Archives: People

Jeremy’s three decades of experience in publishing and book retail is informed by his senior and leadership roles in UK and overseas. Appointed Head of Publisher Relations (PLS) in October 2015, he was principally responsible for managing more than 3,500 publisher relationships across the education, business and public sectors. Jeremy gained an intimate understanding of publishers’ changing business needs to ensure the development of appropriate collective licensing and rights management services for its primary stakeholders.

Following an earlier commissioning career with Informa and Thomas Telford Publishing (ICE Publishing), Jeremy built on his experience as Publishing Manager with premier Middle East trade publisher, Motivate Publishing. In 2007, he took up a new role as CEO of bookseller, Magrudy’s in Dubai. As a co-founder of Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, Jeremy led its operations team from 2009-2011. After four years, Jeremy returned to the UK to provide consultancy services to UK publishers and service providers, a role he reprised after leaving PLS in Spring 2019.

Tristan attended the University of Nottingham (UK) where he studied Biochemistry, graduating with a 2:1 in 2017. In his final year he conducted research to identify novel ubiquitin binding proteins, while focusing further studies on signalling pathways and cancer research. 

After a year spent working and travelling, Tristan joined the open access team of Future Science Group in 2018 as an Assistant Editor to work on four oncology management journals and to assist BioTechniques’ Digital Editor Abigail Sawyer. Promoted to Digital Editor in September 2019 to focus solely on BioTechniques, Tristan now hosts the Talking Techniques podcasts and writes on molecular and cell biology, immunology and the interface of culture and politics with science.

Priyanka Pillai is an academic specialist at the University of Melbourne with a background in bioinformatics and software programming.

Priyanka works as a Research Data Steward for the Melbourne Data Analytics Platform (MDAP) that supports the uplift of data management capabilities at the University. Priyanka also works as a Health Informatics Specialist for the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Disease Emergencies (APPRISE) Centre of Excellence (CRE) based at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity.

Her role as a health informatician for APPRISE CRE supports a geographically distributed network of data holders and researchers and provides strategic advice to facilitate national and international information sharing. Priyanka has been involved with science mentoring programs at the University and is an advocate of inclusivity of women in science.

Alice Wood has 9 years scholarly publishing experience at Wiley. She is currently Open Access Publisher focused on sustainable routes to delivering a transition to open access and the development and implementation of open research initiatives. She regularly delivers workshops on the evolving publishing landscape to the researcher and librarian communities and has an acute awareness of the increasing impact that funders and institutions and their policies can have on STM publishers. Alice has previously held a number of editorial roles within Wiley and as result has a very firm grasp of the challenges that the current environment presents for publishers and the learned societies that many of them publish for.

Alice is passionate about using her own experiences to help others to develop their career and to broaden their experience. She has mentored a number of colleagues and peers and has served on the steering committee for Wiley’s Lean In programme, helping broaden out the scope of the sessions to make them more inclusive to colleagues of all genders. She would use the position on the STM Board to represent the views and priorities of colleagues at an early stage of their careers who are keen build a long term career in the sector

David Ross has developed a wealth of experience and a deep understanding of the academic publishing industry, having spent nearly three decades working for major international publishing houses. At Thomson Scientific, he worked with engineering and materials science monographs and journals, and was based in the US for a number of years after the acquisition of the Chapman & Hall imprint by Kluwer Academic. At Arnold Publishers in London he gained experience in commissioning engineering undergraduate textbooks and, most recently, at SAGE Publishing he has played a pivotal role in acquiring and managing STM and social science journals. During his 20 years at SAGE, David has also developed considerable experience of corporate acquisitions. As Head of Business Development, he was responsible for overseeing acquisitions from initial offer and contract negotiation, through due diligence, to transition and integration of assets. He also led SAGE’s initial ventures into OA publishing almost 15 years ago, and was a founding board member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) in 2008. He now holds a senior leadership position at SAGE Publishing as Vice President for Open Research. As well as building a portfolio of OA journals, this includes responsibility for the development of new systems and processes required by the move away from legacy publishing models. He also leads SAGE’s open research policy initiatives, interacting at a high level with funders, policy makers and university leaders. The academic publishing industry is transforming rapidly, albeit unevenly by discipline and geography. Business models are changing and in order to stay relevant we must adapt and engage with multiple stakeholders, forming broader strategic alliances than we have in the past. The STM Association is uniquely placed to support that change and David would be honoured to be able to use the skills and experience he has garnered throughout his career to assist in that mission.

Rachel Norton is a solutions focused operations leader with more than 15 years’ experience in product development, with a strong focus on strategic business planning, promoting change and maximizing productivity. In almost two decades in publishing working for McGraw Hill’s School and Professional divisions, she’s led her teams and peers through major change initiatives by successfully developing and implementing cross-business systems and processes focused on operational efficiencies and consistent operating procedures.

Rachel’s career has most recently focused on permissions licensing and compliance. In addition to leading a team which review and clears permissions for over 10,000 titles annually, she successfully developed a cross division technology systems to track/monitor compliance of assets utilized within MH products through epic development, story grooming, UAT, defect prioritization, system training and certification of users as well as implementation with her division.

Rachel is also an Adjunct Faculty member at Franklin University. For the last 18 years, she has taught online classes focusing on Introduction to Business, Effective Decision Making & Problem Solving and Business Ethics. Being an early adopter to online teaching, she believes this has brought her a broader, global perspective and deep critical thinking skills.

Rachel is a certified Competent Communicator through Toastmasters International and holds a Master’s in Business Administration from the Ohio Dominican University.

Giles Grant joined the IET with 28 years global experience of the information solutions industry. Latterly he was with Springer Nature, where he was Vice President Global Marketing for the Nature Research Group. Prior to Springer Nature he was with Pearson for 3 years, as Senior Vice President for the global English Language Teaching & Assessment business and Senior Vice President Pearson English Global Marketing promoting Pearson’s Global Scale of English, Pearson English Business Solutions & Wall Street English. Giles came to Pearson from Thomson Reuters, where as Vice President Strategy & Corporate Development he worked on driving global acquisitions, business unit management and expansion into Asia, Africa & Latin America. Before this he was at Incisive Media, as both Group Managing Director for Digital Strategy & Development, and Managing Director for the Interactive Marketing Division, across both B2B and B2C brands. In 1999 he joined the board of BSI Group as Managing Director to transform BSI’s content assets into a successful information solutions business. During the 1990’s he held senior general management and marketing positions at Reed Elsevier, working in the UK, US and Asia Pacific.  Prior to Reed Elsevier he worked for Laura Ashley in financial planning & analysis and RAC Motoring Services in commercial and corporate development. Giles graduated with a joint honours degree in History & Geography, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He trained in accountancy (CIMA) & management (DMS), and was awarded an  MBA in Marketing & International Business from Bradford/NIMBAS. He holds Fellowships from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the Institute of Direct & Digital Marketing and the Institute of Directors.

Colette E. Bean is currently Chief Publishing Officer at the American Physiological Society overseeing the APS family of journals and their newest open access journal launch, Function. Prior to APS, Colette worked at John Wiley & Sons where she most recently served as Vice President and Society Publishing Director for the U.S. In this role, she oversaw the management of more than 350 society-owned journals spanning the life sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences and humanities. Before that, she served as Publishing Director for life, earth and environmental science journals. Bean first joined Wiley in 1992, where her previous roles included Executive Editor, Publisher and Associate Publishing Director. During her career, she has collaborated with numerous societies to successfully launch new subscription and open access journals. She also previously served as Chair on the Executive Committee for the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the American Association of Publishers.

Johan Rooryck represents cOAlition S in meetings with external stakeholders including funders, researchers, librarians, and publishers.

He presents Plan S, listens to concerns, and develops plans to help participants adapt to a changing publishing landscape.

He also advises cOAlition S on the ways to implement the transition to full and immediate Open Access as smoothly as possible.