We are pleased to announce that our Managing Director, Dr Pierre de Villiers, is one of thirteen candidates nominated for three open seats on the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) Board of Directors.

Dr Pierre de Villiers is professionally trained as a family physician and worked for 10 years in private practice in Cape Town before being appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Family Medicine and Primary Care at the University of Stellenbosch, a position he held for 20 years. He holds a fellowship by peer review of the College of Medicine of South Africa, and a doctorate from the University of Stellenbosch in the field of community health. He is former editor-in-chief of the scholarly journal South African Family Practice, and current managing editor of the African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine, with a total of 15 years of editorial experience.

AOSIS introduced open access scholarly publishing to the South African market in 2005 and has been responsible for many publishing innovations in the country, such as online manuscript management, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), publishing in XML and ePUB and QR codes.

OASPA provides a forum for bringing together the entire community of Open Access journal publishers, representing the interests of Open Access journal and book publishers globally in all scientific, technical and scholarly disciplines.

OASPA has requested their members to indicate by 15 August who their three top choices (in no particular order) are from the candidates list. To read a short biography of each candidate as well as a statement about their interest in joining OASPA’s Board of Directors, visit http://oaspa.org/oaspa-election-candidates-2013/

We wish all candidates the best as each is a deserving representative.