Concurrent 3A – Scholarly Publishing: Going Beyond Traditional Markets

Bill Silberg is Vice President for Publishing and Communications at the New York Academy of Sciences, a position he assumed in June 2006. He came to the Academy after spending three years as Senior Vice President for Communications and Publishing at The Commonwealth Fund, an independent, private foundation that studies and supports research on health care policy and social issues. At Commonwealth, he oversaw an overhaul of the foundation’s web site, dramatically increasing the Fund’s professional and public visibility.

Prior to joining Commonwealth in 2003, Mr. Silberg was Senior Vice President and Executive Editor at Medscape from WebMD, the online portal for health and medical professionals worldwide. Mr. Silberg joined Medscape in March after spending 13 years in publishing at the American Medical Association, the last four as Web Editor and Editorial Director for Medical News and New Media at JAMA. Previously, he served as Associate Director for Public Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals and, prior to that, spent seven years with United Press International as a reporter, editor and bureau chief in Albany, NY; Detroit; Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

As co-founder, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Silverchair, Thane Kerner has since 1993 led the organization’s strategic development of platforms and professional services that focus on the intersection of technology with health care knowledge. Medical informatics, the semantic web, clinical information processes, and web-based learning are the foundations for a broad variety of Silverchair-created health reference products delivered via networked digital media. Thane serves on the Executive Council of the Professional and Scholarly Publishers Division (PSP) of the Association of American Publishers; as Co-Chairman of the American Medical Publishers Committee; and on the National Library of Medicine’s Publishers Advisory Panel. He is an advocate for issues of concern to the health information industry, and a frequent speaker and moderator at industry conferences including the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) Top Management Roundtable, the Council of Science Editors (CSE), the PSP Annual Conference, the AMPC Medical Informatics Seminar, and the AMPC-National Library of Medicine Biennial Symposium.

Prior to establishing Silverchair, he was publisher of Experimental Hematology, the official journal of the International Society for Experimental Hematology. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.