Anna Drage

Senior Associate, Technology and Content

Anna has spent the last 30 years working in the academic and standards publishing industry, specializing in the editorial and production side of electronic publishing. Her broad-based experience of both e-book, e-journal and production, and her understanding of how editorial processes feed into this process, has supported publishers as diverse as OUP, Walter de Gruyter, and Woodhead Publishing, via online hosts such as Highwire, Atypon, and MetaPress. Working both for and with publishers, Anna has gained valuable insight into the production workflow of journals and e-books, the use of electronic data in online publishing, and working with third party online hosts.

After an early career as assistant editor for a specialist publisher, Anna worked for Oxford University Press in editorial and print production for their Science and Medical Books as well as their Journals Division, where she specialized in electronic production and online hosting. As their Online Project Manager, she managed the transition of OUP hosted journals to a third party host (Highwire) and acted as the main contact between in-house editorial/production staff and Highwire.

In 2003 she moved to OUP Pakistan as Design Manager for Educational Books before returning to the UK as production manager at Medic to Medic, a company providing software solutions to the NHS. In 2006, Anna moved back into the academic publishing, firstly an Account manager for Atypon Systems Inc, and then Senior Client Manager at Publishing Technology. In both these roles she acted as the day-to-day liaison with Publishers, as well as helping them develop their online products and product strategies. Other workplace assignments include working as the ‘E-Project Manager’ for a UK based publisher, working with their in-house teams to establish a new e-book platform using a third-party vendor.

In 2018, Anna’s career focus changed slightly to become a Data Analyst, then a Change Lead, in Editorial Services at the British Standards Institution (BSI). Here, she gained valuable insight into the process of publishing Standards, and working with sponsors and stakeholders to identify improvements in content workflow using Lean management techniques for incremental change to already established processes.

Her current interest is the use of taxonomies/ontologies and AI in the scholarly, academic and standards environment.

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