Washington, D.C. February 4, 2016. Elections for the CHORUS / CHOR, Inc. Board of Directors were held at the organization’s Annual Members Meeting on February 3, 2016, in Washington, D.C., further to the expiration of the Interim Board that has served CHORUS during its initial formation, just over 2 years after incorporation.
CHORUS members gathered in person or by proxy to vote to elect the members of the Board of Directors. The candidates were elected for staggered one, two, and three-year terms; going forward all terms will be three years. As required by the CHORUS By-laws, a majority of Directors represent not-for-profit organizations. Eleven elected Directors served on CHORUS’s Interim Board. Howard Ratner, Executive Director, serves as an ex-officio member of the Board of Directors.
New to the CHORUS Board of Directors are John Sack (HighWire Press) and Matthew Salter (American Physical Society). “Now that CHORUS has announced agreements with 6 funding agencies, it’s time to move to annual election of the Board of Directors by our publisher and affiliate members. We are very encouraged by the active participation of our members in the election process, which helps to ensure that CHORUS is responsive and evolving to meet the needs of the scholarly community,” said Susan King, Executive Director, Rockefeller University Press and CHORUS Chair.
Dr. King continued, “We are pleased to welcome John Sack and Matthew Salter to our Board. As the Founding Director of HighWire Press, John Sack brings the unique outlook of a thought leader on technology and publishing futures, strategic analytics, discoverability, user research, and technology innovation. Currently the Publisher of APS, Matthew Salter’s perspective has been informed by his diverse experiences as a research chemist who moved into editorial leadership roles for several leading societies and companies in the UK, US, and Asia. John and Matthew’s wide-ranging expertise will be invaluable as CHORUS addresses the evolving requirements of scholarly communications. We also welcome our Interim Directors who have been reelected, and thank them for their continuing service.”
Dr. Joe Serene has stepped down from the Board following his retirement from the American Physical Society. Dr. King thanked Dr. Serene for his dedicated service in the role of Treasurer from the first inception of CHORUS. “Joe brought to CHORUS his experiences as a published scholar, an accomplished publisher, and service to the APS. We are indebted to Joe’s vigilant editing, fiscal astuteness, gentle humor, and contribution to CHORUS and to the scholarly community, writ large.”
Immediately following the Annual Members Meeting, the new Board convened its first meeting to elect the CHORUS Officers. Susan King (Rockefeller University Press) will continue as CHORUS Chair and John Tagler (Association of American Publishers) as Secretary. Scott Delman (Association for Computing Machinery) was elected as Treasurer. A member of the scholarly publishing community for two decades, Mr. Delman currently serves as ACM’s Director of Group Publishing & Digital Library Sales, leading ACM’s Digital Library publication platform and shaping ACM’s policies and editorial approach to Open Access.
Executive Director Howard Ratner (who continues to serve as a CHORUS Officer and non-voting member of the Board), and Treasurer Joe Serene provided an update at the Annual Members Meeting reporting on CHORUS’ operational and financial performance over the past year as well as plans for the year ahead, highlighting:
- Establishing a strong foundation of funders, partners, and members
- Onboarding five federal agencies and the first wave of articles publicly available via CHORUS under agency plans
- Monitoring of 200,000 articles for public access and long-term availability, more than 43,000 of which are already freely available to the public
- Thanking the hard-working members of our Technical Working Group and Communications Working Groups
CHORUS / CHOR, Inc. Board of Directors, Elected February 3, 2016
| DIRECTOR NAME | MEMBER ORGANIZATION |
| David Crotty, Ph.D. | Oxford University Press |
| Kevin Davies, Ph.D. | American Chemical Society |
| Scott Delman | Association for Computing Machinery |
| Fred Dylla, Ph.D. | AIP Publishing |
| Thane Kerner | Silverchair |
| Susan King, Ph.D. | The Rockefeller University Press |
| John Sack | HighWire Press |
| Matthew Salter, Ph.D. | American Physical Society |
| John Tagler | Association of American Publishers |
| Andrew Tein | Wiley |
| Alicia Wise, Ph.D. | Elsevier |
| Fran Zappulla | IEEE |
Biographies of CHORUS Directors are available: CHORUS Board Bios (2-3-16)
About CHORUS
CHORUS advances sustainable, cost-effective public access to articles reporting on funded research in ways that benefit all in the scholarly communications community. A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit membership organization, CHORUS leverages existing infrastructure, promotes collaboration, sparks innovation, and broadens the dialogue among publishers, funders, service providers, researchers and other stakeholders.
Contacts:
CHORUS – Susan Spilka
+1 (516) 315-7721
HighWire – Bonnie Zavon
+1 (650) 723-0522
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