Executive Assembly

The Executive Assembly is one of the most important governing and deciding bodies of the OPERAS AISBL. It is composed of organizations that commit more than others to the development of OPERAS. The Executive Assembly supervises the work of the Coordination Team, coordinates the Assembly of Commons through the Special Interest Groups (SIG) and presents the work done to the General Assembly.Ten organizations in Europe have agreed to steer OPERAS on its path to maturity, act as a national node, and coordinate one or more Special Interest Groups. They are represented in the Executive Assembly by the Executive Assembly Members.

Executive Assembly Members

(Finland) TSV

Lea Ryynänen-Karjalainen is the Executive Director of the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies since 2014. Before the Federation she has worked as the Vice Rector of the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, senior science adviser at the Research Council of Finland and several university management positions. She is also the Chair of the Board of the University of Eastern Finland since 2016. She has a PhD from the Sibelius-Academy in church music.

Specialization in the field of open scholarly communication: Science policy issues, public funding, citizen science

Contact: Lea.Ryynanen-Karjalainen[a]tsv.fi


(France/Fr) CNRS

Lionel Maurel
Lionel Maurel (private)

Lionel Maurel is Scientific Deputy Director at the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences of the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research). Two units inside of the CNRS are particularly involved in the development of the OPERAS AISBL: OpenEdition and Huma-Num.

Specialization in the field of open scholarly communication: copyright and other legal issues related to open access and open data, open science policies, library involvement, digital and knowledge commons

Contact: lionel.maurel[a]cnrs.fr


(Germany/GER) Max Weber Stiftung

Michael Kaiser

Michael Kaiser is a Historian and Director of the department perspectivia.net, library and IT affairs at the headquarters of the Max Weber Stiftung (MWS).

Specialization in the field of open scholarly communication: Digital publishing, enriched digital publications, new digital formats, and blogging.

Contact: kaiser[a]maxweberstiftung.de 


(Greece/GR) National Documentation Centre

Vassiliki Apostolopoulou

Vassiliki Apostolopoulou joined the National Documentation Centre (EKT) as a Research Associate and is working on an EU-funded project focusing on open scholarly communication and open access/science policies. Vassiliki holds a PhD in Political Philosophy, and she is a postdoctoral researcher in the field of Performing Arts. In addition, she has experience in digital media and participates in working groups for organising libraries and archives.

Specialization in the field of open scholarly communication: open access and open data, open science policies

Contact: vapostolopoulou[a]ekt.gr


(Croatia/HR) University of Zadar

Franjo Pehar is Associate Professor and Head of the Laboratory for Interactive Systems and User Experience (UX Lab). He also serves as the Director of the Doctoral Study “Knowledge Society and Transfer of Information”. His career has been marked by a strong focus on the history and theory of information science, delving into areas such as scholarly communication, bibliometrics, and information retrieval. Additionally, his expertise extends to human-computer interaction, emphasising usability, user experience, and personal information and knowledge management. 

ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0690-863X

Specialization in the field of information science: Scholarly communication and publishing, bibliometrics, human-computer interaction, usability, user experience, and personal information and knowledge management.

Contact: fpehar[a]unizd.hr


(Italy/IT) University of Turin

Elena Giglia
Elena Giglia (private)

Elena Giglia, PhD in Italian literature, Masters’ Degree in Librarianship and Masters’ Degree in Public Institutions Management, is Head of the Open Access Office at the University of Turin

She is a member of the Committee on Open Science at the Ministry for Higher Education and Research (MIUR) and of several national and international Working Groups. She has been part of the European Open Science network since many years, attending national and international conferences, and writing and lecturing on Open Access and Open Science. She takes part as an expert in several EU Workshops on Open Access and Open Science. She is one of the coordinators of the CO-OPERAS Implementation Network in GO FAIR.  She serves in the Scientific Committee of the international OAI-CERN workshop on Innovation in Scholarly Communication, of the ELPUB conference, and of the IRCDL conference; she is a member of the Advisory Board of Open Knowledge Maps and Qeios. Elena is the OPERAS delegate within the EOSC Association since December 2020. 

Specialization in the field of open scholarly communication: Open Access and Open Science advocacy, Open Access publishing, EOSC, FAIR data, data management 

Contact: elena.giglia[a]unito.it


(Netherlands/NL) OAPEN

Niels Stern
Niels Stern (private)

Niels Stern is Director of OAPEN and Co-director of DOAB. He began his career in scholarly book publishing in 2003. Co-founder of the OAPEN project in 2008. Head of Publishing at the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2011. Since 2014 independent expert for the European Commission on open science and e-infrastructures. In 2017 Head of Department for Licence Management at the Royal Danish Library and chief negotiator for the national licence consortium in Denmark.

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6466-9748

Specialization in the field of open scholarly communication: Digital book publishing, open access publishing, open infrastructures, citizen science, policy development

Contact: stern[a]oapen.org


(Norway/NO) ERIH PLUS

Monica Roos
Monica Roos (private)

Monica Roos is a senior advisor at The Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills at the headquarter in Bergen. She is running ERIH PLUS at the directorate, a European journal index within the SSH area.

She has a background in research libraries where she specialised in open repositories from early 2000. Since then, she has worked at the point of intersection between technology and users, with a particular focus on researchers and their varied publication needs. Due to her background, she has a strong knowledge of Open Science biology and culture, bibliometrics and other aspects of the academic publication processes. She has also worked as a research adviser at the University of Bergen the latest years. Over the years she has been involved in projects and networks in Norway and Europe.

Specialization in the field of open scholarly communication: academic publication processes.

Contact: Monica.Roos[a]hkdir.no


(Poland/PL) The Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN)


(Portugal/PT) University of Coimbra

Delfim Leão
Delfim Leão (private)

Delfim Leão is Full Professor at the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of Coimbra. Former Director of Coimbra University Press (2011-2021), he is Vice-Rector for Culture and Open Science. 

Specialization in the field of open scholarly communication: His scientific and professional activities include the development of two specialized digital platforms: the Classica Digitalia and the UC Digitalis. He is at present a member of the UNESCO Open Science Advisory Committee.

Contact: leo[a]fl.uc.pt


(Slovenia/SL) The Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Aleš Pogačnik
Aleš Pogačnik (private)

Aleš Pogačnik is editor-in-chief and general manager of Založba ZRC, publishing unit of ZRC SAZU, holds MA in Philosophy.

Specialization in the field of open scholarly communication: Open Access publishing, copyright issues, dissemination and publishing tools.

Contact: ales.pogacnik[a]zrc-sazu.si


(Spain/ES) FECYT

Pilar Rico-Castro is Head of the Open Access, Repositories and Journals Unit at FECYT NCP for Open Science in Horizon Europe Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT).

Contact: pilar.rico[a]fecyt.es


(United Kingdom/UK) Jisc

Graham Stone
Graham Stone (private)

Graham Stone is Jisc’s subject matter expert for OA monographs. He is the lead for communications on OA monographs within Jisc and with members and stakeholders and is responsible for developing and managing strategic relationships in the UK and internationally. Before joining Jisc, he worked in the university sector for 23 years managing library resources budgets, OA services and a University Press. He is a Chartered Librarian, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and holds a professional doctorate for research on New University Press publishing. He is co-author of Techniques for Electronic Resource Management: TERMS and the Transition to Open.

Specialization in the field of open scholarly communication: Open access publishing, Library publishing, library analytics, collection management

Contact: Graham.Stone[a]jisc.ac.uk