About
Ambassadors
Since 2016 DOAJ has been proud to work with a group of Ambassadors who share our belief that open access is the way forward in scholarly publishing. Our Ambassador program focuses especially on areas of the world where greater awareness of the issues surrounding open access is needed, or where open access journals from the region are under-represented in DOAJ.
Initially working with 12 Ambassadors for the Global South, as part of a project funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), we continued and extended the reach of this program by appointing Ambassadors in Russia, Indonesia and Korea. We are delighted to have added new Ambassadors in 2020 for North America and Japan.
Ambassadors
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North America
Adrian Stanley
Adrian is past President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP). He has previously lived and worked in China and is well connected with the global publishing community, especially in places like Brazil (SciELO) and Japan (J-STAGE). He was also Managing Director, Publishers for Digital Science. Adrian serves on NISO’s Information Discovery and Interchange Topic Committee, and he is currently the General Manager at JMIR Publications.
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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Pakistan
Amber Osman
Amber is a passionate expert in open science and a research enthusiast. Over the last decade, she has been actively involved in different international academic, research & publishing organizations and with the Higher Education Commission (Govt. of Pakistan). She has been an award-winning journal editor for advancing the publishing process by adopting innovative research and publishing solutions. Amber advocates for best practices in open access scholarly content. She has Masters of Philosophy in marketing.
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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Japan
Eriko Amano
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Latin America
Gimena del Rio Riande
Gimena is a researcher at IIBICRIT, the Institute for Bibliographic Research and Textual Criticism at CONICET, the main agency that fosters science and technology in Argentina. Most of her research projects are related to Open Science and Digital Humanities, with a focus on the Global South. She is also the president of the Asociación Argentina de Humanidades Digitales (AAHD), and a member of the Board of Directors of Force11, OpenMethods-DARIAH, Hypotheses, and Area (Open Education Network in Argentina).
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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South Korea
Hea Lim Rhee
Hea is a senior researcher at Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), and also the managing editor of KISTI’s Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice (JISTaP), the first English journal on computer science in Korea. Hea received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and her Master of Science in Information from the University of Michigan, where she specialised in archives and records management.
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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South Korea
Hyun Jung Yi
Hyun Jung Yi holds a PhD in Library and Information Science from Chung-Ang University and is a librarian at Hanyang University Guri Hospital. Currently, she also serves as a member of the Scholarly Committee at the Korean Medical Library Association and as a vice chair of the Committee of Information Management at the Korean Council of Science Editors (KCSE). Her interests include observing trends in the scholarly publishing market, disseminating open access journals, and enhancing the publishing environment for researchers.
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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Southern Africa
Ina Smith
Ina holds a Master’s Degree from the University of Pretoria (South Africa) in Computer-Integrated Education, a Higher Education Teaching Diploma, and two degrees (BBibl and BBibl Honors) in Library and Information Science. She is Planning Manager at the Academy of Science of South Africa, and has vast experience of Open Access in general, scholarly research activities, repositories, and Open Access journal management and publishing.
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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Latin America
Ivonne Lujano
Ivonne Lujano Vilchis is a PhD student in Education Policy and Evaluation at Arizona State University. She holds a Master’s degree in Social Sciences with an emphasis on Education. She has worked in scholarly communication and open access since 2011. As DOAJ ambassador she has collaborated with several universities and government agencies on the adoption of best practice for scholarly publications, and open science policies. She serves as a section editor of Current Issues of Education, a journal produced by doctoral students at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College of Arizona State University. Her research interests focus on higher education systems, research evaluation, science policy, open access, scholarly communication, and open science. Ivonne also has a background in dance, and she is currently an amateur tango dancer.
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North America
John G. Dove
John has had a career in executive management, and is now an independent consultant and open access advocate who works with organisations seeking to accelerate their transition to open access. He advises both for-profits and non-profits, and has a particular interest in identifying the steps necessary to flip an entire discipline’s scholarly record to open access. His ambassador activities focus on increasing the support to DOAJ from the community. He served for six years on NISO’s Information Discovery and Interchange Topic Committee, and has written for Learned Publishing, Against the Grain, and Scholarly Kitchen. John serves on the Board of Trustees of his local public library in Revere, Massachusetts. He has a B.A. in Mathematics from Oberlin College.
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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Middle East and Persian Gulf
Mahmoud Khalifa
Mahmoud is the founder of Cybrarians, the Arabic Portal for Librarianship and Information, a non-profit organization located in Egypt since 2002, and working on serving library and information community in Arab countries. He is PhD candidate in Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He works on a dissertation about The national information policies. Mahmoud was an Associate at IFLA International Leaders Programme, 2016-2018, and an accredited trainer for the IFLA BSLA programme (Building Strong Library Association), as well as an OCLC Fellow at Jay Jordan IFLA/OCLC Early Career Development Fellowship Program, class 2010. In 2013 he was the winner of the Scientific Research Academy’s prize in informatics in Egypt. Professionally, he worked in Library of Congress Cairo Office from 2006-2018.
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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Russian Federation
Maxim Mitrofanov
Maxim was born in Moscow, graduated from the University of Foreign Relations and then worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia for nine years. After leaving the Ministry in 2007 he worked for the largest Russian exhibition company, Expocentre, and then joined NEICON in 2014. NEICON is currently the only organisation in Russia supporting DOAJ and is the driving force to share open access ideas among the Russian journal and scholar community.
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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Pakistan
Muhammad Imtiaz Subhani
Dr. Subhani is an [award-winning editor by Thomson Reuters in 2015](https://news.pakistantimes.com/2015/05/05/sajms-secures-third-position-in-scholarone-vision-award-2015-367073.html). He holds a PhD from Iqra University, Pakistan, in Financial Econometrics. Dr. Subahni is a Professor and Dean of the Business School at ILMA University, Pakistan. He is currently [working voluntarily for Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP)](https://customer.sspnet.org/ssp/AboutUs/Committee-Roster.aspx?Code=EDUCATION) as an education committee member, while he is also a member of Creative Commons Global Network, CC Open GLAM, and Research Data Publishing Ethics, FORCE 11. He is a scientific publishing consultant & a technical committee member of HEC Journals’ Recognition System, at the Higher Education Commission, Government of Pakistan.
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Japan
Narumi Shitara
Narumi is the head of the Editorial Office, Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University. She has been the managing editor of CSEAS’s academic journals and monograph series since 2011. Her research interest is in bulletin journals published by Japanese universities and research institutes.
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Russian Federation
Natalia Popova
Natalia has been conducting research into academic communication for over 25 years. Currently, her research interests embrace sociology of science and technology, in particular the problems of open access, transformation in the role of scientific journals in academic communication, and academic publishing under the influence of globalization trends. Natalia is an active member of the International Sociological Association (ISA), Assistant Editor of the journal Changing societies & personalities, editorial board member for Russian and international scientific journals, expert in the evaluation of the quality of scientific journals of the Association of Science Editors and Publishers (ASEP), and Deputy Chair of the Scopus Expert Content Selection and Advisory Board (ESCAB) in the Russian Federation.
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Russian Federation
Olga Kirillova
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South Korea
Sun Huh
Sun is a medical doctor and holds a PhD from Seoul National University in parasitology. He has been a Professor of Parasitology at College of Medicine, Hallym University, Korea since 1988. He has worked voluntarily as a board member of Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (1996-2011), Korean Council of Science Editors (2011-present), and Council of Asian Science Editors (2014-present). He has been an editor of Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions since 2005. His goal with DOAJ is to pursue the registration of all open access journals from Korea to DOAJ.
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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West and Central Africa
Thomas Herve Mboa Nkoudou
Thomas is a PhD candidate in Public Communication at Université Laval (Canada) and deeply engaged in advocating for open science and promoting best practices of scholarly communication in Africa. He has been involved in promoting open access in Haiti and French-speaking African countries (projet SOHA) and is the initiator and organiser of the yearly Africa Open Science and Hardware Summit (AfricaOSH). He is a member of the OpenCon organising committee and an instructor at Force11 Scholarly Communication Institute. He has made it his mission to make scientific resources produced in African-based universities more visible locally and abroad.
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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India
Vrushali Dandawate
Vrushali is Head Librarian at AISSMS College of Engineering College Pune, Maharashtra, India, and She holds a Ph.D. degree from Reva University Banglore, India. Her research topic is 'OPEN ACCESS E -RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT IN ASIA: A STUDY' Vrushali was the winner of the ALCTS Online Course Grant for Library Professionals from Developing Countries in 2014, and the INASP open access week competition in both 2015 and 2016. She was invited to OpenCon 2017 in Berlin, Germany, and subsequently worked as a member of the organizing committee for OpenCon 2018 in Toronto, Canada. She also served as an advisory committee member for Open Access Week 2018-2019. She is selected as an advisory committee member of OpenDOAR and conference committee member of the FORCE2021 Conference.
Conflict of interest statement(s):
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South Korea
Youngim Jung
Youngim holds a PhD from Pusan National University in Computer Science and Engineering. She is now a Senior Researcher at Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, developing and managing scholarly publishing systems for supporting domestic societies. Previously, she worked for KESLI, the national library consortium in South Korea and helped to establish the Korea DOI Center. She is a committee member of the Korean Council of Science Editors (KCSE) and Council of Asian Science Editors (CASE). She has authored publications and communications in the fields of Scientometrics, Library Systems and Natural Language Processing.
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