ALPSP announces award winners

ALPSP announced the winners of its 2013 Awards at the ALPSP International Conference dinner on 12 September near Birmingham, UK. According to the association, 'among this year’s submissions were some very exciting projects reflecting the very best of the industry.'

The ALPSP Award for Best New Journal was given to the FDJ (Faculty Dental Journal published by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. Also shortlisted were: Advances in Nutrition from the American Society for Nutrition and RSC Advances from RSC Publishing.

PeerJ, the open-access publisher of PeerJ and PeerJ PrePrints, picked up the ALPSP Award for Publishing Innovation. In addition, the judges awarded a Highly Commended Certificate to Drama Online from Bloomsbury Publishing in partnership with Faber and Faber Ltd. Also shortlisted were: Altmetric; figshare and Nature ENCODE.

The ALPSP Award for Contribution to Scholarly Publishing 2013 went to Anthony Watkinson in recognition of his support for and commitment to the interests of the scholarly publishing industry over many years. ALPSP explained that 'during his varied and eminent career across the breadth of the industry, he has worked in research, as a scholarly librarian, and held senior roles with major publishing houses. He has also been involved in teaching as a visiting professor at the City University and UCL. He is currently principal consultant for CIBER Research, director of the Charleston Conference and Fiesole Collection, a consultant to the Publishers Association, a course director with STM and still finds time to teach at UCL and Oxford Brookes University.'

Consultant David Sommer, chair of the ALPSP Awards Committee commented: 'The quality and quantity of entries for the awards this year have been extraordinary, and demonstrate that new journal launches and publishing innovation are alive and well in our industry.'