The UKSG 49th Annual Conference and Exhibition: Glasgow – Breakout sessions

Ben Rawlins is the associate dean for Outreach, Engagement, and Collections at the University of Kentucky Libraries. Ben has served in various leadership roles in academic libraries, including library director at Georgetown College, SUNY Geneseo, and Texas A&M International University. In his current role, Ben leads a diverse portfolio that includes reference services, educational services, collections, acquisitions, liaison services, interlibrary loan, electronic resources, open educational resources, assessment, and the branch libraries (Education, Fine Arts & Design, and Medical Center).

With over a decade of experience working in the Academic Publishing and Educational Technology industries, Shivendra is passionate about supporting Research and Scholarly Communications. He holds a BSc in Physics with Astrophysics, and postgraduate qualifications in Business, and Accounting & Finance. As an Engagement Manager at ORCID in the Global Direct Members team, Shivendra focuses on growing member & integration adoption; as well as collaborations with Vendors, Service Providers and Publishers who serve the wider research community.

Liz leads Jisc’s research management product strategy, with a focus on building open and interoperable datasets and services that enable better outcomes for research – driving efficiency, transparency, and collaboration across the sector.
With a background in biology, Liz began her career in academic publishing, gaining expertise in open access and open research practices. This experience sparked her interest in improving the way information flows across the research ecosystem. At Jisc, she brings this perspective to developing data and infrastructure that support the research sector in navigating an evolving policy, funding, and digital landscape

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Naz Torabi serves as the Collections Coordinator, Sciences at the University of Toronto, where she is responsible for overseeing the development of a coordinated and sustainable approach to library collections across the university’s extensive library system. Her responsibilities include the acquisition, management, and assessment of electronic resources, vendor relations. She works closely with science librarians to support the evolving information needs of students and faculty. She is a 2022–2023 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Leadership and Career Development Program (LCDP) fellow and currently serves as co-chair of VimLoC (Visible Minority Librarians of Canada

Charlotte is a Senior Business Intelligence Analyst from the Licensing team at Jisc. She specialises in supporting Licensing’s content and software negotiations with data informed intelligence and insights. Previous to Jisc she has experience of providing bibliometric support in a higher education library.

Beth is a Principal Business Intelligence Analyst from the Licensing team at Jisc. She leads the Business Intelligence team to deliver successful data support for content and software negotiations, and provides data and analytics to monitor and assess value and impact.

Rebecca Wojturska (she/her) is the Open Access Publishing Officer at the University of Edinburgh, responsible for managing Edinburgh Diamond: the Library Publishing Partner for Diamond Open Access books and journals created by UoE academics, professional staff and students. Rebecca is also the co-lead of ALPSP Library Publishing SIG and a board member of: JEAHIL; Journal of Information Literacy; the Library Publishing Curriculum, the Open Institutional Publishing Association; the Open Journals Collective; and the PKP Members Committee. In her spare time she loves reading Gothic literature, watching horror films, playing D&D, and crushing her enemies at board games.

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Cath is the Open Research Librarian (Scholarly Communications) at Liverpool John Moores University. She takes the lead for open access advocacy at LJMU and manages the institutional repository and open journals service. Cath has over 25 years’ experience in libraries in a range of roles from academic services, customer services, user support and most recently research support. Cath is also the Chair of CILIP’s Library and Information Research Group (LIRG) and Co-Chair of the ALPSP Library Publishing Special Interest Group

Tom Morley is Research Culture and Open Monographs Lead at Lancaster University Library. Within this role he leads and coordinates programmes of activity to develop an Open Research Culture as well as exploring options to facilitate open monograph publishing. Tom is also co-editor of the UKSG e-News publication and a member of the UKSG Outreach and Engagement sub-committee.

Amina Malik is a Digital Publishing Librarian and Bridge to Faculty Research Associate at the University of Illinois Chicago. Rooted in cultural heritage work, her research has speculated workflows that steward the ethical hosting and exhibiting of archival materials on or belonging to underrepresented communities in academia. Malik also supports students, scholars and instructors across campus to explore open access publishing trends that best fit their interests in curating their digital scholarly presence and learning environment. Collectively, her service and research interests fall under the umbrella of fostering inclusivity towards expressing oneself, or special collections onto digital publishing platforms.

Sandra De Groote started her career at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) in 1998 as a health science librarian. In 2009, Sandy became the Scholarly Communications Librarian. Sandy is currently the Head of Scholarly Communications at UIC, which includes initiatives such as digital publishing, open access publishing, open education resources, impact metrics, data management, and digital scholarship. Her research examines the impact of the library on faculty productivity and student success. Sandy earned her M.L.I.S. and her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Western Ontario, and her M.Ed. from UIC.

Olivia is currently an Academic Liaison Librarian at the University of Wales Trinity St David (Birmingham) Prior to that, she was a former Secondary English teacher of 10+ years and former Learning Resources Manager at Sixth Form level for 6 years. Her areas of interest include equality, diversity, and inclusion; digital accessibility and the use of Generative AI to support students and staff in a higher education context.

Christine Orr serves as BioOne’s Senior Director of Business and Community Development, driving strategic initiatives designed to advance the mission of sustainably maximizing access to research. Her portfolio includes leading efforts to achieve revenue targets, driving corporate communications, raising the profile of BioOne among strategic communities, and supporting organizational transformation via the creation of Open Access pathways and product diversification.

Sara Rouhi is the Director of Open Science and Publishing Innovation at AIP Publishing. A political science by training, she joined the scholarly publishing community as a publisher starting in 2008 and has been working at the nexus of community engagement, product development and equitable business models

Driving AIPP’s open science strategy, she focuses on developing new publishing models and sustainable business strategies to accelerate AIPP’s mission to advance pragmatic, researcher-focused open science.

Rouhi joins AIP Publishing from Public Library of Science (PLOS) where she held business development and publishing development leadership roles. Her work centers at the nexus of new business models, open science/access, and equity. She’s a vocal advocate for pragmatic, sustainable, community-driven open science strategies. She has a track record of leading agile, award winning teams at PLOS and Digital Science and received numerous awards and recognition for her work in scholarly publishing. After hours, outside of AIPP, she is a free-speech activist and co-author of the Declaration to Defend Research from US Government Censorship alongside the team at DefendResearch.org. She is also long-form improviser in the DC comedy scene and rants on all things #scholcomm, politics, free speech, and comedy on Bluesky @RouhiRoo.bsky.social

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Ken works with universities, libraries, archives, local and central government, the NHS, sector bodies and businesses to help with strategy, understanding needs, business models, value propositions, user experience and innovation. He also reviews services and helps evaluate and procure new technology solutions. In 2025, in partnership with Helen Anderson Consulting, he set up a new AI initiative – ‘AkroNova’ – to provide effective user insights quickly and economically. Ken has published widely including a number of free, open access library technology ‘Briefing Papers’. He also manages Higher Education Library Technology a free, open community, open data resource.

Tasha Mellins-Cohen, Executive Director at COUNTER Metrics and Founder of Mellins-Cohen Consulting, joined the knowledge community in 2001. She has held roles within learned societies and commercial publishers across operations, technology, editorial and executive functions, while donating time to key initiatives and bodies such as UKSG, COUNTER, ALPSP and STM. In 2020 she started consulting in response to requests for help in developing and implementing OA business models in not-for-profit groups. In 2022 she stepped up from volunteering to run COUNTER, the standard for usage metrics, alongside her consulting work.

Caroline Ball is the Community Engagement Lead for the Open Book Collective, and has previously worked as an academic librarian, copyright and licensing advisor, and lecturer in publishing. Her research interests centre on knowledge equity, information ethics, and democratisation of access to information and learning opportunities, focusing particularly on systemic barriers and biases in dominant knowledge systems. She is also an active Wikipedian, was awarded the UK Wikimedian of the Year award in 2020 and currently serves on the Wikimedia UK board of trustees.

Sandra De Groote started her career at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) in 1998 as a health science librarian. In 2009, Sandy became the Scholarly Communications Librarian. Sandy is currently the Head of Scholarly Communications at UIC, which includes initiatives such as digital publishing, open access publishing, open education resources, impact metrics, data management, and digital scholarship. Her research examines the impact of the library on faculty productivity and student success. Sandy earned her M.L.I.S. and her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Western Ontario, and her M.Ed. from UIC.

Emma Nolin is Head of Information Resources and Scholarly Publishing at Malmö University Library, a position she has held for seven years. The library maintains both extensive electronic and physical collections, which are essential for students and researchers alike. While significant development has taken place in the electronic collections, the past two years have seen a renewed focus on the print collections. As the library operates without closed stacks, active management of the physical collection is a key priority.
Emma is a member of the UKSG Education and Events Subcommittee and the LIBER Open Access Working Group. At the conference, she will share how Malmö University Library has approached curating collections in close connection with scholarly communication.

Rick Anderson is University Librarian of Brigham Young University. He has worked previously for YBP, Inc., the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, the University of Nevada, Reno, and the University of Utah. He is a regular contributor to the Scholarly Kitchen and has served as president of NASIG and of the Society for Scholarly Publishing. Rick is the author of three books, including _Scholarly Communication: What Everyone Needs to Know_ (which has been published in three languages) and of the twice-weekly blog _Vision & Balance: Leading and Managing in the Academic Library.

Rob Johnson is the Managing Director of Research Consulting, a mission-driven business which works to improve the effectiveness and impact of research and scholarly communication. He began his career with KPMG, the international professional services firm, before working in a senior research management role at the University of Nottingham. Since founding Research Consulting in 2013 he has led more than 150 projects in the fields of research and scholarly communication. Rob is Vice Chair of UKSG, a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and holds an MSc in Higher Education Management from Loughborough University

Becky Hill has worked in academic publishing since 2011, with roles spanning Editorial, Business Development and Open Research. Her current role as Head of Open Research at Taylor & Francis, focuses on building open research publishing partnerships with research communities across Europe and the Middle East (spanning open access journals, books, and other imprints). Prior to her role at Taylor & Francis, Becky spent several years at the open research publisher, F1000, and before that held editorial roles at Routledge and Maney Publishing, working on scholarly journals within the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Hannah’s role as Open Research Development Librarian includes the management, development, and delivery of the University of Essex’s services in open research, publishing, and research visibility. Hannah also manages the Research Services Team, which builds knowledge and skills of staff and students in open research, and facilitates open access publishing

Dal is the Head of Learning Resources and Student Experience at Coventry University, focusing on Open Education Resources. With a career in academic libraries spanning nearly three decades, Dal was also Project Manager for one of Europe’s largest textbook schemes providing students with seamless access to essential learning materials.
Passionate about accessible learning, she is dedicated to exploring emerging technologies and enhancing student experience through innovative resource strategies

Sam Eerdmans is one of the co-founders of Sylla and the Director of Business & Operations. At Sylla, Sam works in a dynamic role across business, customer success and operations. In this role, he works closely with Sylla’s library partners around the world in the US, UK and Australia – helping them to drive and grow OER success locally.

Gráinne leads the Research Integrity / Publication Ethics team at Karger Publishers, responsible for developing research integrity policies and conducting investigations for all Karger publications and is an elected COPE Council member as of 2025. She completed her PhD in Integrative Neuroscience at Cardiff University in the UK and then spent several years as a researcher at Cardiff University and Imperial College London. Since 2017 she has been working in research integrity teams at publishers and she established the team at Karger Publishers in 2021. In this role, she is particularly interested in research integrity, promoting activities that enhance transparency and the reproducibility of research

Gearóid Ó Faoleán is a Licensing Manager at Jisc, where he primarily negotiates and manages licensing agreements with academic publishers on behalf of the UK HEI and research institution sector.
He previously worked for a decade in academic publishing, beginning as a publisher at Frontiers in Lausanne, Switzerland. He moved to London in 2016 to establish and lead their Research Integrity team for five years, before joining Taylor & Francis in 2020 heading up the humanities and social sciences portfolio for their F1000 imprint.
Gearóid holds a PhD in modern Irish history and continues to publish regularly on the period.

Katherine Stephan is the Open Research Librarian (Development) at Liverpool John Moores University in Liverpool, United Kingdom. She is an advocate for open research, responsible metrics, and author choice in publishing. She is the co-organiser of Open Research Week with Liverpool, Edge Hill and Essex Universities. She is a member of the UKSG Outreach and Engagement Subcommittee and is the librarian member of Think.Check.Submit. A keen gig goer, most years Katherine goes to more gigs than her age. Inconceivably, she has seen Liverpool legend Michael Head 37 times, with Bill Ryder-Jones a distant second

Sarah Sogigian, based in Marlborough, MA, U.S., is the Executive Director at the Massachusetts Library System (MLS). Sarah leads MLS in the offering of critical and signature services for over 1500 libraries, working closely with library staff and local, national and international organizations. She brings experience from previous roles at public libraries and nonprofits to her work. Sarah holds an MLIS in Library and Information Science from the University of Rhode Island and has been honored by local and national library organizations for her collaborative and leadership work. Sarah recognizes that interpersonal relations and ongoing professional learning are crucial to professional success.

Denise Lyons serves as the State Librarian and Commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives in Frankfort, Kentucky. She brings extensive experience in library administration and management, strategic planning, family literacy, and advancing library leadership and resiliency during disasters. Over the past 30 years, she has worked in a wide range of libraries and nonprofit organizations and remains active in several library associations. Denise holds a MLIS from the University of South Carolina and a MS in Public Services Management from DePaul University. She has also taught as a lecturer in the Information Science program at UNC Greensboro.

Matt McLain has worked in libraries for 29 years, including academic, public, and state libraries. His experiences connecting with colleagues at conferences and expanding his peer network have been re-energizing. He delights in sharing the experiences of others and incorporating the best ideas in his work

Michelle Willis currently serves as the Director of the Scotch Plains Public Library, where she oversees library operations, staff development, and strategic initiatives to meet the evolving needs of the community. Before stepping into the director role, she served as the library’s Youth Services Manager, establishing a strong reputation for innovative programming and collaborative partnerships. She holds an MLIS in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University. Michelle is active in the Public Library Association, the Association of Library Services to Children, and serves on the executive board of her local library consortium.

Tom Mosterd is one of the co-founders of Sylla. He has worked for nearly a decade on supporting Higher Education – and libraries in the transition towards Open Science & Open Education. At Sylla, Tom works closely with its libraries and partners in HigherEd on advancing open and affordable learning for all.

Başak Büyükçelen is the Chief Executive Officer of Pressbooks, an open-source digital publishing platform widely used in higher education to create and share interactive learning and scholarly materials. Başak leads Pressbooks in advancing open-source digital publishing solutions that support teaching and learning. With more than a decade of experience in organizational leadership and strategy, she brings a global perspective shaped by cross-cultural collaboration and speaks four languages.

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