Jasper Simons, a senior executive with wide experience in the publishing industry who currently oversees the association's PsycINFO® family of databases, will be the next APA publisher. The announcement was made by APA CEO Norman Anderson. Simons will succeed Dr. Gary VandenBos, who is retiring at the end of the year.
Simons currently oversees the business, operational and editorial aspects of PsycINFO, the world's leading discovery platform for the behavioural sciences, and other specialty databases such as PsycTESTS®. In addition, Simons oversees the product strategy for APA's online hosting platform, PsycNET®. Leading research institutions across the world subscribe to PsycNET to provide their end users with access to the latest research content from APA.
VandenBos has been collaborating with and mentoring Simons over that last few months and will continue to do so until he retires in December, and thereafter as a consultant.
Prior to joining APA, Simons was the vice president of product and market strategy at Thomson Reuters from 2012 to 2014. There, he managed products and services for publishers and associations. During his tenure, he advanced the ScholarOne Manuscript and ScholarOne Abstract software solutions, most notably by developing their ReviewerLocator solution and by building a robust Web services infrastructure to enable product and data integrations for publishers.
Simons joined Thomson Reuters after leading product development for the professional division of SAGE Publications, and releasing an innovative new platform for those interested in the social networks in national politics.
Earlier in his career, Simons held a number of business and leadership positions with leading publishing companies. Simons was the vice president and publisher of the clinical oncology journals for the Cancer Information Group in Dallas. Simons also ran the journals division for the American Anthropological Association in Washington. Before that, Simons was the business manager for Elsevier's ScienceDirect sales division in New York.
