Chemistry Central's in-house team

Chemistry Central is part of Springer Science+Business Media and is operated by BioMed Central.

BioMed Central management team

Matthew Cockerill, Managing Director

Matt has overall responsibility for all aspects of BioMed Central and Chemistry Central’s activities. He has been involved with BioMed Central since its launch in 1999, serving first as Technical Director and later as Director of Operations. Prior to BioMed Central, he played a major role in the creation of BioMedNet, a pioneering website for biologists which incorporated both the Trends and Current Opinon review journals. He has a PhD in Biochemistry, which he obtained working under the guidance of Tim Hunt at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. He also has a long-standing interest in the use of technology to structure and manage biological and medical knowledge.

John Taylor, Chief Technology Officer

John is responsible for all aspects of technology within BioMedCentral, including IT Operations, Software Development, Quality Assurance and User Experience and Design. He is supported by our highly skilled technology teams based in London and India, that develop and maintain our core Open Access publishing, production and peer review systems. John has an extensive background in technology and software development, and has held senior management and consulting positions within the media and information industry. Prior to joining BioMedCentral, John was Vice President of Technology for ProQuest.

Deborah Kahn, Publishing Director

Deborah is responsible for leading the publishing teams to provide an excellent experience for our authors, editors and referees, and for ensuring that BioMed Central continues to grow its portfolio of open access journals. Deborah's career has spanned STM journal and book publishing, database publishing, and research and consultancy. She has been a supporter of open access since the beginning. A mathematician by training, she also has a Masters degree in Organisational Behaviour and a Diploma in Integrative Psychotherapy.

Bev Acreman, Commercial Director

Bev leads BioMed Central's commercial team including Sales, Marketing, Customer Services and PR/Events, all of which aim to maximise exposure for open access publishing. Bev's career in STM publishing started in an engineering research organisation; she then worked for Elsevier and later moved on to Taylor & Francis. She is active within UKSG, STM and a new mentoring and best practice network, the MAPP (marketing in academic and professional publishing) as Customer Service Correspondent.

Chemistry Central Editorial

Jan Kuras, Journal Publisher

Jan has overall responsibility for Chemistry Central's publishing activity, including editorial oversight and development of the chemistry journal portfolio, and promotion of open access initiatives in chemistry. Jan has a background in Chemistry specializing in analytical chemistry and chemical information systems. His career in STM has encompassed chemistry and pharmaceutical information product development and management, including journals, databases, web portals and a preprint server.