Ambassadors

Ambassadors

• 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 is currently the Chief Innovation and Development Officer at JMIR Publications.

• Indonesia

  Dian Eka Indriani

  Dian is from Madura Island, East Java and is a PhD candidate in Primary education at Universitas Negeri Malang. Currently, Dian is a lecturer as well as the Head of Intellectual Property and Journal Centre at STKIP PGRI Bangkalan. She also an active member of CCGN and research Trainee with IGDORE. She is a member of the advisory board for Open Access Indonesia.

• 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).

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 serves 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.

• Middle East and Persian Gulf

  Mahmoud Khalifa

  Mahmoud is the founder and CEO of Cybrarians, the Arabic Portal for Librarianship and Information. He holds a PhD in Information Science from Cairo University. Mahmoud was an Associate at IFLA International Leaders Programme, 2016-2018, and an accredited trainer for the IFLA BSLA (Building Strong Library Association) programme, as well as a 2010 Fellow at Jay Jordan IFLA/OCLC Early Career Development Fellowship Program. In 2013 he was the winner of the Scientific Research Academy’s prize in informatics. He is editorial manager of Cybrarians Journal, the first electronic Arabic journal on librarianship & Information science.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Russian Federation

  Olga Kirillova

• Eastern Africa

  Solomon Mekonnen

  Solomon is a Lecturer at Addis Ababa University (AAU). He is also a Co-Founder of Code4Ethiopia which advocates for open data. Solomon coordinates nationally an Open Access Programme for the international network Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), and is also a local organiser in Ethiopia for an international network called Open Knowledge International. Solomon was a project manager for Ethiopian Journals online. He is a PhD candidate at the University of South Africa.

• 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.

• 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.

• India & Pakistan

  Vrushali Dandawate

  Vrushali is Head Librarian at AISSMS College of Engineering College Pune, Maharashtra, India, and has a Master’s from the University of Pune. Her research interests are open access, Indian librarianship, information literacy, and e-learning technology. 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 subequently worked as a member of the organising committee for OpenCon 2018 in Toronto, Canada. She also served as an advisory committee member for Open Access Week 2018-2019.

• China

  Xin Bi

  Xin holds a PhD degree in Psychology from Soochow University in China and also a Master’s Degree in Information Systems from Liverpool University, UK. He is the University Librarian in Xi’an Jiaotong – Liverpool University in Suzhou and in this capacity he is working with a wide network including librarians, publishers, and professionals in China and overseas to better facilitate scholarly communication and knowledge dissemination.

• 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.