OASPA member organisations have this year had the opportunity to vote for new representatives as the Board of Directors expanded from 9 seats to 10, and 2 of the current board members were ending their term. Following the election process, OASPA is delighted to announce the appointment of 3 new board members: Mark Patterson, Lars Bjørnshauge and Peter Binfield.
Mark Patterson is the Executive Director at eLife, a new open-access initiative supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Wellcome Trust and the Max Planck Society. Building on a solid foundation in academic research, Mark began his publishing career at Trends in Genetics, before moving to Nature and subsequently helping to launch the Nature Reviews Journals. Mark is well known for his time at PLOS, being involved in the launch of PLOS Biology amongst other PLOS journals, in his role as Director of Publishing.
“My enthusiasm for open access to research stems from my scientific background in genetics. Inspired by the open sharing of data in this field, I’m convinced that removal of all access and reuse barriers to the research literature as a whole will transform it into a much more powerful resource for research and education. I’ve been working in open access publishing for the past 10 years, and have a broad understanding of open access journals, and the opportunities and challenges that need to be addressed to realize the full potential of open access. I believe that open access is just one step towards the adaptation of research communication to digital media, and therefore strongly support innovation and experimentation in all aspects of publishing.” Mark was a founding Director of OASPA and has continued to support the organisation, most notably during the assessment process for new members.
Lars Bjørnshauge is currently SPARC Europe Director of European Library Relations and Managing Director of the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), the latter of which he founded. “For a decade now I have been providing services for open access, primarily open access journals and lately open access monographs as well. Being on the board of OASPA provides me with more opportunities for contributing to the further proliferation of open access and to help shape OASPA as a truly global organization for open access and aggregators.” Lars is also co-founder of OpenDoar, the Directory of Open Access Repositories, and co-founder of the Directory of Open Access Books.
Peter Binfield is co-founder (with Jason Hoyt, previously of Mendeley) of PeerJ, a fully CC-BY open access publisher of PeerJ and PeerJ PrePrints. Peter has a strong background in publishing, having worked at Institute of Physics Publishing, Kluwer Academic, Springer, SAGE and then PLOS. “I have been heavily involved in open access publishing for the last five years, and am a passionate advocate for full and unfettered access to the academic literature. Although I have focused mostly in the STM field, from my time at SAGE I am also fully aware of the unique challenges faced by authors in the humanities and social sciences (as well as the challenges that scholarly societies face). This is an exciting time to be in publishing. The industry is rapidly moving from a subscription model to some form of open access publication, and OASPA plays a key role in the navigation of that shift.”
OASPA would like to take this opportunity to extend sincere gratitude to Theo Bloom of PLOS, who will be stepping down from her position on the board, and similarly offer thanks to the two board members reaching the end of their term, Bo-Christer Björk and Raoul Kamadjeu, for all of the input and support that they have given during their time as board members of OASPA. The board is pleased to welcome Catriona MacCallum, who will be taking Theo’s place on the board as a PLOS representative.
For a full list of current board members and terms of service please see http://oaspa.org/about/board/.