Oliver Cocks, ALPSP
Oliver Cocks is Head of Content Retention at Springer Nature, leading initiatives to improve author experience and streamline manuscript transfers across journal portfolios. With a background in behavioural ecology, he applies a researcher-centric, data-informed approach to his work, focusing on scalable, ethical publishing solutions that promote transparency and empower informed author choice. He began his publishing career in 2018 at BMC, contributing to open access growth and editorial strategy before joining the Content Retention team in 2022. Passionate about serving researchers, his work reflects a commitment to integrity, accessibility, and innovation in academic publishing.
Bev Acreman, UKSG
Bev Acreman was a founding member of T.C.S. while at BioMed Central and helped gather interest from other organisations in the same space. She has extensive experience in journal publishing and was Vice President, Open Access Business Development at BioMed Central and then Springer. She is Executive Director at UKSG, an organisation she has been involved in as a volunteer for over 20 years.
Gaelle Bequet, ISSN International Centre
Dr Gaëlle Béquet was appointed Director of the ISSN International Centre (Paris, France) in March 2014. She began her career as an ICT specialist for the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. She has also worked in various academic libraries. She holds a PhD in Information Science (2011, Sorbonne University). In 2014, she published her book Trois bibliothèques européennes face à Google : aux origines de la bibliothèque numérique (1990-2010) about the emergence of digital libraries in Austria, France and the UK.
Erich van Rijn, Association of University Presses
Erich van Rijn is currently Executive Director at the University of California Press, where he has served in various roles since 1997. Prior to joining the University of California Press in 1997, Erich held positions at Oxford University Press and HarperCollins Publishers. Erich has been active as a volunteer in industry associations, and currently serves as an at-large member of the Association of University Presses board of directors. He also served on the advisory board of Towards an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME), a joint initiative of the Association of American Universities, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of University Presses.
Dominic Mitchell, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
Dom has worked extensively with the publisher and librarian communities both as a publisher, with the BMJ Publishing Group (UK), and as an account and project manager at HighWire Press – Stanford University (USA). He is DOAJ’s Operations Manager. He is responsible for the technical development of the DOAJ platform, building communities with stakeholder groups, and ensuring the smooth running of the organisation.
Claire Redhead, OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association)
Claire’s publishing background began back in 2000. Editorial positions in UK publishing houses in the 12 years that followed provided her with valuable opportunities for developing key skills and varied experience in the academic journal and book publishing industry. In 2012 Claire joined the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), initially responsible for managing membership and communications for the organisation. Claire quickly took the lead in developing and growing OASPA during this time and was appointed Executive Director of the association in 2016.
Alysa Levene, COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics)
Alysa joined COPE in 2022, after 20 years of working in academia. As Operations Manager, she supports the Executive Officer in implementing COPE’s strategic objectives, and the Trustee Board and Council in producing educational and other member resources. She also manages the quarterly member Forum. She has a PhD in History and is the author of a number of scholarly and trade books.
Donna Okubo, International Association of STM Publishers
Donna is STM’s Community Engagement Manager. She works across the STM community to strengthen collaboration and advance trusted research. She brings over 20 years of experience in science and data publishing, with a focus on community engagement and partnerships.
Previously, she helped establish Dryad’s institutional membership program and spent more than a decade at the Public Library of Science (PLOS), supporting institutions, funders, and policymakers in advancing open and reliable scholarly communication.
Katherine Stephan (Research Support Librarian/Academic Liaison Librarian, Liverpool John Moores University)
Katherine Stephan is a Research Support Librarian and an Academic Liaison Librarian at Liverpool John Moores University. She previously worked in public libraries in Bristol and Norwich before moving into academic libraries in 2012. She is keen to work with and learn from others that support and advocate for open research via open data, open access publishing, engagement events, and work with the wider public and public libraries. She tweets at @msiowaintheuk.
Niels Stern, OAPEN Foundation
Niels Stern is the director of OAPEN and co-director of the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). He began his career in scholarly book publishing in 2003 and co-founded the OAPEN project in 2008. Since then, he has been head of publishing for the Nordic Council of Ministers, independent expert for the European Commission on open science and e-infrastructures, and before joining OAPEN, he was head of the department for licence management at the Royal Danish Library, also serving as chief negotiator for the Danish national licence consortium.
Sofie Wennström, LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries)
Sofie Wennström represents the LIBER organization and their over 400 member libraries across Europe in the Committee. Sofie has been working with academic publishing since 2003 and manages Stockholm University Press’s journal portfolio. Sofie’s workplace is Stockholm University Library in Sweden, where she is also teaching students and researchers about scholarly communication and information literacy.