Jan Velterop
Encyclopedia
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
, The Netherlands, he was originally a marine geologist and became a science publisher in the mid 1970s. He started his publishing career at Elsevier
Elsevier
Elsevier is a publishing company which publishes medical and scientific literature. It is a part of the Reed Elsevier group. Based in Amsterdam, the company has operations in the United Kingdom, USA and elsewhere....
in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. After a few years out of the scientific field as the director of the Dutch regional newspaper De Twentsche Courant, he returned to international science publishing at Academic Press
Academic Press
Academic Press is an academic book publisher. Originally independent, it was acquired by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1969. Reed Elsevier bought Harcourt in 2000, and Academic Press is now an imprint of Elsevier....
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. After Academic Press, he joined Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
as director for a short while, but moved quickly on to help get BioMed Central
BioMed Central
BioMed Central is a UK-based, for-profit scientific publisher specialising in open access journal publication. BMC, and its sister companies Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central, publish over 200 scientific journals. Most BMC journals are now published only online. BMC describes itself as the...
, the first commercial open access science publisher, off the ground.
Velterop was one of the small group of people who first defined 'open access' in 2001 in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, a meeting resulting in the Budapest Open Access Initiative
Budapest Open Access Initiative
The Budapest Open Access Initiative was a conference convened by the Open Society Institute on December 1-2, 2001. This small gathering of individuals is recognised as one of the major historical, and defining, events of the open access movement....
.
In 2005 he joined Springer Science+Business Media
Springer Science+Business Media
- Selected publications :* Encyclopaedia of Mathematics* Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete * Graduate Texts in Mathematics * Grothendieck's Séminaire de géométrie algébrique...
in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
as Director of Open Access. Springer is the first mainstream STM (Science, Technology, Medicine) publisher to offer open access as an option for virtually all its scientific and scholarly journals.
At the end of March, 2008, he left Springer to join Knewco, a company that uses semantic technology to accelerate scientific discovery. Since January 2009 he is involved in the Concept Web Alliance as one of the initiators. He is currently CEO of the recent start-up Academic Concept Knowledge Limited (AQnowledge), residing in Guildford
Guildford
Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
, UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Some selected writings on Open Access
- The Example of a Hybrid Model: Springer Open Choice (In: Open Access, Opportunities and Challenges, a Handbook, p 39, German Commission for UNESCO, published by the European Union, 2008)
- Open Access: Science Publishing as Science Publishing Should Be (Serials Review, Volume 30, Number 4, 2004 pp. 308–309)
- Open Access is a Choice (Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie 54, 2007, 4-5, S.268-272)
- Open access and publishing (UKSG, The E-Resources Management Handbook, 2006)