Project team

This project investigated the role of mega-journals in the academic community and beyond, and was a collaboration between the University of Sheffield and Loughborough University. Details of the project team can be found below. The project also had an Advisory Board of senior stakeholders from the publishing, academic, library and funder communities helping to direct its research.

Stephen Pinfield, Principal Investigator
Information School, University of Sheffield
My research interests focus on scholarly communication, digital information resources management, and information-related policies in organisations. Recently, this has included work on open-access publishing and dissemination, research data management, and digital repository development. I work at the intersection between technology deployment, organisational policy development, and cultural practices, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Much of this has to date concentrated on applied areas, stemming from my professional background as an information services manager before moving into an academic role. I have, however, combined this with working with a number of theoretical models in order to understand patterns of uptake of innovative approaches to scholarship and communication.
s.pinfield@sheffield.ac.uk

Claire Creaser, Co-Investigator
LISU, Loughborough University
I am a Chartered Statistician and have worked in the library and information sector since 1994. As Director of LISU, I am involved in a wide range of research and consultancy projects, responsible for the management of the unit as well as ensuring the quality and reliability of the various data collections and analyses which are undertaken. My main research interests are in the areas of management statistics for libraries and information centres, and scholarly communication, with particular reference to researcher behaviours and attitudes to open access to research outputs.
c.creaser@lboro.ac.uk

Jenny Fry, Co-Investigator
School of the Arts, English and Drama, Loughborough University
I am a Professor of Publishing and Information Science at Loughborough University. My research is focused on digital scholarship. I joined Loughborough University in 2007, prior to that I was a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. My research is focused on digital scholarship, with a particular emphasis on disciplinary research cultures. I have led the Research Communication Group (ReCoG) at Loughborough University since 2009.
j.fry@lboro.ac.uk

Peter Willett, Co-Investigator
Information School, University of Sheffield
My research has focused principally on the development of novel techniques for a range of important applications in chemoinformatics, but I have also made significant contributions to information retrieval and increasingly to bibliometrics. Many algorithms developed in my research group are embodied in operational chemoinformatics software that is in use throughout the world, with the GOLD, GASP and GALAHAD programs for ligand-protein docking and pharmacophore mapping being widely distributed on a commercial basis. My research has been reported in over 500 articles, books, chapters, reports etc. that have attracted over 22000 citations in Google Scholar (h-index of 69). I have supervised over 70 PhD students and been awarded over 80 research grants and contracts to a total value of ca. £6M. Much of this work has been supported by industry, the collaborations involving GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson and Johnson, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Syngenta and Unilever inter alia.
p.willett@sheffield.ac.uk

Valérie Spezi, Research Associate
LISU, Loughborough University
I joined LISU, a research unit based in the Centre for Information Management at Loughborough University, as a Research Associate in 2009. During that time, I have been involved in a wide range of projects in both the academic and public library sectors, from service development to service evaluation to user behaviour.
My main research interests are in the area of researchers’ information behaviours, scholarly communication and open access. I completed a Master’s degree in Information and Library Management at Loughborough University, which I successfully completed, with distinction, in 2009.My main research interests are in the areas of management statistics for libraries and information centres, and scholarly communication, with particular reference to researcher behaviours and attitudes to open access to research outputs.
v.c.l.spezi@lboro.ac.uk

Simon Wakeling, Research Associate
Information School, University of Sheffield
I completed an MSc in Digital Library Management at the University of Sheffield in 2010, and a PhD in Library and Information Science in 2015 . My doctoral work investigated the users and uses of the global union catalogue WorldCat.org, with a focus on determining the requirements for a recommender system. I have subsequently worked as a Research Associate on a range of projects at the Information School, including investigations of public library interlending, the graph literacy of business intelligence dashboard users, relevance annotations for big data, and the development of a taxonomy of search sessions. My research interests include information seeking behaviour, graph literacy, and the role of open access in scholarly publishing.
swakeling@csu.edu.au

Open-access mega-journals and the future of scholarly communication