Oxford at the turn of the century was the setting for the first meeting between Anne Kitson and Paul Evans to lead to a successful publishing collaboration that continues to this day. Already both seasoned publishing industry directors at the time, looking back then on graduation from the University of Oxford before in the 80s and 70s respectively, they came to work together at Elsevier.
In more detail, Anne is an experienced senior executive with a track record of success over three decades, working in academic publishing. Most recently from 2018-2023 Anne was the CEO and MD for Cell Press and The Lancet at Elsevier (RELX). Anne is also a former Board member of the International STM Association; Board Director of KeAi (Beijing and Shanghai) 2016-2023; former member of the UK Publishers’ Association Council 2018-2023; Committee member, Academic Publishers, Europe; Industry Advisor, Oxford International Centre for Publishing; Panel member of EU Expert Group on Scholarly Publishing and Communication, 2017/2018. Anne brings skills in business strategy, innovation, management, business transformation, product development and fostering strategic partnerships globally as well as deep experience in the US and China markets.
Paul is a veteran publisher with 40 years’ experience mainly with RELX (principally at Elsevier). SAGE Publishing (where he was managing director of the Asia Pacific subsidiary) and Springer Nature (where he was director for the Nature journals in China). After becoming one of the global publishing directors at Elsevier (after working in roles in editorial, IT, marketing and publishing management), he focused increasingly on Asia, setting up Elsevier’s S&T office in China. He returned to Europe to become SVP Academic Relations but the lure of Asia drew him back successively to SAGE and Nature. While based in China he became mentor to the Communications University of China and an adviser for the industry to the state council of information.
Fast forward a quarter of a century and the time is right to bring to fruition the combined experience of nearly 70 years in publishing, mainly in areas of journal management.
After corporate life both sought to continue their work with the industry as non-executive directors for the premier prepress technology problem solver and service company Siliconchips Services. With this organization to underpin a new enterprise Anne and Paul have set forward on a new programme of journal publishing. The experience of knowing what not to do, as well what to do is vital in being able to lead such an enterprise and the experience of having worked in both innovative settings and in world leading journals organizations are now being fully exploited. First off to launch is the journal Artificial Intelligence Advances in Education with the superlative editor-in-chief Samira Hosseini who is also CEO and founder of AAA, Autonomous Academic Accelerator (AAA). Researcher Authors will also get the chance to publish not only what worked but what did not and what they learned from that. This is a new focus for journal publishing and also new is the attention to the triangle connecting Research, Industry and Government for sources of relevant content.
We hope you will enjoy the fruits of our collaborations as we extend the team further and you check out our offerings as they appear on subdomains of this website, including of course first, aiaie – Artificial Intelligence Advances in Education. This is the first born in the family of SCS-journals.