Life & Literature Speaker profile: Susan Skomal

Susan Skomal, Ph.D., has been Executive Director and COO of BioOne since 2005. BioOne was begun in 2001 as an innovative collaboration of scientific societies, libraries, academe, and the private sector to provide cost-effective access to high quality biological, ecological and environmental science research. While at BioOne, Skomal has overseen the development of a second collection (BioOne.2), increased the number of Open Access titles from three to 12, increased distribution internationally, and returned increasing amounts of revenue to the publishers participating in the collections. Prior to BioOne, Skomal served for six years as Director of Publications for the American Anthropological Association. Trained as an anthropologist with specialties in archaeology and linguistics, Skomal has a healthy respect for the evolutionary force of natural selection—particularly helpful as the scholarly community undergoes its own transformation in the electronic environment.