ATG PROFILES ENCOURAGED
Anton Angelo Research Data Coordinator University of Canterbury Private Bag 4800 Christchurch, New Zealand Phoner: 027 509 7905 <Anton.angelo@canterbury.ac.nz>
Born and Lived: Gore, NZ. Lived in Dunedin, London, Amsterdam and Christchurch. Professional Career and Activities: Digital Librarian. Have been an IT Trainer/Support, Web developer, Business Development Consultant, Project Manager, Bookseller, Santa Claus. Favorite Books: Cryptonomicon, LOTR, The Thirteen Clocks.
Pet Peeves: Leggings aren’t trousers. Philosophy: Anarcho-syndicalist.
Most memorable career achievement: Helping Douglas Adams get his email in 1994. How/where do you see the industry in 5 years: Libraries will be guardians and promoters of local unique data, available to the world.
Dr Anke Beck CEO IntechOpen The Shard, 32 London Bridge Street London SE1 9SG Phone: 0044 20 3457 0462 <anke@intechopen.com> www.intechopen.com
Born and lived: I was born near the German university town of Göttingen where Robert Bunsen was born, the Grimm brothers taught and Max Planck died. I left the area when I was 19 to work in Namibia, where I later taught. I started to study in Regensburg, then Mainz, and went with a scholarship to study at SOAS in London, had a little stop-over in Boulder, Colorado and through a collaboration with one of SOAS partner institutes I returned to Germany to do my PhD. With my previous publisher, who appointed me first as Vice President, and had branches in Boston, Beijing, Munich, Vienna, Basel, there was lots of moving around, but, much to my regret, I never had the chance to stay there for longer than a business trip. Now I’m in London again, hopefully permanently – inshallah – given Brexit. Asia is still on my list for the future. I am very curious to live there for longer. Professional career and activities: My first publishing experience was with Mouton. Given my academic background: the publisher of my dreams! Eventually, I oversaw the whole of the Humanities and STEM program of De Gruyter, Berlin, both HSS and STEM. In my years there I headed up the editorial side of the US office and we later expanded our publishing programmes into China. We grew through many mergers and acquisitions and by partnering with University Presses. When people began talking about open access I was immediately fascinated: this was what scholars always wanted: research at their fingertips, no boundaries, no limitations: free access to what is important to them. Endless access to content. I knew that the model risked cutting into traditional revenue streams but there was no other way. At De Gruyter, we bought Versita, a pure OA publishing house, grew the numbers of journals and expanded the model to OA books and programs. Open access makes so much sense in the academic world and it reflects what scholars want, though there are things I want to improve upon.
96 Against the Grain / November 2019
Besides my day joy, I serve on the advisory board of the Rat für Informationsstruktur (RfII. German Council for Information structure) It is part of the German Ministry of Education and Research. We focus on the topic of Research Data – Sustainability – Internationality, in the area of digital data. http://www.stm-publishing.com/anke-beck-appointed-to-german-council-for-information-infrastructure/. I also serve on the board of one university and one Centre for Advanced Studies. It is important for my work to keep one foot in academia, to monitor changes but also the needs of today’s academic system. Family: One of each: one daughter and one husband
In my spare time: …I like to see or listen to things which challenge what I saw or listened to before, be it the recent exhibit in the Tate Modern by Olafur Eliasson or music by John Adams “Harmonielehre.” Favorite books: Both the academic writings of Siri Hustvedt, and also her literature books. Pet peeves: People who say one thing but mean the other... Philosophy: “Life is short – have dessert first.”
Most memorable career achievement: The opening of the Beijing office for my previous employer. This was quite a challenge. There were absolutely no resources to make it happen but an intern, the Chinese bureaucratic apparatus rejected the application again and again and again – and we had no idea why. At some point, I found out: it was because, as press, we belonged to the category “tendency operations.” Encouraged by Eleanor Roosevelt´s motto “do one thing every day that scares you,” I took a desperate step, invited myself to the Chinese Embassy in Berlin, invited the (then) Cultural Attachée and invited him to see our “harmless 260 years-old publisher.” He and a whole delegation came to see us. And then like a miracle, papers finally got through and we could employ our first member of staff. I hope that I can do something similar for IntechOpen in the near future. Goal I hope to achieve five years from now: There are lots of things happening in open access but the key goals I have are to be a more active part of the transformation to a world of knowledge without boundaries, to include more geographical areas and institutions and give them visibility on the academic landscape without compromising on quality. AI offers so much potential that I can only imagine how that can support our systems and digital workflows. I am excited by the future and want to make sure we are agile enough to embrace new technologies quickly to support academia.
Dr. Robin Burgess Senior Research Data Librarian The University of New South Wales UNSW Library (level 5) Sydney NSW 2052 Australia Phone: 0293858161 <r.burgess@unsw.edu.au>
Born and Lived: Born in the UK moved to Australia (Sydney) 4 years ago. Professional Career and Activities: I have a First Class Honours degree in Environmental Biology and a PhD in Biosciences where I specialised in the management of research data both quantitative and qualitative to devise a mixed method approach to be able to analyse data and develop decision support systems. I undertook Postdoc research incontinued on page 97
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
