Building A Science Community One OA Book At A Time

Scientific publishing advances human knowledge by sharing the latest discoveries. Now, a 15-year-old publishing startup is adding collaboration and community building to its goals.

IntechOpen, founded in 2004, is a scientific community of authors and editors built by scientists for scientists to provide a collaborative environment for peer-reviewed academic research, according to Dr. Anke Beck who became CEO in August 2018. In its role as an Open Access publisher of books and anthologies, she says, IntechOpen seeks to level the research playing field and promoting an environment that is democratic and inclusive.

“We focus on books where we believe there’s a greater space for ideas to flourish, and for collections of ideas to come together,” Beck tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally.

“In a talk in Berlin at Academic Publishing in Europe conference, I referred to open access book publishing as the Cinderella of publishing because it opens that space where scientists can shed light on a given scientific problem in more detail,” she explains. “Book publishing, I think, serves much, much better the scientific discussion than scattered articles in a journal.”