OASPA Appoints Malavika Legge as Program Manager

We are pleased to announce that Malavika Legge has been appointed as Program Manager for OASPA, starting in July 2022. Malavika has held senior roles at the Biochemical Society since 2015, serving as the Society’s Director of Publishing, as well as Executive Director on the Portland Press Board for the last four years, promoting and supporting an open agenda within the Biochemical Society during that time.

Malavika was also an active participant in discussions that led to the founding of the Society Publishers’ Coalition (SocPC). She was elected to the group’s first Council in 2019 and has been serving as Chair since 2020 – a voluntary post that she will continue in given the overlapping aims of OASPA and the SocPC.

Malavika’s interest in open access goes back a long way. She held editorial, licensing and management roles in a career spanning nine years at Informa Healthcare where she worked on peer reviewed journals, books, encyclopaedias, and databases. By the end of her time at Informa Malavika was already running in-house workshops to improve open access workflows and enable deposition of authors’ accepted manuscripts while training teams about Creative Commons licences.

“I’m delighted to welcome Malavika,” says Claire Redhead, OASPA’s Executive Director. “She brings a wealth of knowledge, significantly from the perspective of learned societies, and firsthand experience of the challenges and opportunities that moving to open access brings. She has done a tremendous job championing the transition to open access at the Biochemical Society and leading the way with other societies that are committed to an open future and are showing what can be done. More than that, she is truly passionate about scholarly content and improving access to knowledge across the globe.

And it’s exciting that OASPA is growing and we are able to add a new member to the team. With Bernie Folan as OASPA’s Communications, Engagement and Outreach Manager, and Lulu Stader as Membership Manager, Malavika joins an efficient and dedicated staff. We’re all looking forward to having her working with us on furthering OASPA’s mission.”

Along with strong roots in content development and extensive licensing experience, Malavika has a love for harnessing workflows and technology on the one hand, and galvanising people and communities on the other, to help deliver open access in a fair way for all involved. Much of her experience is in cross-functional working – bringing disparate teams together and using data and creativity to find ways of achieving sustainable open access.

“Opening up content in a sustainable way is only possible through willingness, the exchange of ideas, and trust”, says Malavika; “I’m grateful to all who have puzzled out possibilities on open access with me in the past. I feel joyful about joining OASPA to learn some more, and to do what I can to help take possibilities even further. I dream of a world where scholarly publishing is open access publishing – by default, for everyone.”

As OASPA Program Manager, Malavika will be responsible for leading a range of activities that directly support OASPA’s mission, including identifying new initiatives, developing projects, convening committees and working groups at the board and member level, and contributing to community initiatives on open access.