AIP Taps Top Publishing Talent

Ramping up for the next wave of scientific publishing

MELVILLE, N.Y., March 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Institute of Physics (AIP) announced today the hiring of three new publishing experts who will become part of a core leadership team that will help drive publishing forward into the 21st century.

"Publishing is the glue that holds the scientific community together and an essential part of the apparatus that drives innovation," says John Haynes, Vice President for Publishing at AIP--a major nonprofit publisher of scientific journals and an umbrella organization for 10 physical science societies that represent 135,000 scientists and engineers worldwide.

"These three new professionals will help advance AIP's own innovative efforts and play key roles in creating the next wave of scientific publishing," Haynes adds. They are:

• EVAN OWENS, the new Chief Information Officer, Publishing, who will be responsible for the vision and overall strategy required to build and maintain AIP Publishing as a leading technology-driven publishing house.

• ROBERT HARINGTON, the new Publisher, AIP Partnerships, who will be responsible for developing and operating AIP's world-class partner publishing program in collaboration with learned societies in the physical sciences.

• LISA McLAUGHLIN, AIP's new Director, Informatics and Production, who will help to create and develop new products and services designed to enhance the reader experience.

"As we look forward to the future, we anticipate great changes in how scientific content is viewed and shared, which will advance knowledge in ways that were unthinkable just a few years ago," says Fred Dylla, the Executive Director and CEO of AIP.

These changes are driven largely by new technologies and the Web, which is making it possible for journal subscribers to move beyond the traditional ways of accessing scientific information. Where once journal articles were fixed in print and bound in hard copies on library shelves, every article published today has the potential to become its own portal into an expansive, interconnected, and ever-evolving universe of knowledge.

The three hirings are the culmination of a restructuring that began a year ago at AIP, which is seeking to take full advantage of new opportunities for publishing in the 21st century. Other developments AIP has made in the last year include:

• Rolling out a new professional networking site for scientists, called AIP UniPHY, which promises to enhance collaborations and speed science. See: http://www.aip.org/press_release/uniphy.html

• Creating a new eBook platform so that researchers and students are now able to cross-search and access journals, proceedings, and books on a single site. See: http://www.aip.org/press_release/eBooks.html

• Developing iResearch, a new application that allows researchers to download and store AIP journal articles to their iPhone or iPod touch.  See: http://www.aip.org/press_release/iPhoneApp.html

Also, AIP announced this week that it has opened a new office in Beijing, China—the first part of a multi-phase plan to expand globally. See: http://www.aip.org/press_release/beijingoffice.html

MORE ABOUT EVAN OWENS

Evan Owens, the new Chief Information Officer, Publishing, will be responsible for the vision and overall strategy required to build and maintain AIP Publishing as a leading technology-driven publishing house. One of the leading experts in the world of electronic publishing, Owens was most recently the vice president of content management at ITHAKA in Princeton, NJ. Prior to that, he was the Chief Technology Officer at Portico, where he was responsible for the complete technology design and implementation of a pioneering long-term preservation archive for electronic journals. Before that, Owens spent nearly two decades in a variety of positions at the University of Chicago Press, including IT Manager and Electronic Publishing Manager of the Journals Division.  

He holds an honors B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine, was a candidate in the Ph.D. Program in Music History at the University of Chicago, and was a Fulbright Scholar at King's College, London.

MORE ABOUT ROBERT HARINGTON

Robert M. Harington, the new Publisher, AIP Partnerships, has responsibility for driving strategic growth of society and partner publishing at AIP. Harington comes to AIP from Wiley Blackwell, where he served as Vice President and Executive Publisher. Prior to that, he was Executive Vice President and Global Science Publishing Director at Blackwell Publishing. Working across the United States, Europe, and Asia, Harington was responsible for leading the dramatic global growth of society journal publishing in the sciences for Blackwell. He has forged an international career working in both non-profit and commercial settings with rich experience in book, journal and electronic publishing.

He holds a doctorate in biochemistry from University of Oxford, and a first class honors degree in chemistry from University of London.

MORE ABOUT LISA McLAUGHLIN

AIP's new Director, Informatics and Production, Lisa McLaughlin will help to create and develop new products and services designed to enhance the reader experience. McLaughlin joins AIP after serving as Director, Journal Publishing Services at the company Aptara. Prior to Aptara, McLaughlin served as Vice President of Production at Blackwell Publishing (now Wiley-Blackwell) for ten years, during which time she managed the U.S.-based journals production program. Prior to Blackwell, she worked at Heinle&Heinle, now a Cengage company, producing educational content for the college market.

McLaughlin has a Bachelor of Arts from Simmons College in Boston and an M.B.A. from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

ABOUT AIP

The American Institute of Physics is a federation of 10 physical science societies representing more than 135,000 scientists, engineers, and educators and is one of the world's largest publishers of scientific information in the physical sciences. Offering partnership solutions for scientific societies and for similar organizations in science and engineering, AIP is a leader in the field of electronic publishing of scholarly journals. AIP publishes 12 journals (some of which are the most highly cited in their respective fields), two magazines, including its flagship publication Physics Today; and the AIP Conference Proceedings series. Its online publishing platform Scitation hosts nearly two million articles from more than 185 scholarly journals and other publications of 28 learned society publishers.

SOURCE American Institute of Physics