Meet the publisher who believes science should be social and research should be read

Media releases, Nature

Steven Inchcoombe, Chief Publishing Officer for Springer Nature, is visiting Australia.

Steven Inchcoombe is the Chief Publishing Officer for Springer Nature, overseeing the publication of over 2,900 journals including influential titles like Nature and Scientific Reports.

Steven was responsible for the Nature Publishing Group’s move into open access publishing, resulting in 60 per cent of their 2015 research articles being open access. Following the merger of the parent company in the same year, Springer Nature became the world’s largest open access publisher.

He was also behind the SharedIt content-sharing initiative which allows authors, subscribers and media partners to share links to the Springer Nature’s peer-reviewed research articles on social network and websites. A 15-month trial of this idea on nature.com led to 1.3 million additional article views.

Visiting Australia from the UK, Steven is speaking about big data, open data and open access publishing, and their value for academic research at a series of half-day symposia and networking events being held this week in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

“We need to be able to continue to increase access to research articles, books and databases,” says Steven.

“In addition to increasing access we also want to improve understanding of research and the advances that they communicate. We also need, particularly in the sciences and in many parts of the social sciences, much greater use of open data.

“Publishers are trying to help researchers succeed with their careers, they’re trying to help further communicate their advances not just within research, but more widely to the whole world at large.”

Steven studied physics at university and is also a chartered accountant.

For interviews please contact Niall Byrne, niall@scienceinpublic.com.au, 0417-131-977 or Suzannah Lyons, suzannah@scienceinpublic.com.au, 0409 689 543

Read on for details of the talks Stephen is giving in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Springer Nature events in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane: What do big data platforms and open data mean for research?

In each city, Steven will give a talk on ‘Advancing Discovery using Open Data’, followed by a talk from a local research leader, then a panel discussion with additional experts, taking questions from the audience.

Sydney: Tuesday 6 June – ‘Value of Open Data’ Symposium & Networking Event

Steven will be joined in Sydney by Professor Sally Cripps, from The University of Sydney Business School & Co-Director of the Centre for Translational Data Science. She will present on the impact of open data on her own research.

  • When: Tuesday 6 June, 2017
  • Time: 9am – 12 noon, directly followed by networking luncheon until 1:30pm
  • Where: Seminar Room, Level 2, Fisher Library, The University of Sydney, Camperdown NSW

Melbourne: Wednesday 7 June – ‘Big Data Platforms’ Symposium & Networking Event

Steven will be joined in Melbourne by Professor Richard Sinnott, Director of eResearch at The University of Melbourne and Professor of Applied Computing Systems in Computing and Information Systems Department, Melbourne School of Engineering. His research spans from bioinformatics to mapped social media data for urban research. He will be presenting on ‘Big Data Platforms for Inter-disciplinary Research Communities’.

  • When: Wednesday 7 June, 2017
  • Time: 9am – 12 noon, directly followed by networking luncheon until 1:30pm
  • Where: The Woodward Conference Centre, Level 10, 185 Pelham Street, Carlton, 3053, VIC

Brisbane: Friday 9 June – ‘Open Access Scholarly Publishing’ Symposium & Networking Event

Ginny Barbour, Executive Director of the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group, will join Steven in Brisbane. She will present on the topic of ‘Open Access Scholarly Publishing: Current State and Future Prospects’.

  • When: Friday 9 June, 2017
  • Time: 2pm to 4pm, directly followed by networking cocktail party until 5:30pm
  • Where: Sir Llew Edwards Building – Terrace Room, Building no. 14, University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus

RSVP for all events: Email Lisa Maclean, Springer Nature via Lisa.Maclean@springer.com.