The Royal Society of Chemistry is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr James Milne as Managing Director, Publishing.
Dr Milne is a publishing professional with more than 20 years experience in Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) publishing. After completing his PhD in computational structural engineering at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, he joined Pergamon Press as a publishing editor responsible for a portfolio of engineering books and journals.
Pergamon had been acquired by Elsevier and, over the next seventeen years, Dr Milne held a number of editorial positions within Elsevier. From 2001 to 2008 he was responsible for Elsevier’s most significant chemistry portfolio of products, before taking a role in Elsevier’s innovation and product development team.
In May 2009, Dr Milne joined the RSC as Editorial Director, Publishing, helping shape the considerable growth and development of the journal and book portfolio published by the learned society. During this period, the RSC launched 12 new journals, including the flagship title Chemical Science and the innovative journal RSC Advances. In March 2011, he was appointed acting Managing Director, Publishing. He was confirmed as Managing Director, Publishing earlier this month.
Dr Milne said he was delighted to be appointed to the role. “My vision for RSC Publishing is to develop the portfolio of products and services to place the RSC at the forefront of the information profession, while truly satisfying the information needs of the international chemical science community.
“The development and progress achieved by RSC Publishing has been significant, with considerable growth in usage, citations and submissions to our broad range of products and services. This is all down to the fantastic contribution made by staff throughout the organisation, without whom, this could not be possible.”
RSC Chief Executive, Dr Robert Parker said: “Jim’s experience as Editorial Director with the RSC, and before that as a chemistry publisher at Elsevier, gives him the breadth of knowledge and expertise to successfully lead our dynamic publishing operations. He is poised to build on the remarkable growth in RSC’s publishing activities over the last four years.”
