held senior leadership positions in the US and UK with Reed Elsevier as the CEO of its non-US education business and as SVP of Lexis Nexis Risk Solutions. Prior to joining Reed Elsevier, Chris worked for the Pearson Plc as Commercial Director for The Financial Times Electronic Publishing Group.
Outside of his day job, Chris has been the Chair of the Board for Activate Learning Group, a major FE College Group operating in the Thames Valley and a member of the Business in the Community Leadership team.
Anca Babor is Director of Strategy at BMJ and BMJ New Ventures. She has been with the company for eight years. Prior to this, she worked with Thomson Reuters and GSK in several Strategy and investment roles.
In her current role, she covers a few aspects:
– leading the strategy planning activities and innovation. In the past year, she worked very closely with the Publishing team to develop their Global Publishing Strategy.
– the operational aspect of her role includes the management of the China and India offices: these are two very exciting businesses, which are at an inflection point of transitioning from startups to mature businesses.
Another distinct part of her role and skillset is investments – both organic and through acquisitions. Anca set up BMJ New Ventures three years ago and developed a pipeline of investable companies.
The aim of BMJ New Ventures is to invest in and partner with early-stage digital companies that align with our core business and mission. Anca led the first VC-type of investments that BMJ has ever made.
She currently sits on the Board of Patchwork, a locum recruitment software company, which is one of their investments.
Anca holds an MBA degree from INSEAD.
Dana Compton is Managing Director and Publisher for the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). In this role, she oversees all publishing operations for ASCE’s 35 peer-reviewed research journals, as well as its conference proceedings, books/e-books, and standards product lines. Prior to joining ASCE in 2018, Ms. Compton was a Senior Consulting Associate with KWF Consulting, served as Publication Director at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and held production positions at the American Society of Clinical Oncology and Thompson Publishing Group (now Thompson Information Services, a division of Columbia Books & Information Services).
Ms. Compton is a Past President of the Council of Science Editors (CSE). She remains an active CSE volunteer, serving on the Editorial Board for CSE’s Science Editor, as a chapter editor and advisory group member for development of the CSE style manual Scientific Style and Format, and on the program planning committee. Ms. Compton serves on the advisory board for the Text Recycling Research Project, is a HESI SDG Publishers Compact Fellow, is a member of the Society Street program committee for 2022, and has participated in various other publishing industry projects and committees.
Ms. Compton is a senior society leader with emphasis on strategic planning, sustainable business models, editorial and content strategy, and diversity and inclusion issues in research and scholarly publishing. She frequently speaks at industry conferences on a range of topics and has written and contributed to articles related to scholarly publication.
Following a joint bachelor’s and master’s degree in Marine Biology at the University of Southampton, Chris joined BMC (part of SpringerNature) in 2015 as a Journal Coordinator. In this role he performed administrative tasks on STM journals and took on leadership of new open access journal setups. From there he progressed into journal development, specialising in life and environmental science titles. He also took on an additional role partnering with the Falling Walls Foundation, where he was responsible for organising a local TED Talk-style competition for early career researchers. Since 2020, Chris has worked as a Publishing Editor at Cambridge University Press.
Liz Ferguson is Senior Vice President of Wiley’s global Research Publishing organization. With more than 20 years experience in STM publishing, she defines and leads Wiley’s publishing strategy. She is responsible for teams managing nearly 2,000 journals, working with our society partners and editors, developing open access strategy and wider open research efforts, and implementing new operational standards for editorial workflows including in research integrity and publishing ethics.
Prior to this role, Liz was VP, Open Research from 2018-2021. She led open access strategy for Wiley including development of transformative business models, external engagement, and open publishing policies across Wiley and the newly acquired Hindawi. From 2015-2018 she was VP, Editorial Development, setting subject and journal development strategy across Wiley’s global program, led the development of Wiley’s open data strategy from 2013-2015, and from 2008-2013 was responsible for Wiley’s journal program in biology. Before joining Wiley, Liz held Publisher and other editorial positions at various STM publishing companies including Blackwell, Wolters Kluwer and Thomson Science.
Liz is currently a member of the STM Association Board and of the Royal Society’s Publishing Board, as well as being a frequent speaker and chair at industry and academic meetings. She has previously been Chair of the Academic Publishers Council of the Publishers Association, a member of the Royal Society’s Publishing Board, and of the Academic Publishing in Europe Program Committee. She also served two terms on the Board of Dryad, participated in the Universities UK OA Efficiencies Working Group, and was a member of the Organizing Committee of the OASPA Conference on Scholarly Publishing from 2013-2018.
Xuefeng (Jack) Zhu is the Founder of Eurasia Academic Publishing Group, an academic publisher specializing in providing publishing services and helping academic scientists fulfilling their global reputation and influence the potential of their work. Jack obtained his Ph.D. from Tongji University (Shanghai, China) and conducted postdoctoral research at the TUDelft (the Netherlands). 2017 Jack moved to Hong Kong to launch EurAsia Academic Publishing Group, subsequently becoming its director. After that, he returned to Shanghai as a researcher at USST (Shanghai). Recently, Jack has collaborated with more than 60 universities in China, meanwhile running two Wechat platforms connecting more than 0.7 million Chinese scholars. All these resources could help EAPG to reach the target clients of the academic society and publishing industry in China without barriers.
Vikram Savkar is General Manager of the Medicine business at Wolters Kluwer Health, in which capacity he directs the P&L, strategy, and operations of a market-leading global medical publishing/software group spanning the Lippincott medical education publishing and educational technology business, the Lippincott medical and nursing journals business, and Ovid, a leading global research and content distribution software platform for medical research used in 190+ countries.
Prior to assuming this role in late 2019, Mr. Savkar had a diverse career as a leader in STM and educational publishing. From 2012 to 2019, he was General Manager of multiple groups in Wolters Kluwer’s Legal & Regulatory division, including the Aspen legal education publishing and educational technology imprint, and the Kluwer Law International imprint headquartered in the Netherlands. From 2007 to 2012 he was Senior Vice President and Publishing Director of Nature Education, the newly created global science education wing of Nature Publishing Group, publisher of Nature and Scientific American. From 2000 to 2007 he held a succession of roles within Pearson’s Higher Education publishing division, including Director of New Ventures for the Learning Solutions Business. Prior to his career in publishing, he worked as a Special Assistant to the Conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra from 1997 to 2000, building on his background as a pianist.
Mr. Savkar earned B.A. degrees in Physics and Classics from Harvard University, graduating in 1995. He lives in Cambridge, Mass., in the U.S. with his wife and daughter, and has previously lived in Germany and India.
Anne Kitson is currently Senior Vice President and Managing Director of The Lancet and Cell Press, based in London and Cambridge, MA at Elsevier.
Anne has also served on the Council of the UK Publishers Association since 2019, and on the board for Elsevier’s Joint Venture with China Science Press Media, KeAi since 2015.
Anne joined Elsevier in 1997 and her previous roles have included (SVP), Physical Sciences, SVP, Health and Medical Sciences (2012-2015), SVP for Life Sciences (2009-2012), Publishing Director for Materials Science and Engineering, (2005 – 2009), and Managing Director of Elsevier Advanced Technology (2002 – 2005).
Before joining Elsevier Anne worked at Blackwell Publishers, Oxford University Press, and Pergamon. She is a senior executive with a focus in strategic planning, product development, innovation, strategic business development, change management, M&A, acquisition embedment, asset divestment, business analysis, and marketing.
Anne has a Masters degree from Oxford University in Biochemistry.
Rhodri Jackson is Publishing Director for Open Access and Asia journals at Oxford University Press (OUP), leading teams across the UK, the US, China, and Japan. He is responsible for the growth and development of OUP’s open access journals publishing, and for setting and delivering OUP’s open access and open research strategy and policies. OUP is a mission-based university press, committed to open access publishing, and to ensuring that high-quality scholarly research is disseminated, read, and re-used as widely as possible.
Rhodri joined OUP in 2004 and after a brief spell in the English Language Teaching division has spent the last fifteen years working in journals publishing. He has worked across STM, HSS, and legal journals, with open access providing a constant theme throughout his career. Rhodri has played an active role in the evolution and development of open access publishing over the past two decades, serving two terms on the board of the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and acting as OASPA Treasurer from 2014-2018.
Rhodri has worked with OUP’s China and Japan-based teams since 2014 and is responsible for OUP’s journals strategy and programme in Asia.
JOIN