Jan Velterop becomes Springer's Director of Open Access

Springer is enhancing its commitment to free online access, and has given the job to someone with well-earned OA credibility. From today's press release:

Springer has strengthened its commitment to innovation and customer choice by appointing Jan Velterop to the newly created position of Director of Open Access. In July 2004 Springer launched Springer Open Choice a pioneering project which provides an additional publication option to the traditional subscription model. Authors can choose to make their articles freely available worldwide on the Internet, for a fee of 3,000 US dollars....Velterop is one of the most prominent figures of the Open Access movement. He will be joining the company from BioMedCentral, an established Open Access biomedical research publisher, where he was Publishing Director. Derk Haank, Springer's CEO, comments: "Springer Open Choice has attracted constant attention within the publishing world since its launch. Springer is the first major commercial publisher to provide an Open Access model, making it a pioneer in the industry. We are now taking a further step forward. The appointment of Jan Velterop creates an internal champion for this second component of our publishing policy, making sure Open Access gets the required attention both internally and externally". "I am firmly convinced that Open Access publishing represents a powerful way to meet the needs of many authors and readers. It therefore fits in ideally with Springer's growth strategy", adds Jan Velterop.