This page is intended to highlight news of the passing of any SSP members. These individuals enriched our lives and our community. We are saddened by the loss and ask that you join us in remembering them fondly. If you have news to post here, please send it to info@sspnet.org.
Partick Alexander (2024)
Patrick Alexander was at the helm of Penn State University Press’ scholarly publishing division since July 2009, retiring in January of 2024, concluding a 40-year publishing career that includes more than 25 years in academic publishing. He was an active member of SSP since 2005, most recently serving as a mentor and a member of the Early Career Subcommittee.
Melanie Schaffner (2024)
Melanie Schaffner was the Director of Communication, Marketing, and Engagement at Project MUSE and friend to many in the scholarly communication community. Melanie helped build Project MUSE from the ground up into an aggregation that is now a world-class foundation of humanities for the library and university press communities.
Bruce Rosenblum (2023)
Bruce Rosenblum designed and implemented electronic publishing workflows and solutions for over 35 years. He was the developer of the Crossref Metadata Deposit Schema and co-authored the original NLM DTD. He served on the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Board of Directors from 2005 to 2013 and was the co-chair of the NISO STS working group as well as an active member of its JATS and BITS working groups. Prior to joining Atypon, he was CEO of Inera, which was acquired by Atypon in 2019. His 16 years of joint work with Crossref earned Inera and Crossref the 2014 NEPCo Publishing Collaboration Award, and he was awarded the status of NISO Fellow in 2020. Bruce led software development for Inera’s eXtyles and Edifix. Bruce has been a member of SSP since 2005, a frequent speaker at SSP events, and a guest contributor for The Scholarly Kitchen. In his most recent post, he shared about disclosing his ALS diagnosis with the scholarly publishing community.
Sarah Andrus (2022)
Sarah was Executive Publisher at Mary Ann Liebert since 2021 and previously worked at Oxford University Press and Wiley. She co-authored the book Leading from the Middle, a resource that shares empowering messages to help readers take control of their environment by seeing themselves as actionable leaders today. She worried greatly about the decline of science in popular discourse, and her diligent work to support important research will be her legacy. A member of SSP since 2019, Sarah was an active volunteer for the Career Development Committee and the Joint Task Force for Career Progression. She was integral to the development of SSP’s Publishing Skills Map. Sarah graduated from Cornell University with a BA in Linguistics and from NYU Stern School of Business with an MBA in Strategy and Global Business.
Randall Marcinko (2021)
In 1981, Randy founded Dynamic Information Corporation, an early pioneer in information delivery, and provided scientific literature and patent research for many Silicon Valley technology and biomedical companies that have since become household names. This marked the beginning of Randy’s long involvement in the online information industry, where he was widely considered a visionary thinker and synthesizer of industry knowledge who recognized trends and opportunities long before many others caught up. He helped accelerate the evolution of the global information industry through his thoughtful discourse, cogent questions, and provocative ideas. For nearly forty years, Randy cultivated close relationships with publishers, vendors, and information industry players to help great content reach readers and researchers, wherever and whenever they needed it. Randy’s unwavering commitment to transparency and doing the right thing, his innovative and incisive thinking, his generosity in sharing his knowledge, and his wry sense of humor made him a respected leader, valued mentor, and cherished friend.
Bruce Gossett (2021)
Bruce was Managing Director and Publisher at the American Society of Civil Engineers from 2000 to 2019. He led a program in a challenging environment where publications were expected to be a revenue-generator for a nonprofit professional association. He followed technical advances closely, always interested in improving delivery of civil engineering content to professionals, students, and library customers. Scholarly publishing changed dramatically during Bruce’s tenure, from a print-only environment to an online-first environment. This affected absolutely every aspect of the business. Each innovation brought challenges, and there was no roadmap for how to do any of it. He was a mentor to many, including Angela Cochran, Past President of the Council of Science Editors and the Society for Scholarly Publishing and Chef in The Scholarly Kitchen, and Dana Compton, Past President of Council of Science Editors and current Publisher at ASCE.
Mohammad Asadi-Lari (2020)
Mohammad worked tirelessly to develop STEM Fellowship’s mission and vision, serving as the first Chair of the STEM Fellowship Journal’s Student Editorial Board and expanding the scope of the Big Data challenge. Mohammad was awarded an SSP Student Fellowship in 2016, while he was a student in the Cellular, Anatomical and Physiological Sciences (CAPS) program at the University of British Columbia. In addition to serving on multiple SSP committees during his time as a member, he also became an ORCID and Altmetric Ambassador, giving a number of talks, including a very memorable session at the American Association for the Advancement of Science “Research without Borders” meeting. Mohammad was a wonderful advocate for youth engagement, leading initiatives in the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, the Canadian Red Cross, and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, among many others. In his TEDxYouth talk, “Empowering Youth to Think Global but Act Local,” it is clear the impact Mohammad had on our community.
Linda Beebe (2018)
Linda was a strong woman, a fighter for others all her life: working for Family Services to improve the lot of enlisted airmen’s families; to create better conditions for juvenile offenders in Virginia; to preserve and extend the knowledge bases of the social work and psychology professions; to win equal representation and a fair shake for the residents of the District of Columbia, and always, always, for equal rights and responsibilities for women. Linda was at the forefront of advancing scholarly publishing, especially in promulgating digital knowledge bases. She was past Associate Executive Director for Communications at the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), and past Senior Director of PsychINFO at the American Psychological Association (APA). She was especially pleased to have been elected as the first woman to chair CrossRef, an international not-for-profit membership organization that exists to make scholarly communications better.
Anita DeVivo (2017)
Anita DeVivo was one of the founding members of the Society for Scholarly Publishing which was started in 1978. DeVivo played an important role in not only the formation of SSP, but also in the advancement of scholarly writing across the industry. One of her most notable contributions to the world of publishing was her 1974 revision of the American Psychological Association Style Manual which provided writers and editors with alternatives to the gender-biased language then commonly used in publishing. She consulted as well on the authoritative Chicago Manual of Style and taught advanced editing classes at the George Washington University. She held positions at the National Parks Association, the American Home Economics Association, the Catholic Encyclopedia, and the American Personnel and Guidance Association, the American Psychological Association (APA), and the American Occupational Therapy Association. She served in a leadership and consulting capacity with a wide range of professional organizations, including the Society for Scholarly Publishing, the Council of Biology Editors, the American Economic Association, and Rodale Press.
