News Item 9 (March
27, 1999)
Richard Smith and Karen
Hunter to Open Plenary Programme
The first plenary session of the congress
will feature two eminent figures from the world of scholarly publishing:
Dr Richard Smith, editor of the BMJ and
chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group, and Ms. Karen Hunter, senior vice president
of Elsevier Science. As well as being an eminent medical writer on his own account,
Richard Smith has overseen the radical transformation of the British Medical Journal,
which has moved from being an entirely paper publication to being a medical resource whose
primary incarnation is now online. Fundamental changes are also occurring in the BMJ
Group's range of specialist medical journals and in the book publishing programme. Dr
Smith will look at the future of scholarly publishing and can be relied on to avoid the
easy and the predictable.
Karen Hunter has responsibility within
Elsevier Science for guiding library policy and strategy and as such she is a hugely
influential figure in the world of commercial scholarly publishing. An accomplished
speaker and author, her ideas will help shape the development of health and medical
libraries. In accepting ICML's invitation to speak Ms. Hunter commented that she found her
brief both challenging and exciting: I suspect that a year+ from now we will have seen
many, many more new initiatives which will not be mere bumps in the road.
There will be five plenary sessions
during the congress, each featuring two outstanding speakers. |