Ask a Publishing Executive

Our Ask the Experts series allows attendees to steer the discussion, asking whatever questions they’d like of our panel of experts. The discussion groups are a great opportunity to learn about an emerging trend in scholarly communication and explore how it can benefit your work.

Charles Watkinson is Director of the University of Michigan Press and Associate University Librarian, Publishing, at the University of Michigan Library. He was President of the Association of University Presses in 2022-2023. Charles has previously been Director of Purdue University Press and Director of Publications at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

David Turner is a Content Consultant and Head of Partnerships at DCL and is a regular presenter on topics like Digital Transformation, Publishing Automation, XML, metadata, and Content Management.

Jason Hu is Director, Researcher Services and Networks at Taylor & Francis. He leads global teams for researcher services, strategic partnerships, and content acquisition. Before joining Taylor & Francis, Mr. Hu has been the Regional Director Greater China at ORCID. Previously he has worked at Wiley for many years, with various responsibilities in journal publishing, business development, market insights and strategies. Besides his extensive experiences in academic publishing, Mr. Hu is also passionate on promoting research and publication integrity. He has served as COPE Council Member since 2016. He holds an MBA degree from University of Chicago, USA.

Mia Ricci is the Director of Publications Operations at the American Geophysical Union. She oversees peer review management, policies, and operations of their 24 scientific journals and the Earth and Space Science Open Archive, AGU’s preprint and community server. Mia is also the lead for AGU Publications’ diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts and is a committee member of SSP, CSE, and the Joint Commitment for Action and Inclusion and Diversity in Publishing. She works remotely from Bloomington, Indiana.

Miriam Maus is Chief Publishing Officer at IOP Publishing (IOPP). Miriam is responsible for the creation and delivery of the organisation’s publishing and researcher engagement strategy. Working with a global team of publishing and marketing professionals, Miriam ensures that IOPP’s publishing activities deliver trusted content of high quality, and that the organisation takes a leadership role in publishing ethics and integrity, inclusive and transparent publishing practices and that the power of technology is harnessed to improve the publishing experience for all involved. During her 25 years in academic publishing Miriam has created strategies, developed business opportunities and led diverse teams through periods of change and growth. Prior to joining IOPP, Miriam worked for Blackwell Publishing and Wiley in a range of senior leadership roles. Miriam is a board member of the STM Association. She has also served on Research4Life’s Executive Council since 2019, and joined STM’s Research Integrity Committee in spring 2023, promoting best practice in publishing ethics across the industry.

Sara Rouhi is the new Director of Open Science and Publishing Innovation, reporting to Chief Publishing Officer, Penelope Lewis. Rouhi is charged with developing new publishing models and sustainable business strategies to accelerate AIPP’s mission to advance open, equitable research communication and empower researchers to accelerate global progress. Sara joins AIP Publishing from Public Library of Science (PLOS) where she was Regional Director, Publishing Development, The Americas. In this role she focused on engaging with high-level stakeholders, including funders, policymakers, and institutional leaders in local scholarly communication ecosystems. Before this role she built up PLOS’ institutional business models and partnership base as Director of Strategic Partnerships, launching three new, non-APC business models (including the 2021 ALPSP Innovation in Publishing award winner, Community Action Publishing) and implemented over 200+ partnerships globally. Sara is active in the scholarly communications community as a volunteer and thought leader, speaking frequently on open access, equity in publishing, and diversity in scholarly communications. She is was Board Member for the Society of Scholarly Publishing (SSP) from 2022-204 and was the recipient of SSP’s Emerging Leader award in 2015. She is active in the Washington DC improv comedy scene with her troupe Sistine Robot and she tweets/bleets @RouhiRoo and @RouhiRoo.bsky.social.