Seminar 2: Under the Radar…

John Chodacki, Product Director at Public Library of Science (PLOS), has spent most of his career designing, developing and leading digital publishing initiatives. Before joining PLOS, he managed cross-functional product teams at OReilly Media, Safari Books Online, Creative Edge, Zinio, and VIZ Media. He holds a BA in Anthropology and African American Studies from Grinnell College and an MBA from San Francisco State University.

Abel L. Packer is Director of the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) Program of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) and Advisor on Information and Communication on Science at the Foundation of the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), Brazil, since June 2010. Previously he was Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences (BIREME) of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization for 11 years. He participated pro-actively in the conception, management, operation and dissemination of major Latin American and Caribbean multilingual scientific information networks, such as the Virtual Health Library (VHL) and the Scientific Electronic Library Online. In 2014 the SciELO Network indexes and publishes in open access more one thousand journals. Mr. Packer holds a bachelor degree in Sciences and a Master Degree in Library Sciences.

Mr. Yan Shuai, Associate Chief Editor of Tsinghua University Press (TUP) and TUPs Director of Journal Publishing. The journals published by TUP now include Tsinghua Science and Technology (English), Nano Research (English), Building Simulation (English), Journal of Advanced Ceramics (English), Friction (English), Journal of Tsinghua University (Science and Technology) (Chinese with English Abstracts), Computer Education (Chinese), Science-Technology & Publication (Chinese), Physics and Engineering (Chinese), and Chinese Birds (English), Journal of Automotive Safety and Energy (Chinese with English Abstracts), Experimental Technology and Management (Chinese with English Abstracts), Tsinghua Financial Review (Chinese), Journal of Economics (Chinese), Journal of Traditional Chinese Medical Sciences (English) . Yan has been the president of Society of China University Journals (CUJS, www.cujs.com) since 2004, and the vice president of China Periodicals Association (CPA) since August 2012. Yan has also been working for Chinas Association for Science and Technology (CAST) as a member of CASTs Committee for Academy and Society Activities since 2011.

Richard Padley is the CEO of Semantico (UK) and Semantico Inc. (USA). Semantico is an innovative and award-winning digital publishing solutions company with offices in the UK and the USA. Richard is known for his passion on topics such as access and managing online identities, the semantic web, taxonomies and discoverability, and mobile and cross platform delivery. Before founding Semantico in 1999 Richard worked for Macmillan where he developed the online versions of the Grove Dictionaries of Art and Music. There he specialised in building workflow tracking systems for multi-volume reference works, SGML content management systems and typesetting. Richard has a degree in computer science from Sussex University and lives in Brighton. Richard is a regular keynote speaker at industry events including the STM, ALPSP, APE and UKSG conferences. He hosts regular Semantico events for industry professionals: the S3UG conference and Thought Leadership dinner, and he writes for the influential and popular Discovery Blog.

David Sommer is a highly-driven professional with 15 years’ experience in the global publishing industry and a track record of developing successful products and businesses. David has developed a range of successful new products including Blackwell Synergy, ContentStore, ScholarlyStats, MPS Insight and RiskCheck. David is a powerful force at the intersection of sales, people and technology. He has the ability to get the best out of people, combined with a strong commitment to learning, development and growth and a high level of integrity. David has an MA in Physics from the University of Oxford and an MBA from University College Dublin.

Head of Publisher Outreach, Digital Science. Phill use his talents to spread the word about the Altmetric, figshare and ReadCube publisher offerings through conference presentations, thought leadership pieces, webinars, authoring case studies and other forms of outreach. Prior to this he worked at Labtiva, a Digital Science backed educational software company out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their primary product is ReadCube, a hybrid next-gen reference manager, literature discovery tool and article reader. Phill was Labtivas VP of Business development. Prior to joining Labtiva, Phill was the Editorial Director at JoVE, the unique scientific video journal. In a former life, he was a research scientist with publications in fields as diverse as neuroscience, microscopy and plasma physics. Phill is a microscopy and business development consultant at Harvard Medical School. Originally from the UK, Phill obtained a PhD in physics from Imperial College, London.