Speakers
Part 1: Dimensions Roadmap / The Big Switch Panel
Scott Delman, Director of Publications, Association for Computing Machinery
Over the past 30 years, I’ve served in a variety of senior editorial and managerial roles at large scholarly publishers and societies, including Kluwer Academic Publishers, Springer, and most recently the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In my current role as ACM’s Director of Publications, I am responsible for developing and implementing ACM’s overall publications strategy, overseeing editorial operations, institutional sales and licensing activities, and ACM’s Open Access strategy. My passion for scholarly publication and for driving positive change in the industry has led me to become active in the governance of several leading technology-driven non-profit organizations, including Crossref, arXiv, Portico, and CHORUS.
Sarah Greaves, STEM Consulting Limited
Sarah has over 20 years of experience within STM editorial and publishing. After an academic career she worked at Nature Publishing Group for over 15 years in both editorial and publishing roles, launching Nature Communications and Scientific Reports before spending two years at Hindawi. Sarah focuses on creating innovative new products and services aimed at solving key researcher pain points whilst ensuring the academic scientist remains at the heart of any publishing decision. Sarah is now a publishing consultant, non-executive director of the Royal Society of Chemistry & The Biochemical Society and volunteer for numerous science outreach programmes.
Amye Kenall, VP of Product, Data & Analytics Hub, Digital Science
Amye joined Digital Science as VP of Product in 2023 and brings with her 20 years of experience in the STM industry. In the past she has held various positions across all aspects of the publishing process. Amye has worked on projects, working groups and authored publications related to open access, open data and reproducible research. She leads the Data & Analytics products at Digital Science, including Dimensions, Altmetric and others, in vision, strategy and execution. Amye works with research communities to support initiatives that help drive open science and make published research fairer and more reproducible. She served as Treasurer for the FORCE11 community for 5 years and has been extensively involved in organisations such as the Research Data Alliance. She also gives regular industry talks and workshops on behalf of the company, covering topics such as disruptive publishing technologies, preprints and open science. Before coming to Digital Science, Amye held various positions in the STM industry, including at Research Square, Springer Nature, and Taylor & Francis.
Alison Mitchell, Chief of Staff, Digital Science
Alison Mitchell is Chief of Staff at Digital Science, responsible for the strategy, thought leadership, business intelligence and CSR functions. Before joining Digital Science Alison was Chief Journals Officer at Springer Nature, responsible for over 3,000 journals including the Nature, Springer, BMC and Palgrave Macmillan imprints. She has served as an editor (on Nature and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology), a publisher (for both in-house and externally edited journals) and, before that, was a researcher with a PhD from Imperial College, London.
Lucy Robinson, Senior Director of Research, SAGE
Lucy is Senior Director of Research at Sage where she has enjoyed a 25 year academic journals publishing career. She is currently a key member of Sage’s team negotiating Transformative Open Access Agreements and evolving our OA transition strategies. Prior to this she worked on journal purchase acquisitions during a period of significant list growth at Sage.
Tyler Ruse, Publisher Solutions, Digital Science
Tyler joined Digital Science in 2017 and spends most of his time helping publishers get business value out of various data-focused products. Tyler currently lives and works in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
Matt Wascavage, Director of Publications, ACSESS
Matt Wascavage is the Publications Director for the Alliance of Crop, Soil and Environmental Science Societies (ACSESS). He oversees the 13 journals, book library, and magazines published on behalf of the ASA, CSSA and SSSA. From 2012 to 2018, Matt served as a Director at the American Physical Society (APS) where he was responsible for forming and managing the international subscriptions, licensing, and sales team. Prior to APS, Matt spent 12 years with the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC.
Session 2: Figshare / The Data Evolution Panel
Lauren Cadwallader, Open Research Manager, PLOS
Lauren Cadwallader is Open Research Manager at the Public Library of Science (PLOS), working to advance the adoption of open science practices – particularly data and code sharing – in the research communities that publish with PLOS. Prior to working at PLOS, Lauren worked in the Office of Scholarly Communications at Cambridge University Library in roles related to Open Access, Open Research training and Research Data Management.
Christna Chap, Head of Editorial Development, Karger Publishers
Christna Chap is Head of Editorial Development at Karger Publishers where she is responsible for the strategic development of the portfolio of academic journals and books. As part of her role, she led the implementation of a research data policy across all Karger journals. Prior to joining Karger, she worked in various editorial roles at the open access publishers PLOS and BioMed Central. Christna studied Biotechnology at the ENSTBB in Bordeaux and completed a PhD in Molecular Biology at the Max Delbrück Center (MDC) in Berlin.
Daniel Evanko, Senior Director, Journal Operations, American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
Daniel oversees the editorial operations of the society’s ten research journals, manages the development and implementation of new technology solutions, and spearheads the journals’ efforts to improve the transparency and reproducibility of the research they publish. Prior to joining AACR in 2016 he was the Chief Editor of Nature Methods and later the Head of Editorial Services at Springer Nature.
Mark Hahnel, CEO, Figshare
Mark Hahnel is the CEO and founder of Figshare, which he created whilst completing his PhD in stem cell biology at Imperial College London. Figshare currently provides research data infrastructure for institutions, publishers and funders globally. He is passionate about open science and the potential it has to revolutionize the research community. For the last eight years, Mark has been leading the development of research data infrastructure, with the core aim of reusable and interoperable academic data. Mark sits on the board of DataCite and the advisory board for Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
Erika Pastrana, Springer Nature
Dr Erika Pastrana is Editorial Director for the Nature Research Journals and oversees the health and applied portfolio. As part of her role, she has been developing Springer Nature’s editorial policy for code sharing, peer review and publication and participates in the implementation of SN’s Open Science Roadmap which includes initiatives to support data, code and protocol sharing. Erika obtained her PhD in Molecular biology and neuroscience and worked as a researcher at Columbia University prior to becoming an editor in 2010.
Part 3: Dimensions Research Integrity (DRI) / Research Integrity Challenge
Nicholas Bailey, Product Manager, Digital Science
Nicholas Bailey is an experienced AI and machine learning developer and is the Technical Product Manager for Dimensions Research Integrity. He is an expert in the way machines can learn and use language and, alongside his work with Digital Science, he researches deep learning at City University of London. As an engaging speaker on technical topics, Nicholas regularly appears at conferences and provides mentoring for early-career technologists. He lives with his wife and two children in Cambridge, UK.
Julia McDonnell, Publishing Director- Owned and Product, Oxford University Press
Julia’s primary responsibilities are to identify, evaluate, and implement ideas for product development relating to Journals, and to develop and increase the impact of OUP’s owned portfolio. She joined OUP in 2009 as a member of the Editorial team working on Science and Medicine journals. She has worked in both OUP’s New York (USA) and Oxford (UK) offices and is currently UK based. Julia holds a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford.
Robyn Mugridge, Head of Publishing Partnerships, Frontiers
Robyn joined Frontiers in 2018, having previously worked for several other international publishers including Springer Nature and the NIHR Journals Library. In 2019 she established the Publishing Partnerships program at Frontiers, where her work now focuses on strategic collaborations with societies. Robyn joined the ALPSP Education Committee in 2021 and in 2023, she was appointed interim Co-Chair of the Committee. In her spare time, she enjoys writing her publishing blog www.MugsPubs.com and speaking publicly at publishing events.
Simon Porter, VP Research Futures, Digital Science
Simon Porter has forged a career transforming university practices in how data about research is used, both from administrative and eResearch perspectives. As well as making key contributions to research information visualization, he is well known for his advocacy of Research Profiling Systems and their capability to create new opportunities for researchers. Simon came to Digital Science from the University of Melbourne, where he worked for 15 years in roles spanning the Library, Research Administration, and Information Technology.
Cynthia Hudson Vitale, Director, Science Policy and Scholarship, Association of Research Libraries (ARL)
In this role, Cynthia advances the Association’s mission of enduring and equitable access to information, information stewardship, and publishing through strategic partnerships with higher education colleagues and through various advocacy initiatives. Prior to joining ARL, Cynthia worked in research libraries building and leading computational research services. She is the co-founder of Ripeta.
Part 4: Altmetric / Author as Customer Panel
Senol Akay, Assistant Director Data & Analytics, American Chemical Society
Before joining the digital strategy team at ACS, Senol held a senior digital marketer position at an international marketing firm, where he crafted e-marketing strategies for global enterprises.
Senol’s educational journey began with a B.S. in Chemistry obtained in Istanbul, Turkey. He subsequently immigrated to the United States to pursue advanced studies in Chemistry, achieving an M.S. in Bioanalytical Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Georgia State University. Additionally, he holds an M.S. in Data and Analytics from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
In 2009, upon completing his doctoral studies, Senol leveraged his analytical and data processing prowess as an e-commerce director, leading commerce and digital marketing strategies for multiple e-commerce websites. Following a period of refining his digital strategy skills, he seamlessly merged his research background and professional expertise in his present role at ACS.
Rachel Borchadt, Scholarly Communications Librarian, American University
Rachel is the Scholarly Communications Librarian at American University, where she oversees open access and research metrics needs on campus. In addition to this role, Rachel’s research interests center on the use of diverse research metrics in research evaluation to increase the equity in evaluation processes. She serves as the Dimensions and Altmetric support person on campus, and uses both products to better showcase research impact at the individual, school, and campus levels.
James Butcher, Clarke & Esposito and Journalology
James Butcher spent over 20 years working at two of the most influential scientific publishers: first as Executive Editor at The Lancet and then as Vice President of the Nature journals. He is now Practice Lead for Europe at Clarke and Esposito, the strategy consultancy. James also writes a weekly newsletter, Journalology, which helps editors and publishers create impactful journals.
Natalia Madjarevic, VP Business Operations, Data & Analytics, Digital Science
Natalia Madjarevic joined Digital Science in 2014 and was originally part of the Altmetric team, heading up Client Services and spending a lot of time getting to know customers. In her current role, she works across a number of Digital Science products including Altmetric and Dimensions. Earlier in her career, Natalia worked in a range of academic libraries including LSE and with a focus on research support, and her first library job was at The Guardian.
Ros Pyne, Global Director, Research & Open Access, Bloomsbury Publishing
Ros Pyne is Global Director, Research and Open Access at Bloomsbury. She has worked in open access policy and strategy roles since 2013 and has a particular interest in bringing OA to long-form scholarship and to the humanities. Ros sits on the advisory boards for the OAPEN OA Books Toolkit and the Mellon-funded Book Analytics Project and is co-author of several papers on open access books.
Mike Taylor, Head of Data Insights, Digital Science
Mike is Head of Data Insights at Digital Science where he works with publishers and research enterprises to understand the impact of their journals and research.
Mike is an innovator in scholarly metrics and social impact. Prior to the development of altmetrics, he was working to understand how researchers were using emerging social media networks and other platforms to exchange information. Mike has conducted much research and has published papers and presentations on altmetrics and other forms of impact. He is working towards a PhD with Mike Thelwall at Wolverhampton University on Open Access publishing and social impact.
Mike has been involved in many open initiatives during his career, most notably contributing to the architecture of the Orcid repository and API prior to its launch during his time at Elsevier Labs.
Mike is the co-founder of ElevenOne Theatre and an active director, producer, writer and actor.
Helen Cooke, Managing Director, Publisher Sales, Digital Science
Helen joined Digital Science in 2021 and now heads up the publisher team, bringing 20+ years of experience from the academic publishing industry. She has worked previously in sales and marketing positions to bring e-resources to libraries worldwide. Helen headed up the Journals Sales team at SAGE Publishing also working at GeoScienceWorld and Blackwell Publishing. For 8 years she was one of the owner/directors at Burgundy Information Services, working with varied publisher clients such as SPIE, Mary Ann Liebert, Canadian Science Publishing and CUP.