Archives: People

Caroline Birkle has over 15 years experience in the STM publishing arena working in private, publically listed and society publishers.  After obtaining a Masters in Chemistry and French from the University of Sheffield she joined Thieme Publishers and held diverse roles in both marketing and sales. Later as the Books Publisher at the Royal Society of Chemistry Caroline led the team’s ambitious digitization program and then at Thomson Reuters she played and important role in the digitization of the Sweet & Maxwell print program. Caroline has subsequently worked on numerous transformation projects of varying size and complexity working for the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and as a consultant. She also served for three years on the higher education digitization think tank (Hochschulforum Digitalisierung) in Berlin. In April 2018 she was appointed as Managing Director of Converis at Clarivate, bringing together over a decade of transformation experience and commitment to academic publishing and enablement of excellence in academia.  Caroline speaks German, French and English and works between London and Karlsruhe.

Freddy White joined IOP Publishing in 2016 as an Associate Editor after completing an MSci in Physics at the University of Bristol. He became maternity-cover Publisher of the plasma titles in early-2017 before taking responsibility for nanoscience in mid-2017. As Publisher his role focuses on strategic journal development, Editorial Board management and engagement, and content commissioning.  He particularly enjoys working with researchers to develop new ways to support their communities.

Maggie Simmons is the Director of Publishing at the Geological Society of London where she leads the Society’s publishing activities, as well as its Library and Information Services. She joined GSL in 2018 as Head of Editorial Development where she was responsible for the strategic development of the Society’s portfolio of journals and books. Prior to this she was a Publisher at IOP Publishing.

Kaleigh Sunday is a Managing Editor at Taylor & Francis Group, where she manages Physical Sciences titles—predominantly Chemistry and some Physics. Since joining Taylor & Francis as an Editorial Assistant in early 2012, she now acts as Managing Editor III and takes an active role in leading major society bids, with some of the recent successful acquisitions being the American Nuclear Society’s suite of technical journals and the Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists. Aside from acquisitions, she particularly appreciates the relationship building component of her role. She enjoys cultivating positive and trusting relationships that get the best out of those she collaborates with (and credits this to her longevity in her current positon).

Jasmin Lange is Chief Publishing Officer at Brill, a medium-size independent academic publisher founded in 1683. As member of the management board, she leads a team of 100 editorial staff and is responsible for Brill’s publishing strategy. She started her career at Brill in 2011 as Assistant Editor and later specialized as Director Business Development in M&A and open access. Before joining Brill, she worked in various positions in academia, publishing and book trade. She holds a PhD in book history from the University of Mainz and a master’s degree in business management. Before joining the STM board in 2019 she was a member of the STM Policy and Advocacy Committee and the ALPSP Council. She currently serves on the board of STM, the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) and the HSS division of NWO, the Dutch national funding body.

Jasmin is an advocate for publishing excellence in the humanities and social sciences. She is committed to working with other stakeholders to improve the distinct publishing infrastructure for HSS communities. Having worked closely with many small and medium-size publishers, she values their community-driven ethos, flexibility, and innovative power. Preserving a diverse publishing landscape and improving the cooperation among all academic partners were two of her key aims while serving on the STM Board. She promotes a fast, fair and transparent transition to open access for all research fields as set forth in her well-received Scholarly Kitchen article Plan S and Humanities Publishing.

Mirena Bagur joined IntechOpen in 2017 as president, global marketing to elevate awareness about scientific publishing of Open Access books and about IntechOpen. Prior to this, Mirena founded CONTeXO Group in 2005, where she led a team of technology and start-up experts, advising technology-inspired clients on business strategy and product development execution, and making it possible to position them for early-stage funding.

Passionate about innovation, Mirena is active in the Boston technology and start-up ecosystem. She has been on the Board/Advisory Board member of The Capital Network; sat on the health tech steering committee at the MIT Enterprise Forum; and has been a reviewer, judge and mentor at various business competitions. In addition, as the Course Co-director of the joint Harvard-MIT Division of Health, Sciences, and Technology course HST.921 “Enabling Technology Innovation in Health Care System and the Life Sciences,” she has developed curriculum and managed execution of academic program and real-world innovation projects with graduate students.  Prior to this, Mirena held a management role, as a senior vice president at Weber Shandwick, a leading global marketing communications agency. She was chosen to lead national-level initiatives designed to elevate Weber Shandwick’s brand and to increase visibility in new markets and geographies, resulting in numerous referrals and revenue increase.

Mirena holds a masters degree in international trade and marketing from the University of Zagreb, School of Economics, Croatia, and has completed a strategic business leadership program at the Columbia University. She enjoys singing and skiing with family and friends, and is involved in numerous non-profit organizations. 

intechopen.com 

Darla P. Henderson, Ph.D., Publisher and Asst. Director, Global Journals Development, ACS Publications, American Chemical Society: Henderson is the ACS business lead responsible for the strategic development, launch, governance, and oversight of ChemRxiv.

She also directs the strategy and development of ACS’ key pillars of open access – including the society’s first fully open access journal, ACS Central Science, an author rewards program, expanded licensing options for hybrid open access, an ecommerce solution, new funder relationships, and a platinum open access program.

Prior to this role, Dr. Henderson held responsibility for the strategic development of ACS’s general chemistry portfolio of journals, including the flagship Journal of the American Chemical Society and the society’s books program.

Courtney Morris is a co-founder of ARTiFACTS, the company with the first researcher-specific platform built on blockchain technology. 

Mr. Morris is a seasoned executive with extensive general management, product development, marketing and strategy experience in SAAS and information businesses from education, STM publishing and healthcare. 

Courtney enjoys skiing and is an instrument rated pilot.

Patrick H. Alexander is the director of The Pennsylvania State University Press. Involved in academic publishing for more than 30 years, he currently is completing his third year of service on the executive board of the Association of University Presses.

He is serving a second three-year term on the publications committee for the American Schools of Oriental Research, and he is the institutional representative and AUP member of the AAU/ARL/AUP Task Force on Open Access Monograph Publishing (TOME).

He has served on the Management Advisory Board for Purdue University Press and the advisory board for Project Muse.

He is the editor of two books, and he has also written or presented for The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Professional and Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers, the Society of Biblical Literature, Inside Higher Ed, the Journal of Electronic Publishing, the Scholarly Kitchen (blog), and Against the Grain. 

He acquires in areas of book history, Jewish studies, and African American history and culture. Alexander has been conducting publishing and writing workshops for more than 25 years.

Developing business models for arts and humanities publishing that promote both access and sustainability and integrate new forms of technology figure prominently in Alexander’s professional objectives.

Robert McGrath is Founder and CEO at ReadCube, part of Digital Science.  He is committed to developing tools that accelerate the pace of research.  In particular, Robert enjoys applying technology to streamline common research workflows, with a focus on literature discovery, full-text access and acquisition, and reference management and citation.  

ReadCube is best known among academic and commercial researchers for its suite of reference management tools, which includes Papers following its acquisition in 2016.  In addition to serving researchers, ReadCube offers platform plugin technologies for publishers which support enhanced content delivery, e-commerce (rental and cloud), disaster recovery, and managed content sharing solutions.  

In addition to his responsibilities at ReadCube, Robert leads Digital Science’s latest offering, Anywhere Access, a solution for libraries to streamline access to both subscription and on-demand content.  He is a member of the Digital Science Discovery & Analytics group’s executive management team, responsible for strategy and solution architecture across the Digital Science family, and sits on the board of IFI Claims, a leading global patent data provider. 

Before joining Digital Science, Robert worked on a variety of software engineering projects at Microsoft, Franklin Templeton Investments, and early stage software startups.  He earned a degree in Computer Science from Harvard University.