Team

The OAPEN team consists of the following persons:

Niels Stern - Managing Director

Niels Stern has worked in scholarly publishing for more than twenty years. Since 2014 he has also acted as an independent expert for the European Commission on open science and e-infrastructures. He is a member of the OPERAS Executive Assembly and the Open Book Collective Board of Stewards and serves on a number of advisory boards and committees.

E-mail: stern[@]oapen.org

Twitter: @nielsstern, @OAPENbooks

ORCID: 0000-0001-6466-9748

Danny Kingsley - Community Manager (Southern Hemisphere)

Dr Danny Kingsley works as an Australian-based scholarly communication consultant and is a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science. She spent 2015-2019 in the UK working as the Deputy Director of Cambridge University Libraries. She established Open Access Australasia in 2013 after completing her 2008 PhD on open access. She sits on multiple committees, writes extensively and regularly presents.

E-mail: d.kingsley[@]oapen.org

Dorien van der Giessen – Collection Manager

Dorien van der Giessen joined OAPEN in 2012. Before that, she worked as an information specialist in several libraries (amongst others: Ministry of Justice & Security; WODC Research and Documentation Centre).

Dorien’s responsibilities for OAPEN and DOAB include collection and metadata management; reporting and the upload of books and chapters into the OAPEN Library.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Library and Information Sciences.

E-mail: d.vandergiessen[@]oapen.org

Jordy Findanis – Project Manager

Jordy Findanis joined the OAPEN Foundation as Project Manager in 2023. He has worked in scholarly publishing for more than fifteen years and has managed most aspects of the publication process, including editing and production (print and digital content in different formats and for various platforms), distribution, fundraising and open access. He holds an MA in English from Aalborg University.

Jordy’s main tasks at OAPEN include publisher outreach. In this capacity he is also part of Open Book Futures (OBF), a community-driven project based at Lancaster University and funded by Research England Development (RED) and Arcadia. The collaborative project seeks to enhance Open Access infrastructures and promote bibliodiverse and equitable community-led approaches to Open Access book publishing.

*Email: j.findanis[@]oapen.org

Laura Bandura-Morgan - Funder Relations Manager

Laura Bandura-Morgan joined OAPEN Foundation in August 2022. Her focus is engaging with research funders to create a forum to share ideas and experiences related to OA book infrastructure developments in support of policy implementation.

She has received her Ph.D in Molecular Biology but for the last 8 years she has been involved in Open Science activities. She was a long-term employee of the National Science Centre, a governmental funding agency in Poland. Apart from her duties as a head of audit and compliance team she focused mainly on developing and implementing guidelines and policies on research integrity, data management and open access. She was a member of Science Europe Working Groups on open data and open infrastructure, and involved in work of cOAlition S task groups.

E-mail: l.bandura[@]oapen.org

ORCID: 0000-0002-7040-5682

Laura J. Wilkinson - Product Manager

Laura J. Wilkinson joined OAPEN as a Product Manager in 2022. Her previous experience includes roles at Crossref, ORCID, UKSG Committee, and at the university libraries of Northumbria, Sunderland, and Oxford. She was awarded an MA in Information and Library Management in 2006, and has held invited positions at Newcastle University (UK) and Université Lyon 1 Claude Bernard (FR).

Laura’s main areas of work at OAPEN are the Books Analytics Dashboard, Peer Review Information Service for Monographs (PRISM), and technical support for OAPEN, DOAB, and the OA Books Toolkit.

E-mail: l.wilkinson[@]oapen.org

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8922-7839

Lotte van Aalten– Publisher Relations Manager

Lotte van Aalten started her work for OAPEN as project assistant in 2009. After working as a marketing intern and editorial assistant at Amsterdam University Press, she joined the OAPEN project and continued working for OAPEN when it was established as a foundation.

Lotte’s main focus is engaging with publishers worldwide. She is also engaged in communication and project activites. She has a Master of Arts degree in Arts, Culture and Media and a minor in literary studies.

E-mail: l.vanaalten[@]oapen.org

Ronald Snijder - CTO / Head of Research

Ronald Snijder joined the OAPEN Foundation in 2011. He is responsible for the operational, technical and data-related aspects of the OAPEN Library, the Directory of Open Access Books and the OA Books Toolkit. He has a background in library and information sciences, information technology and holds a PhD in social sciences.

Since 2008 he has been active in the field of open access books; both at a practical level and as researcher. Before that, he has worked in several profit and not-for-profit organisations as an IT and information management specialist. When working at Amsterdam University Press, he was part of the team working on the OAPEN project.

E-mail: r.snijder[@]oapen.org

Twitter: @ronaldsnijder, @OAPENbooks, @DOABooks

Mastodon: @RonaldSnijder@mastodon.social

ORCID: 0000-0001-9260-4941

Silke Davison - Community Manager (North America & Europe)

Silke Davison is Community Manager at OAPEN and the DOAB, where she is responsible for the development of and engagement with their library communities, seeking to promote and support the transition to open access for academic books. Prior to this, she worked at Frontiers and Springer Nature, and completed an MA in Publishing at UCL.

E-mail: s.davison[@]oapen.org

Sînziana Păltineanu - Project Manager

Sînziana Păltineanu joined OAPEN as Project Manager in 2023. Sînziana’s previous experience includes roles at the Berlin University Alliance and at Bard College Berlin. At OAPEN, Sînziana will focus on the Policy Alignment of Open Access Monographs in the European Research Area (PALOMERA) and on further developing the OA Books Toolkit.

Sînziana holds a Ph.D. in the Comparative History of Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe from the Central European University. Among other awards and fellowships, Sînziana was a Reese Miller Scholar at Cornell University (Ithaca/USA) and a Fellow for Literature at Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart/Germany).

E-mail: s.paltineanu[@]oapen.org