At the heart of the academic literature are conversations about how we understand the world.  The content and context of what researchers in the academy do is fundamentally important in constructing what it is to be human. The advent of a deeply interconnected world, and the growth of academic output has, unsurprisingly, led to a situation where it becomes difficult to get a clear understanding, or even a clear picture, of the diversity of what we know about the world. Though advances in communication have led us to this place of over-saturation, tools that help us manage and work our way through all of the information available to us have been slow to emerge.

Mendeley has made real progress in creating tools that can help researchers both manage, and make sense of what is going on in the literature. When I was approached by Jan, Victor and Paul I was impressed by what they had achieved so far, and even more impressed by what their future plans are. They have assembled an amazing team, and I see a great opportunity to work with them to make a positive impact on the daily life of people working with academic literature.

In my career to date I have worked for scientific publishers, first at Springer, and then at Nature Publishing Group. I’ve been fortunate to work closely with communities of scientists, to work with great people in the publishing industry, and to help build some pretty interesting things. A consideration, though, has often been on trying to understand how these tools can fit within the framework of existing publishing business models.

By moving to a start-up company, focussed on just doing one thing, and doing it really well, I see a chance to work on rapidly producing tools that innovate not only in what they offer, but also in the business models that support them. Those are some of the reasons (did I mention the amazing team already?) that I’m absolutely delighted that I will be joining Mendeley full time from Monday the the 28th of June.